Superb!

I admire Soros. His approach to global economic problems is worthy of great respect. His analysis of the underlying dynamics of the War on Terror is perceptive. But it misses one crucial, inescapable fact. Regardless the circumstances and dynamics that gave rise to terrorist acts, terrorist acts are real, material, effective and by now irremissable. As it were, the genie's out of the bottle. Terrorisism is now an accepted modus of warfare, terrorist acts deployments of terrorist weapons. Terrorism is globalized guerilla warfare. It works, and, depending on the "terrain" it works beautifully. It's the "anti-atomic weapon."

There is an old comedy/satirical song penned by former MIT mathemetician Tom Lehrer, a song about Werner Von Braun, the former Nazi scientist who helped develop U.S. missile technology in the 1950s-60s. One line speaks to our anxieties about terrorist acts: "When the missiles go up who cares where they come down. That's not my department," says Werner Von Braun.

First, welcome back Dean Slaughter. You were missed.

I would like to add some further reservations about the "war on terrorism" to the list offered by George Soros:

The main reason to reject the war on terrorism as a dominant themes and guiding principle of national policy is the corrosive and debilitating effect that war is having, and will continue to have, on our national culture. Daily talk about the "war on terrorism" conveys a sense of permanent emergency and crisis. This is harmful for at least these two reasons: first, because emergency conditions create the demand for, an acquiescence in, emergency powers; and second, because modern terrorism is not a crisis, but is likely to be a more or less permanent feature of modern life, and for a very long time. That is regrettable, but it means we have a choice: are we going to continue to wallow in our post-9/11 national stupor and trauma, frozen in time and haunted by the shadows of "wartime" fear and doom? Or are we going to move on and build our future, and consign terrorism to that psychic background space of modern nightmares and potential harms - like fatal traffic accidents and sudden heart failure - that, while undoubtably real, we do not allow to govern our lives.

Bush and friends prefer fear and doom, and that is why they love the War on Terror.

What Americans are mainly being distracted from by the war on terrorism is not some other horrifying overseas bogeyman, but their own domestic future. Americans need to get back to building their economic and social future, with the customary optimism, good cheer, humor and bluff courage which characterizes Americans at their best. They need to escape from the morose gloom and doom, and introverted paralyzing paranoia, into which the Bush administration has pushed them, and continues to push them because it serves their own ends. Such episodes have occurred throughout American history, and represent America at its worst.

The war theme also encourage a false promise of a decisive "victory" over terrorism. But I doubt we are ever going to see terrorism go away, although we may have more or less success in suppressing it. Twenty years from now, thirty years from now, fifty or a hundred years from now it may still be with us. Terrorism is a technique that will always be attractive to non-state actors with limited conventional power. As explosive materials and devices have become more readily available in the past few centuries, as modest technical proficiency in physical chemistry and biochemistry has spread outside a small well-governed elite and into the broader culture, and as cheap and easily obtained guns and bargain basement military equipment have been proliferated to absurd and obscene levels, the frequency and destructiveness of terrorism have increased apace.

We are not just experiencing a sudden burst of militancy. One suspects there will always be radical militant groups characterized by some combination of legitimate grievances, dour alientation, resentment, fantasy, hatred and wild-eyed utopian fervor. They will be attracted by the opportunity for a few weak people to do great damage. Preventing terrorist attacks should be regarded as one of the standard security functions of government. Americans and others should shift from thinking of fighting terrorism on the model of warfare or a response to crisis, and begin to think of it as part of good government-as-usual.

I also worry about what the war on terrorism is doing to a generation of young Americans. Rather than helping the nation heal from the 9/11 trauma, the government's tireless promulgation of the war on terrorism theme is helping to produce a generation of quasi-fanatics. Rachel Kleinman and some of the other Truman Democrats, for example, have made it clear that they now regard the War on Terrorism (or the War on Islamofascism, or the War on Islamic Totalitarianism, or one of the other affiliated "wars") as the defining theme and cause of their generation. I'm really quite concerned about the future of the country if the upcoming generation is fixated on the problem of terrorism above all other problems, and makes it their life's vocation to pursue a quixotic quest to kill the Tree of Evil by destroying and pulling out the "root causes" of terrorism. I'm also a bit concerned about the strong sense of generational difference, specialness and "calling" the war theme seems to have wrought in their psychologies.

