August 13, 2006 to August 20, 2006
Counteracting Terrorism
Counteracting Terrorism-BECKER
The terrorist plot to blow up from 7-10 planes with liquid explosives will once again increase the fear of flying. After the 9/11 horrendous attacks, U.S. domestic air travel was down by over 10 per cent for two years, and international travel on American airlines declined much further. The magnitude of this response went far beyond what could be explained by either the increased objective risk of flying or the greater time spent going through security. For even assuming that 3 planes a year on American airlines continued to be exploded by suicide bombers, air travel would still be a lot safer than traveling by car and bus, two major alternatives to air travel.
Many people stopped flying in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack because they feared being on a plane with suicide bombers, a fear that far transcended any objective risk of flying. Since such fears are part of the makeup of human nature--presumably due to biological evolution over time--fear should be incorporated in any useful analysis of the factors that determine willingness to fly, or to engage in other activities that are vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
I anticipate that as evidence of the destructiveness and scope of this latest terrorist plot unfold, many leisure and business travelers will once again be too frightened for a while to travel by plane, especially on international flights to and from the United States. The drop in air travel will not be as great as after the 9/11 attacks because this plot was foiled before any successful missions were carried out, and because travelers are more inured to terrorist threats than they were before that defining event.
It is clearly important to develop an efficient and effective system to reduce the likelihood of successful terrorism. Security will have to be continually updated and made more thorough as new information is acquired about terrorist plans. For example, the inconvenience of air travel will increase further as airport security adjusts to preventing liquid bombs from getting through security checks. Unfortunately, there is an ongoing battle between the ingenuity, dedication, and fanaticism of terrorists, and effective security measures. Terrorists continue to probe until they discover weaknesses in airport security. If they find it too difficult to mount terrorist attacks on planes, they may concentrate on other targets. Trains are an obvious example since security at train stations is generally very lax.
Still, universal security measures at airports or other sensitive points are not enough. Although civil libertarians criticize "profiling" of travelers and others, and government officials deny they engage in it, profiling is a necessary part of any reasonably effective security system. Groups that should be scrutinized carefully differ over time and among region of the world. For example, the Tamils are responsible for terrorism in Sri Lanka, and the IRA over a decade ago bombed London and other parts of England. Young Muslim males of Pakistani and Arab background have been responsible for the vast majority of recent terrorist activities in America, Britain, and continental European countries. This includes 9/11, the British 7/7 subway bombings of last year that killed over 50 people, the Spanish train bombings of the year before which killed almost 200 people, and other actual or thwarted attacks in the West. Therefore, young males from these groups should receive especially close scrutiny at airports and other public places.
Objectors to profiling of particular groups complain that this would subject many innocent members of groups being profiled to obtrusive and sometimes embarrassing searches and even harassment. No question that profiling of a group inevitably means that innocent members of that group would experience greater delays and more unpleasant encounters than would innocent members of groups not profiled. This is regrettable, but there is no effective alternative to profiling when one or a few groups pose far greater threats than do the rest of the population. To limit the discomfort and anger caused by profiling, members of the profiled groups should be treated politely and with dignity. They should also be reminded that they too are being protected from terrorist activities by a small fringe.
Those objecting to profiling potential terrorists usually want to subject everyone to the same detailed examination and inquiry. However, when potential terrorists are part of a group that constitutes only a small fraction of the population, searching everyone with the same detailed care at airports or at other venues would be needlessly costly and time consuming. This would slow down and thereby reduce air travel and other vulnerable group activities. It would also lead to loud complaints by those affected after the fear of terrorism had abated.
People in the United States and other free countries are gradually realizing that effective conduct of the war on terrorism means that it is no longer possible to have the full complement of liberties they have been accustomed to. Terrorists and suspected terrorists may be subjected to psychological pressures in order to gain vital information, pressures that would not have been acceptable in the past. In addition, government anti-terror agencies will be listening in on some phone conversations, they will inspect some emails, they will check some spending and bank accounts, they will monitor travel, and in other ways too they will intrude on traditional liberties. Of course, profiled groups, including innocent members, would be subject to more extensive surveillance than others. Unfortunately, mistakes will continue to be made, as in the detention by Britain a few months ago of some Muslim men who turned out to be innocent.
As readers of this blog and my other writings know, I have little confidence in government. Posner's discussion of mistakes by the FBI is just an additional, although important, example of this. But like it or not, government actions have to be the first line of defense against terrorism. While vigilance is required to prevent zealous public officials from overstepping their legitimate boundaries, they must have enough power to fight terrorism effectively. Clearly, some of these powers would not have been accepted in peacetime before 9/11, but since free societies are vulnerable to suicidal and other terrorists, these societies have to limit certain freedoms in order to more effectively fight terrorism. Hopefully, the vast majority of traditional freedoms can be preserved.
Terrorism-- Posner's Comment
I agree with Becker's analysis, but I draw a few additional lessons from the recent foiled plot to bring down airliners with liquid bombs, and let me explain them.
