When is Terrorism Successful?
The latest, and thankfully non-fatal, terrorist attack on a Delta Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit has clearly shown that innocent people need not die for terrorists to be successful. This shouldn't seem so strange given that the objective of terrorism is to terrorise. Like many forms of asymmetric warfare, it acts as a force multiplier - impacting the lives of many more beyond those directly affected by violent acts. While death and injury from violent acts is truly terrible, it is the change in behaviour of those not directly affected that damages our society and way of life the most. Like most editorials, the Australian highlights the inadequacies in our current security arrangements that allowed this failed bombing to happen and notes a range of immediate security changes like full body pat downs on flights to the US. If we'd only done this sooner the argument goes, we could have averted this near tradjedy. But sadly, it is in our response to terrorism where terrorists truly succeed. Whilst terrorists acts result in fewer deaths and injuries than from peanuts, lightning strikes and accident causing deer, our legal and behavourial changes have been enormous. We've changed the way we travel and move freight at enormous cost to the economy. We declare an emergency and arrest people when they get sick and spend too long in the toilet. We've given up civil liberties and long held human rights, all to reduce the threat of terror, but are yet to declare a War on Peanuts or include Bambi in the 'Axis of Evil'. Perhaps the objective of this attack wasn't to kill but to simply scare us into changing our way of life. In addition to taking off our shoes and loosing our duty free liquids, it looks like we'll now be subject to inner thigh pat downs. I fear the next terrorist will smuggle explosives on board internally leading to the ultimate in security humiliation - the full body cavity search. While we may not be able to control the reasons why these people may want to kill or hurt us, we can control how we react. By limiting our responses to something more proportional to the threat (like that of peanuts and lightning strikes) we can reduce both the effectiveness and incentive of terrorist actions. To defeat terrorism, we must stop being terrified.