The war metaphor also gives people a false sense of confidence that the changes we make in our legal and constitutional practices and traditions are only temporary emergency measures, rather than permanent ones. But in fact, they are not at all likely to be temporary. Once the prosecutorial, police and judicial arms of goverment succeed in accumulating new powers, it is almost impossible for people to take those powers back, There will always be some reason to be found why the "war" must be continued, or why the previous war has morphed into some new war.

The war theme also encourages obsessive navel gazing about whether we are "winning" the war on terror, and distorts our political debate in other ways as well. For example, Democrats who accept the grave allure and cosmic significance of the War on Terror are often driven to argue that the reason one should oppose the war in Iraq is because that latter war is a "distraction" from the war on terror. This is really misguided and wrongheaded. Even if there were no terrorist threat of any significance facing us, the events transpiring in Iraq would be a calamity of global import. Surely precipitating a massive collapse of stability, and a horrifying carnival of murder in the heart of the most strategic region in the world, and sending thousands of American soldiers into the meat grinder in the process, is awful enough without any need to bring in the matter of spurious "distractions" from the equally spurious war on terror.

Democrats cowed by the war on terror ballyhoo also sometimes box themselves into the awkward position of arguing, for political effect, that we are in fact "losing" the "war". Now Americans have all sorts of problems with Bush's domestic and foreign policy. But it is more than faintly absurd to take up the position that a country that has not seen a major terrorist attack since the so-called "war on terror" began is actually losing that war. The only evidence for this is that there are still terrorists out there, and there are still terorist plans to be thwarted - like the recent UK episode. But it was thwarted. And you know what? When Democrats take over, there are still going to be terrorists out there and the Democratic administration will still have to thwart planned attacks. We don't want to lay down the position now that the very existence of nasty terrorists making nasty plans that we have to thwart proves both that there is a "war on terrorism" and that we are "losing" that war. If so, Democrats will be losing the war from the day they take office.

So, rather than continuing to enable the Bush/Republican bewitchment of the public about the War on Terror, let's work to decisively break the spell, re-enter the reality-based realm, and treat terrorism as just one among several serious and persistant challenges to security and peace. And if people are looking for some cause to devote themselves to, how about the cause of building an exciting and optimistic future of prosperity, hope and progress, rather than languishing in the dismal and gloomy twilight world of the War on Terrorism.

Or perhaps, dull and several years late.

Soros is wrong if he thinks the "frame" is responsible for the manner in which Bush and Cheney conduct America's foreign policy.

The GWOT meme is for domestic political consumption, only. As such, it acts to sanitize imperialist adventures and innoculate the Administration against criticism. Whatever they called it, we'd still have gone into Iraq, still have called Sharon a "man of peace," and still have given Israel a free hand in its wars against Hizbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.

Fair points, Ellen.  Still, it's nice to see a concise summary of why and how the "war on terror" frame is damaging.  That construct might not have influenced the current administration's foreign policy, but it was definitely used to justify that foreign policy.

PSA: There is a Users' Help Forum.

There's one for the tinfoil hat crowd.

because modern terrorism is not a crisis, but is likely to be a more or less permanent feature of modern life, and for a very long time. That is regrettable, but it means we have a choice: are we going to continue to wallow in our post-9/11 national stupor and trauma, frozen in time and haunted by the shadows of "wartime" fear and doom? Or are we going to move on and build our future, and consign terrorism to that psychic background space of modern nightmares and potential harms - like fatal traffic accidents and sudden heart failure - that, while undoubtably real, we do not allow to govern our lives.

There's much that's true in this post, and there's no doubt that the WAY the Bush Administration has prosecuted the "War on Terror" almost by definition discredits the whole idea. 

And yet I can't help but think that a lot of this is whistling past the graveyard.  It is probably true that if terrorism were to stay more or less at the level it exists now, especially in the US where it is essentially non-existent, then yes, it would be possible to argue that terrorism should be treated no differently than any other scourge of modern life like car accidents or heart disease.  But of course the terrorists themselves, especially those states like Iran where terrorism is state policy, aren't sitting still.  They are getting more sophisticated, seeking more and better weapons and looking to spread their evil ideology.  People on this blog tend to pooh-pooh the threat of Iranian nukes.  But even they are ten years away, how can anyone say that nukes in the hands of a government with the track record of Iran isn't something just insanely scary? If that doesn't meet the definition of an enemy that needs to be fought, then I don't know what does.

