[TCM]
Can anything be done? To stop the likely effects of lots more surface-to-air missiles, lots more nerve gas available on the black market, and so on?
In a word, "no."
there are various parts of this essay I agree with, and other parts that I don't. your conclusion that such things are unstoppable is quite tenuous and not backed by evidence. what you fail to note is that law enforcement agencies usually benefit from the same innovations in technology that criminals benefit from. the FBI for example has vastly improved their ability to deal with criminal fingerprints through technology for example. in fact one could argue somewhat that government agencies stand to benefit more from new tehcnology because in some ways they are better organized and better funded than small nefarious cells of terrorists. however, I tend to agree that there is a continual arms race going on here, and that it's not necessarily desirable. the "solution" (TCM would argue against the use of such a word) is not to merely try to have a warfare, siege-like mentality imho, and a continual "trying to stay ahead of the criminals". we do not have regular open terrorism in the streets of the US and I see no reason to think there ever will be as TCM suggests. nevertheless what his essay misses, and many in law enforcement miss, are the root reasons for crime. I'm not going to sound like a liberal here and say criminals are blameless because they have been psychologically abused. its not excusable to react to any situation through crime or terrorism. however they have various gripes that are always seeded in reality. it seems to me no nation-state has ever experimented with trying to take away the root causes of violence and discontent. why? because a policeman holding a gun is so much more visceral and the public responds to this image readily. other "programs" that try to decrease discontent among the budding terrorists of tommorrow are usually ridiculed. it is very difficult to prove that they work or that they are worth the money. terrorists invariably have a patricular pathological psychological profile that sees the world in terms of "martyrs vs. villians" with the villians in the government, and the villians taking away or abusing respectable citizens. the "problem" of terrorism will be solved when we take the view that insanity and violence is *not* a natural aspect of human behavior (as TCM tends to suggest), and that there are specific environmental conditions that breed it. like malaria, if you take away the swamplike breeding grounds, you will largely remove it. such a thing is a radical hypothesis, but one that nonetheless has never really been tested in practice.
FBI Director Louis Freeh and the TLA spooks are already sounding the alarm about the "Four Horsemen." Sen. Sam Nunn is calling for measures to ensure that cyberspace is "secured" and that the Net is not used to further chemical and biological terrorism.
the military and spook establishments require threats to survive. I believe they are largely manufacturing a new one that has marginal actual danger content.
I'm not advocating such "terrorism," by the way, merely telling it like it is.
ah yes, the standard amusing TCM disclaimer. hmmm, your signature suggests otherwise.
Keep your head down, avoid crowded downtown areas, prepare for moderate disruptions, and reject arguments that an American Police State will do anything to stop terrorism.
once you lamented about the impractability of Duncan Frissel's suggestions for tax avoidance for regular people and a real society. many of your own suggestions seem to be to fit into the same kind of category of "not viable for regular human beings".
(Remember, terrorism is just warfare carried on by other means, with apolgies to Von Clausewitz.)
disagree. the purpose of warfare has traditionally been to seize something tangible like territory. terrorists are after intangibles-- namely, terror itself, disrupting a "peace process", etc. in warfare, the warfare is directly aimed at obtaining the "thing", like the way Hussein invaded Kuwait. terrorists do not obtain a physical "thing" by bombing some symbol. terrorism is extremely symbolic at the root. however I agree in the use of violence they are identical. Tim McVeigh apparently bombed the OKC Murrah building for a reason: he was pissed off over Waco. in a country in which the populace believes that the government is truly "of, by, or for the people" you won't see this kind of discontent and barbarianism. terrorism is not normal but generally an indication that a nation-state has gone badly off track and neglected some important psychological need of some significant part of its populace.