Costello.caliber:Lagrangian,priori:schedulers …

The obvious result is that if someone wants to rob you, or blow you to bits, chances are all the police are going to do is help pick up the pieces, and chase leads.

When the scale of such crimes reaches that of using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons on us, the number of victims rises kinda drastically. This in turn raises the demand for protection by citizens to the top of the scale. They will be served.

For many, the demand for retribution against the bad guys goes ballistic as well. No bad guys evident? Well, any sinning group will do at that time: say, Iranians, Syrians, Palestinians—all of the above for example. We lash out.

So we flail about with our weapons until someone says enough! We are avenged. Several trillion dollars of destruction and many hundreds of thousands of deaths later, we survy the scene.

How about next time we put in a few preventive measures around the world to stop these kinds of things before they become an orgy of destruction? Buy a few more cops, for God’s sake! Buy a lot more! Buy many division’s worth. And then use them! They are cheap by comparison to the death and destruction wrecked!

Look at Israel and Palestine: firing away at each other for revenge every day for at least a half century.

If you think our government could withstand the outcry for revenge, and take the hits without responding, I believe you are living in a dream world, a utopia without oxygen.

So does the other guy want his revenge…

How many cops does it take?

I have some odd views on privacy: I believe that there is no such thing as privacy in the public environment, and so I am happy to install video cameras all over the place and record everybody’s public activities. However, I also believe that private activities really should be left private.

One solution to our problems with intercepting electronic communications would be to delegate most of the work to computer algorithms. Congress passes enabling legislation that stakes out the broad parameters of the algorithms, then a group of experts create (in secrecy) the actual algorithms, with a Congressional oversight committee confirming that the intent of the enabling legislation is respected. Then we turn the computers loose on all electronic communications. The trick is that there are also strong strictures against human access to the intercepted data. Only the computers monitor the data streams; they kick out only that tiny fraction of data that meets the criteria of “suspiciousness”; only then does a human get to see it. This could actually work — IF we have sufficiently selective algorithms. Unfortunately, I fear that our body politic is too ignorant of computer science to appreciate that this process can be made both fair and effective.

The issues have been
(a) whether more effective policing, including proactive policing, would be helpful in significantly reducing the odds of successful terrorist attacks, and how to align increased police powers with civil liberties. This includes a frank discussion of how much we Americans want to allow police to leverage the technology curve over the next 20 years. Do we want 1000 times as many electronic deputies of the government observing our lives, directly and indirectly?
(b) whether more should be spent on homeland infrastructure and border protection measures to minimize the chances of successful terrorist attacks, and whether we should improve our capacity to respond when an incident occurs, to hopefully minimize injury and loss of human life.
(c) whether very expensive military interventions abroad are helpful or harmful to our security, and if they are helpful, how and where they should be focused.
(d) whether more effort should be spent worldwide on reducing access to WMD raw materials and technologies. (yes!)
(e) etc
For all these, there are clear differences between the aggregate Democratic and Republican camps, and there are also significant differences within the parties. The Republicans would like all of America to think that they own the terrorism issue, but they don’t. (e.g. a lot of homeland security improvements could be bought with the $1.2 billion (price estimates vary) that was previously spent on a B2 bomber that crashed last week. The B2 program continued long after the collapse of the Soviet Union.)

You cite several nasty terrorist possibilities. As I wrote earlier, those possibilities are real but they are of low probability. High-cost, low probability events are some of the toughest policy issues to deal with, largely because people get so upset about them. If we remove the emotional aspect and look at it in terms of probable body count, these possibilities always vanish into insignificance. For example, let’s do a fake calculation on a terrorist attack with a makeshift nuclear weapon. Let’s say that such an attack would kill a million people, and there’s one in a million chance of it happening per year. Then the mathematical calculation says that the effective threat of this event is 1 dead American per year — not much to worry about at all.

Of course, this is a fake calculation — neither of us know the real numbers. But my point is that, if you look at these things rationally, they just don’t add up to much because the probabilities are certainly low.

You might respond with the observation that a nuclear weapon detonating in an American city would trigger mass political hysteria. Yes, it would, just as 9/11 triggered political hysteria. But do you approve of that hysteria? Are you asserting that the American people are too emotional to respond rationally to such an event? Do you believe that we should abandon rationalism in the event of such an attack?

You ask me,

” Would you have argued in 1941 that Japan and Germany were not major threats because fewer than 3000 Americans had been killed by them… yet?”

Not at all. The basis for continuing attacks from Japan and Germany was clear to see. The probability that they could execute such attacks was high. There were good objective reasons to assess the danger posed by these powers as very serious. And there AREN’T good objective reasons to assess the danger posed by Islamic terrorists as very serious.

You write,

“Imagine what the political scene would look like right now if the 2006 plot to blow up a dozen jumbo jets over American cities had not been thwarted?”

And was that plot thwarted by the troops in Iraq? By the troops in Afghanistan? Was it thwarted by warrantless wiretapping? Was it thwarted by any of the extreme measures taken since 9/11? Or was it thwarted by the same kind of diligent work that we were using prior to 9/11?

You complain that the Democrats have crippled our intelligence efforts. Can you demonstrate that 9/11 would have been thwarted had we tortured people in our custody? Can you demonstrate that 9/11 would have been thwarted by warrantless wiretapping? Can you demonstrate that any of the impediments created by the Democrats prevented our intelligence agencies from thwarting the 9/11 plot?

Furthermore, 9-11 was a major event - not just for its death toll, but for its impact on society and the economy. After all, more were killed there than Pearl Harbor. Would you have argued in 1941 that Japan and Germany were not major threats because fewer than 3000 Americans had been killed by them… yet?

One reason 9-11 happened was a Democratic administration that treated terrorism like you suggest - a minor threat, low casualties, a police matter, no big deal.

Even the Republicans’ “inadequate” response has stopped attacks that would have killed thousands. Imagine what the political scene would look like right now if the 2006 plot to blow up a dozen jumbo jets over American cities had not been thwarted?

The Republicans *should* be taken more seriously on this because, in spite of the failure to do a better job (hey, when does the government do a good job?), they at least recognize and respond to the threat.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have crippled our intelligence agencies every chance they got, starting in the 70’s and continuing into their current legislative action that has effectively ended much of our electronic intelligence gathering.

1. The distinction between a personal crisis and a national crisis. I see no justification for that distinction. Yes, 9/11 generated a lot more news stories than the everyday accidents that kill more people. But we should found our policies on reality, not perception. The fact that millions of Americans were shocked by 9/11 while they are blase about traffic deaths does not mean that a policymaker should concentrate on the former and ignore the latter.

2. The question of whether more attacks would have taken place had we not responded so vigorously. My response to this is to point out that there are degrees of response, from no response up to the full-tilt War on Terror with accompanying invasions, etc. I believe that, had we implemented only minor tightening of our security protocols, we would have been just as successful in preventing acts of terror as we are now. Of course, all these considerations are speculative. They’re rather like the old joke about the fellow waving his arms and quacking. When asked why he was engaging in such odd behavior, he replied “To keep the elephants away.” When reminded that there were no elephants nearby, he triumphantly replied “See? It works!”

Valerie, you accuse me of advocating lawlessness. Your further accuse me of ignoring the needs of those I don’t know. This is poppycock; nothing I have written suggests any of those conclusions. You are indulging in wild hyperbole.

You are advocating lawlessness and failure to protect the vulnerable because you personally think nobody you care about is likely to get hit. If we follow your line of reasoning, we will deserve what we get.

Liberals don’t do that. They care about the little people, and the ones in harm’s way.

http://eustonmanifesto.org/?page_id=132