So what I fear is not the retirement of the term "war on terror" but rather the slow acceptance of terrorism as something you can't do very much about.  I'm with those who say that the struggle against Islamic extremism is nothing less than the defense of Western civilization and as such, it needs to be  be put at the center of the nation's agenda.  Does that imply an endorsement of the Bush agenda?  It shouldn't, but to too many people it does.  And that's one of the most pernicious legacies of this most pernicious of presidencies.

It's beyond tinfoil hat. he's made up a story out of thin air, based on his political beliefs and nothing else (unless he has some inside sources in British intel that he's not telling us about), and now he's going to watch the news and cherry-pick things to "prove" it. It's exactly the same thing the Bush administration tried to do with Iraq and WMD.

It's very depressing to see someone rate the comment a 4, to fall for a lefty version of a "Curveball" or a Chalabi. Makes me want to stop spending so much time at this place, thinking I might catch a bit of whatever non-reality-based disease is going around.

Even should a few of his predictions come true, it will never redeem the method. It's not just paranoid, it's a faulty way to approach discerning truth: a closed mind.

thanks for pointing out that you think the Fallows piece is important.

I would note to others that even thought the article is not available on line, there are two links to "Atlantic Unbound" pieces by him that are related and thought-provoking.

There were only two predictions in that comment.  So, if both were to pan out, it would still be a few.  The non-predictions stated were facts.  You are free to interpret them as you wish, just as others do.

Hoppy in Sacramento

It may well be that the "global war on terror" will devolve into a purely political form of the word, but those using the term treat it like a shooting war. There is heavy emphasis on military answers, on portraying the threat as an organisation that must be killed.

The rhetoric of "global war on terror" only serves to scare the populace, to maintain FUD. A sober analysis would show that less, not more, is being done under Bush than under Clinton to reduce the threat of terrorist attacks. Intelligence-gathering, cooperation, almost every effective tactic has been scorned by Bush as too wimpy.

Using the word "War" for political gain may seem macho, but in the end only invites sarcasm. The "war on drugs" was/is a joke, and the "war on poverty" also faded away in emberassment.

Brad, I do think the rising power of Iran, and the the question of best way to deal with that power, pose serious challenges for the US, Europe, Russia, China and for states in the region - including Arab states. But these challenges only seem connected in remote ways with the problem of terrorism.

We've learned of several terrorist plots and alleged plots against Western governments and their people over the past five years - in Canada, in the US, in the UK and in Spain, for example. Have any of them been traced to the government of Iran, or to groups who owe their primary loyalty to Iran? Have there been any credible reports - or even suggestions from our own Iran-obsessed government - that Iranian agents are in the US actively organizing terrorist operations?

My own view is that US relations with Iran are more a matter for coventional statecraft, and don't fall under our efforts against terrorism in any direct way. I don't want the Iranians to have nuclear weapons; just as I didn't want the Indians and the Pakistanis to have nuclear weapons, or the Israelis, or the Chinese, or the North Koreans, or the Russians. But this just seems to me to be the latest manifestation of the older problem of nuclear proliferation - a problem we have had for decades, before anyone was worried much about terrorism

But this is part of the problem with the war on terror theme. The expression "war on terrorism" is often expanded by the government and media to cover all issues of security concern related in any way to the Middle East and Muslim world. It is not conducive to clear thinking to refer to refer to such a broad assortment of different issues under a single heading - and specifically, the single heading of "terrorism".

And personally, I do not think Western civilization itself is in significant jeopardy. The sky isn't falling.

Actually, its not out there at all.

In Canada during our separatist crisis, the RCMP (Our FBI the mounties) attempted to infiltrate and discredit the separatist movement.

What was discovered when a public inquiry came about was that the RCMP made a habit of writing wildly inflammatory separatist letters to the press, to discredit real separatists. Infiltrators also colluded with and incited criminal acts. And at least one or two criminal acts, including the burning down of a barn, was actually initiated and planned by the RCMP.

This was not the separatists crying foul. This was the RCMP's dirty little secrets being dragged out into the light.

Structurally, in order to infiltrate a group, police or undercover agents often feel the need to establish their false bona fides with tough and extremist talk.

Quite often, when undercover agents are exposed, people in these groups have identified the agent as the most radical and aggressive person in the group. He's the one most inclined to incite violence, most inclined to push for the most extreme position. The need to continually 'prove' that they are real radicals can lead to advocacy of violence and actual violence.

In part, its the need to produce results. After all, every undercover assignment is a major investment of time and money. An undercover agent cannot easily be placed in a role, removed, and then re-placed in another role.

So what happens when an undercover agent is placed with what turns out to be a Koran group, or a pacifist anti-war group. Major waste of time and resources. So bureaucraticaly there is a need to radicalize. You have to justify your undercover work, even if this amounts to going out and committing minor terrorist acts, or cajoling others to plan terrorist acts.

Frankly, if it can happen in Canada, then its a snap that it is a real issue elsewhere.

In terms of Britain, we know that they experienced a similar phenomenon in dealing with the IRA.

And in the US, we have only to look at COINTELPRO or Operation Northwood (google either of them) to see how easily and brutally it can happen. In Operation Northwood elements in the Pentagon actually plotted the murder of American citizens in order to justify a military invasion of some pissy little third world country.

Often with these things, we don't find out the truth until years later.

My own view is that by this time, the historical record of these 'false flags' and 'black ops' is so extensive and so disturbing, that we simply cannot accept any current incident at face value any more.

It is not paranioa, but simple realism. Given the historical record, we simply cannot know.

And add to the list:

"Shock and Awe" is nothing more than a government sponsored military led terror tactic. It is meant to instill fear and terror.

Well, its very simple. Iran has a long track record of violence.

For instance, here's a list of the countries it has invaded!

...

...

...

Whereas the United States has in the last forty years only sent troops on missions to: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, Lebanon, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Somalia, Kosovo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf.

hmmmm

Okay, bad example.

BUT Iran did fight a major war with Iraq...

...20 years ago.

...as compared to America which fought two wars with Iraq, maintained sanctions for 12 years, undertook numerous military bombing operations like 'Desert Fox' and currently occupies the place to this very day.

hmmm

Okay, another bad example.

BUT Iran sponsors terrorist organizations, like Al Quaeda...

... well, not like Al Quaeda, which it hates.

... But definitely it sponsors Hezbollah.

On the other hand, the United States has sponsored or supported terrorist organizations or operations in or against Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Iraq, Iran, Venezuala among others.

Hmmmm

That's not a good example either.

Okay, how about this:

Iran is a country of people who wear funny turbans and robes, who go around shouting Allah Akbar which probably doesn't mean any good, and who are not sufficiently devoted to kissing America's ass.

I think that justifies a good nukin' right there.

Meanwhile, over in that strange country called reality....

And yet I can't help but think that a lot of this is whistling past the graveyard. It is probably true that if terrorism were to stay more or less at the level it exists now, especially in the US where it is essentially non-existent, then yes, it would be possible to argue that terrorism should be treated no differently than any other scourge of modern life like car accidents or heart disease. But of course the terrorists themselves, especially those states like Iran where terrorism is state policy, aren't sitting still. They are getting more sophisticated, seeking more and better weapons and looking to spread their evil ideology. People on this blog tend to pooh-pooh the threat of Iranian nukes. But even they are ten years away, how can anyone say that nukes in the hands of a government with the track record of Iran isn't something just insanely scary? If that doesn't meet the definition of an enemy that needs to be fought, then I don't know what does.

I'm sort of with you on this, but my concern is that the Administration isn't with you. My concern is that many in this Administration would find the continued existence of a non-nuclear and even non-Hezbollah-supporting Iran unacceptable if its under the current regime. Whether the real goal is an idealistic Middle East democracy project or a cynical grab for oil, the nuclear issue is perhaps just a tool for Bush, and therefore Bush does nothing to signal to Iran that giving up nukes would allow them to maintain control of their country.

In other words, the Bush Administration makes Iran MORE likely to acquire nukes, so that it might be more like North Korea than Iraq.

I'd agree that with increasing technology terrorism is going to be a bigger and bigger deal in the future. But that's exactly why we need to prioritize our anti-terrorism--we need to do more to fight the biggest threat, nuclear proliferation, and perhaps live with the smaller, more manageable threats. And above all we need to realize that war produces chaos and disorder and terrorists love chaos and disorder. We should threaten war with Iran, but we must consider that Mutually Assured Detriment--if we can keep Iran as a non-nuclear dictatorship, that would be much safer for us (as well as Iranians and the entire planet) than turning it into Iraq-style anarchy.

Iran may need to be fought in the future, but it sure as hell doesn't need to be fought TODAY, and nothing good will come of a war with Iran started by the guys who gave us the war in Iraq.

I also worry about what the war on terrorism is doing to a generation of young Americans. Rather than helping the nation heal from the 9/11 trauma, the government's tireless promulgation of the war on terrorism theme is helping to produce a generation of quasi-fanatics. Rachel Kleinman and some of the other Truman Democrats, for example, have made it clear that they now regard the War on Terrorism (or the War on Islamofascism, or the War on Islamic Totalitarianism, or one of the other affiliated "wars") as the defining theme and cause of their generation. I'm really quite concerned about the future of the country if the upcoming generation is fixated on the problem of terrorism above all other problems, and makes it their life's vocation to pursue a quixotic quest to kill the Tree of Evil by destroying and pulling out the "root causes" of terrorism. I'm also a bit concerned about the strong sense of generational difference, specialness and "calling" the war theme seems to have wrought in their psychologies.

I've got to seriously disagree with you here. Terrorism is the key issue of our time--and this will be even more true in future generations. As more and more technology unleashes greater and greater power, the effort to keep small dissatisfied groups of individuals from killing mass numbers of people will become more and more important. Yes, we must always live with terrorism--but reducing (or at least not increasing) the number of people with both desire and means to kill a mass of their fellow human beings is an absolute requirement of human society in the future. If the younger generation happens to see that more clearly than their elders, than they're just ahead of the curve--it will become even more obvious to generations yet born, with destructive technologies yet undreamt.

That said, I think stopping terrorism is a matter of restraint, patience, cooperation, economics, and culture rather than causing destruction and chaos--but terrorism is still of primary importance.

Because a centrist is parasitical upon the ideas -- the ideology -- of those to the right and to the left?

"Why can't we all just get along?"  Rodney King 

I don't disagree that terrorism is a very important issue, and will be a continuing challenge for us for an indefinite period of time - probably for as long as we can anticipate. That's one reason why we need to shift from "crisis mode" to a more sustainable and less anxiety-ridden model of terrorism prevention and suppression as a routine function of government.

But where is the empirical evidence supporting the view that terrorism should be regarded as the "key issue of our time", or the "defining issue of our time"? Exactly how many successful terrorist attacks have occurred in recent years? And taken together, how destructive have they been?

AIDS probably kills more people every year than have been killed in the entire history of terrorism.

Global competition for energy resources is now leading to increasing hostility and rivalry among large and powerful states - and could very easlily lead to major war in the coming few decades. And many of those states have whole arsenals of nuclear missiles - not just a suitcase nuke, dirty bomb, or a vial of nerve gas.

And war between states is part of the common pattern of world history. Yet I hear many of these supposedly clear-eyes members of the terrorism generation suggest that we have entered some sort of globalist Shangri-la where large states no longer go to war with each other, and we therefore only have to worry now about failed states and non-state actors. I ask: who really has the clearest vision and soundest judgment here?

We also face a problem of collosal debt, wildly inflated home costs, a lopsided income distribution, persistantly sluggish job growth, a hazardous balance of payments deficit and a shifting global balance of economic power that presents the threat of very troubled economic times ahead for the US if we don't act to address these problems. When the rising "war on terror" generation starts losing their jobs and homes and standard of living, I wonder if they will be happy then about all the mental effort they once put into worrying about a few militants and their amazing exploding liquids and shoe bombs.

And a rapidly deteriorating global environment, proliferating global slums, and rising gap between rich and poor are exacting a savage daily toll of human degradation and misery that add up to far more suffering than has ever been caused by sum total of all terrorism.

In my view this younger generation, at least insofar as they are represented by people like the Trumans, is not seeing the issues we face more clearly than their elders. Instead a combination of limited historical experience, an undue focus on current events and vivid recent traumas, and a narrow attention span are causing them to fixate on and exaggerate one particular problem at the expense of others that are equally and more serious. To be fair, its not just them, but a lot of other Americans as well.

When my son was six, a neighbor in our appartment building put something down the drain that clogged some of the building's outflowing pipes, and caused a serious flood in our own apartment. It scared the shit out of him. For years after, my son had an exaggerated fear of running water, gurgling toilets and knocking pipes. I don't actually think he was a visionary, who saw the Problem of Plumbing more clearly than others. But the one devil he knew seemed much more frightening than all of the other devils out there.

So now we have a generation of people who were raised in an unprecedented era of tranquility, peace and prosperity, and then experienced their one memorable national calamity when some planes came out of the sky and crashed into the World Trade Center. This particular kind of modern hazard seems to them to be the defining characteristic and challenge of our times. But maybe it is just the defining scar of their own psyches?

I would add that one contributing factor in the War on Terror culture is the extravagant influence of New York and Washington on our political and media culture. Those people who are the most traumatized, and who probably have the most to fear from terrorism, are having a disproportionate and irrational impact on how others in America perceive the world.

The issue as you say are the politicians who do not think through the position and take a position that they believe in. The problem is compounded when a politican, or one of the rest of us, refuse to re-examine what we used to think.

The problem is not so much the place on the spectrum but the shallow or finger-in-the-wind positions.  I cannot believe from anything I read that you can visit Iraq and come home with the all is well view.

-------------

Technical issue

This morning I cannot copy text inside the Cafe. I can highlight the text to be copied but when I go to hit copy it is not an available option. [I can still copy from other online sites, e.g., newpapers]

Okay; 911wasInsideJob is a conspiracy nut and his loud claim that the GWOT is a fraud (and nothing but?) is extreme.  But he draws attention to certain absent facts one would expect to be present were this terrorist plot to be all Bush and Blair claim for it.

He, then, goes on to offer a couple of what are clearly speculations (that is, he's not seeking to pull the wool over our eyes) which given the history of our government's counterintelligent activities over the past 50-60 years are conceivable.

Yes; 911wasInsideJob is using rhetorical questions hyperbollically, but I don't think that makes his comment the ranting of a tinfoil hat conspiracist.

Here's a thought. I'm not very concerned about terrorism. I don't deny that it exists, but the chance of me being affected by a terror attack is about the same as getting struck by a lightning. Simply not worth fretting about in the grand scheme of things. I also don't have a TV. Could there be a link?

In Canada during our separatist crisis, the RCMP (Our FBI the mounties) attempted to infiltrate and discredit the separatist movement.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Yes, you are protected against certain forms of worry. OTOH, you lack the immunizations provided by the BBC, significantly "Yes Minister", "Monty Python" and "Yes Prime Minister".

There are other resources. Now, my blood sugar has been bouncing up and down for the last hour or two, making me cranky. It cheered me, however, to cast Senior Administration Officials into the cast of "Are You Being Served"? For example, consider Cheney, in a John Inman voice, sticking his head into the Oval Office door and inquiring "Are you free, Mr. President?" Does Secretary Rice have a companion named Tiddles? How about John Yoo as Captain Peacock?
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Okay, now; as it is I already feel uncomfortable enough sticking up for 911wasInsideJob.

Would I be a tinfoil hat conspiracist if I wondered whether the JonBenet Ramsey killer has an air tight alibi and was confessing in order to get himself out of a Thai jail?

I can and do watch DVDs on my computer. Hence I am not deprived of the joys of British humour and the associated immunization services. Black Adder, Fawlty Towers, &c. I did watch Yes Minister on TV in a previous life.

Thank you for reminding me that I need to place an order for The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset right now.

Western civilization has survived everything from the Black Death and the Spanish flu to the Nazis and Soviets. Western civilization is hardly threatened by a few train bombs and a few airline crashes. Turning this problem into a winner takes all clash of civilizations is the one way to both justify and guarantee the death of millions. We should not be so stupid.

But all our horses are named Preston!

It's a tradition!

That your home might be overvalued is a bigger threat to you than the loss of your very life?

When I'm dead, I'm obviously not going to be worried about little things like dying. So yeah, I guess it is.

Are you worried about an asteroid hitting Earth? Or a meteorite hitting you personally? Are you worried about the Sun turning into a red dwarf? Are you worried about dying in a car crash? Getting struck by a lightning? Are you worried about global warming? Running out of oil? Avian flu?

Here's a thought for you. Humans are atrociously bad at prioritizing risks. And I mean unbelievably bad. Terrorists are well aware of that. You can play their game... but you're not going to win.

Let me get this straight. The prospect of losing your job frightens you more than nuclear annihilation? You're more afraid of an imbalance of dollars--little green pieces of paper--outside our country than uncontrolled nuclear fuel? That your home might be overvalued is a bigger threat to you than the loss of your very life? And you think OTHER PEOPLE have distorted perspectives?

Well of course losing my life would be worse than simply losing my job or home. But the rational degree of worry one assigns to some prospective calamity is a function of both how bad the consequences of that calamity would be and the probability that calamity will actually occur.

For example, I would prefer the loss of my job to, say, being kidnapped, tortured and killed by a biker gang on crystal meth. But someone who worries more about the biker gang scenario than their precarious economic situation probably has a distorted sense of the expected harms associated with various threats, unless they live in some weird dystopian bikerland.

I don't know where you live. But what would you say is the probability that you personally will be killed, in the next ten years, in a terrorist attack? What do you think is the probability that terrorists will detonate a single nuclear bomb in that period of time? Two bombs? Three bombs? Now what is the probability that you will be killed by cancer, a heart attack or a car wreck? As for myself, I think that if I ever am killed by a nuke, it is much more likely to be a Russian nuke or a Chinese nuke launched in a conventional war as part of a large nuclear barrage than a terrorist nuke. I wish my government were doing more to alleviate the many problems and sources of potential conflict that could bring the US to blows with China or Russia in the not-so-distant future, and not devoting quite so much attention to keeping fluids and nail clippers off airplanes.

Simply put, any of the problems you mention would be easily solved if human beings were better at cooperation, but many are impossible to solve otherwise. The problem of human conflict is the key issue in the sense that if it is solved all is easy but if it fails then we are doomed. The "War on Terror" may be a mistake, but terrorism itself is a meta-issue--it has tendrils in every other issue.

So do you think the challenge of our generation is solving "the problem of human conflict?" That strikes me as a fairly unrealistic goal. But beyond that, it is a much broader problem than the problem of terrorism.

I do agree with you when you say this: "the more entites in the world who have the capacity to create mass destruction, the factorially more dangerous our situation becomes." But the threats of this kind are still, by far, the threats of states acquiring greater destructive powers, and going to war against other states.

I don't see that we are in any more danger of a Hobbesian war of all against all than we have been at any other time in human history. But we do have more to fear from the destructive power of the warring parties. And it is still clearly the case that the most destructive of these warring parties are likely to be states, rather than terorists. So addressing the potential causes of major wars between large states is still the most pressing human security problem. It drives me to distraction that so many Americans, and others, seem willing to sleepwalk their way into a coming world war born of the strategic jostling for control over energy resources, while spending all of their time along the way worrying about terrorist gangs blowing up a single plane, or even a single nuclear weapon that they may never obtain.

So taking into acount both the potential destructiveness and likelihood of different possible threats, I still think there are several problems that have equal or more claim than terrorism to be declared the challenge of our (or somebody's) generation.

Its the calm before the storm sort of issue.

Remember the 70's when everyone was worried about herpes? Yeah, a minor but embarrassing cold sore on the genitals was a threat to civilization.

Then aids came along.

Terrorism is like that. It's sort of geopolitical herpes.

So... going to be interesting to see what planetary auto immune dysfunction syndrome is going to look like.

The Soros article is terrible. If he doesn't like the GWOT term (who does?) he should offer a replacement term and show us, point by point, how it solves the 4 problems he outlines.

But what would you say is the probability that you personally will be killed, in the next ten years, in a terrorist attack? What do you think is the probability that terrorists will detonate a single nuclear bomb in that period of time? Two bombs? Three bombs?

You've got two errors here. One is the choice of time window. Whatever the chances that this will happen in the next 10 years, the chance that this will happen in the 10 years after that are much, much, much higher. And so on for every decade following. That's the error of the older generation--too short a time window.

The other thing is that I simply have no idea what the probability in question would be. It's easy to compute a probability of heart failure or car crash. Terrorists destroying cities? Too hard to guess. It's too dependent on what happens in the next few years, and how much we're willing to do to make it less likely. There's too many variables.

As for myself, I think that if I ever am killed by a nuke, it is much more likely to be a Russian nuke or a Chinese nuke launched in a conventional war as part of a large nuclear barrage than a terrorist nuke.

Well, that's the difference we have, then. You're absolutely wrong. Russia and China are big enough entities that they motivated by rational economic concerns. Indeed, even you chalk up their motivations as economic. Therefore, in a resource war, these nations might threaten to use nukes, but actually doing so would cost them so much in a world of both economic interdependence and nuclear retaliation that it's extremely unlikely they would actually do so.

A more serious threat is that current nuclear powers would supply smaller entities with nuclear weapons. The more small state and non-state actors (no, terrorism is not defined as "non-state") we have to worry about, the more likely one is either to act irrationally or not have anything to lose to begin with.

Now, reducing the size and threat and American, Russian and Chinese arsenals might be good if it means less nuclear proliferation and less uncontrolled nuclear material. But terrorism--the capacity for "little guys" to blow up the planet--is still the challenge of our generation. Any one who denies that simply fails to understand the problem, or simply fails to think ahead.

o do you think the challenge of our generation is solving "the problem of human conflict?" That strikes me as a fairly unrealistic goal. But beyond that, it is a much broader problem than the problem of terrorism.

Actually, it's not really broader at all. The problem of terrorism is either reducing the number of entities who want to blow us up or reducing the number of entities who have the capability to blow us up. (The key focus is on the number of entities--that's why focusing on Russia and China, the big two scariest entities, is mistaken). But if we focus merely on the second part of the formula, we make ourselves invulnerable and everyone else vulnerable and thereby dramatically increasing the number of people who want to blow us up. Therefore, we have to work on both sides of the formula--which means the human conflict itself becomes the problem. It seems broader in the sense that we have always faced it, but it is the future threat of terrorism that forces us to face it now, that makes it the current greatest threat to our species.

Well, that's the difference we have, then. You're absolutely wrong. Russia and China are big enough entities that they motivated by rational economic concerns. Indeed, even you chalk up their motivations as economic. Therefore, in a resource war, these nations might threaten to use nukes, but actually doing so would cost them so much in a world of both economic interdependence and nuclear retaliation that it's extremely unlikely they would actually do so.

This complacency in the face of the evidence of human history rather shocks me. How do you explain all of the highly destructive wars that have occurred between great powers for centuries? Those powers were also usually motivated by economic competition, and the struggle for power and imperial control. Yet wars happen. We came close several times during the Cold War to nuclear war, even though both parties were disposed to avoid such a war, and all generally recognized that it would not be in anybody's interest. But brinkmanship, miscalculation, suspicion, the passions of a crisis, ideological animadversions and several other factors can lead generally rational actors to lock in on a trajectory that takes them toward a war which will ultimately benefit neither of them. Do you think the fear of nuclear war during the Cold War was an illusion, and that war between competing nuclear-armed economic powers has somehow been rendered a relic of the past?

The war on Al Qaeda ?

Precise, delimited and with a clear definition of victory (get those f**kers dead and buried).

Directly related to 9/11 (as to remove it from the hands of Chimpy Our King).

No, you can't have your own facts!

Wait a minute...there are all sorts of events that have taken place that eat at the "terrorism is a tactic" idea.  It's only a tactic when there are some sort of objectives beyond the act of terrorism itself. 

Some years ago when the first known suicide bombing by a teenage girl took place, there was some rethinking about the phenomena and I read, I'm pretty sure it was from an Israeli media source, that the girl was not particularly religious or even political.  Suicide bombing had become fashionable, and the particular impetus was typical teenage angst rather than ideological.  What tactic was Timothy McVeigh using in Oklahoma?  A tactic employed to make a statement?  

I would go along with "terrorism is a tactic" when it is a tactic, however. 

Neoboho

addendum:

1.  What country has used nukes in warfare?

2. What country is threating to use nukes in warfare?

Yep, Iran is dangerous. 

Neoboho

It's a bit strange to be thinking of the political goals of the 19th and early 20th century Nihilist bombers.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Why?  We have a government without meaning, and a lot of folks seem to like it.  But you're right, it is strange.

Neoboho

. . . I'm trying to say . . . that "tactic" is not part of an all inclusive definition.

If you're saying that the mere fact that current "terrorists" employ certain particular means is not enough to label all people who use those means terrorists, I would agree.

In order to be so denominated a terrorist must induce fear and trepidation in observers lasting some reasonable period of time. Thus, McVeigh, who never got the opportunity to threaten a repeat performance, and Harris and Klebold, who commited suicide, do not qualify as terrorists.

Eric Robert Rudolph, James Charlres Kopp, and Theodore Kaczynski probably do qualify.

The explanation is simple. In previous centuries, wars between great powers at least seemed profittable. They're not this time around. And the historical evidence indicates that Americans, Russians, and Chinese understand that while it might be profittable to get close to nuclear war, it's never sensible to actually cross the line. Therefore, we should worry about powers other than those three which are not quite so predictable.