The first lesson is the shrewdness of al Qaeda and its affiliates in continuing to focus their destructive efforts on civil aviation. Death in a plane crash is one of the "dreaded" forms of death that psychologists remind us arouse far more fear than forms of death that are much more probable; this explains the extraordinary safety of air travel compared to gas heaters, which kill with a much higher probability. The concern with air safety, coupled with the fact that protection against terrorist attacks on aviation can be strengthened, though only at great cost in inconvenience to travelers, makes the recently foiled plot a merely partial failure for the terrorists. The revelation of the plot will significantly increase the costs of air travel--costs that are no less real or substantial for being largely nonpecuniary (fear, and loss of time--which, ironically, will result in some substitution of less safe forms of travel, namely automobile travel).
The plot has also revealed the importance of counterterrorist intelligence. A defense against terrorists as against other enemies of the nation must be multilayered to have a reasonable chance of being effective. One of the outer defenses is intelligence, designed to detect plots in advance so that they can be thwarted. One of the inner defenses is preventing an attack at the last minute, as by airport security screening for weapons. The inner defense would have failed in the recent episode because the equipment for scanning hand luggage does not detect liquid explosives. The outer defense succeeded. This is fortunate because airport security remains in disarray. The liquid-bomb threat had been known since a similar al Qaeda plot was foiled in 1995, but virtually nothing had been done to counter it. This is a failure of our Department of Homeland Security but also of the corresponding agencies in other countries, such as Britain's Home Office. If intelligence had failed, the attack would have succeeded.
Intelligence succeeded in thwarting the attack in part because of the work of MI5, England's domestic intelligence agency. The United States does not have a counterpart to MI5. That seems to me a very serious gap in our defenses. I have criticized it in a series of recent writings, including my book Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform, ch. 4 (Hoover Institution and Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005). Perhaps now these criticisms will receive a more sympathetic hearing.
Primary responsibility for national-security intelligence has been confided to the FBI, a criminal-investigation agency oriented toward arrest and prosecution rather than toward patient gathering of intelligence with a view toward understanding and penetrating a terrorist network. The title of an article on the front page of today's New York Times says it all: "Tracing Terror Plots, British Watch, Then Pounce: Experts See Different Tactics in U.S., Which Moves in Quickly." The Bureau's tendency, consistent with its culture of arrest and prosecution, is to continue an investigation into a terrorist plot only for as long a time as is required to obtain sufficient evidence to arrest and prosecute a respectable number of plotters. Under this approach, the small fry are easily caught but any big shots who might have associated with them quickly scatter. The arrests and prosecutions warn terrorists concerning the methods of the FBI.
Bureaucratic risk aversion also plays a part; prompt arrests assure that members of the group won't escape the FBI's grasp and commit terrorist attacks. But without some risk taking, the prospect of defeating terrorism is slight.
MI5, in contrast to the FBI (and to Scotland Yard's Special Branch, with which MI5 works), has no arrest powers and no responsibilities for criminal investigation, and it has none of the institutional hangups that go with such responsibilities. Had the British authorities proceeded in the same manner in which the FBI would have been likely to proceed, rather than continuing their investigation until almost the last minute and as a result being able to roll up (with Pakistan's help) more than 40 plotters, most of the plotters might still be at large and the exact nature of and danger posed by the plot might not have been discovered.
The Times article says that the British could wait until the last minute because they have more legal scope for detaining suspects than we do. I don't think this is correct, but if it is, it is one more sign that we still do not take the threat of terrorism seriously enough to reexamine a commitment to civil liberties formed in a different and safer era.
Which brings me finally to a silver lining. It is not the fact that the plot was foiled; it was, as I said at the outset, merely a partial failure. The silver lining is that this close call may shake us out of some of our complacency. Because we have not been attacked since 2001, we are (or were until last week) beginning to feel safe. We were ostriches. An article in the current Atlantic Monthly by the usually astute journalist James Fallows proclaims victory over al Qaeda. Fallows argues that by depriving bin Laden of his Afghanistan sanctuary we defeated al Qaeda, and the only danger now is that we will overreact to a diminished terrorist threat. Bin Laden was indeed deprived of his Afghanistan sanctuary, but he promptly found another one, in Pakistan. Though the plotters of the liquid-bomb attack are British citizens, the plot in its scope and objective has al Qaeda written all over it. Al Qaeda is the high-end terrorist group. It is not content with bombing merely a subway or a train. Its hallmark is the spectacular attack, and the recent airliner plot had it succeeded would have rivaled the 9/11 attack in its impact.
Our ostrich brgade may retreat to the claim that "our" Muslims, unlike the British and Canadian Muslims, are fully integrated into American society and so pose no threat. That is false. The percentage of American Muslims who are potential terrorists is undoubtedly smaller than the corresponding percentages in either Britain or Canada. But as there are many more American Muslims than there are British or Canadian ones, and as (we now know) British (and presumably Canadian) Muslim extremists want to attack us and not just their own host nations, we cannot afford to assume that we are safe. Perhaps we shall no longer indulge that dangerous assumption.
Response to Comments on Terrorism--Posner
Let me respond briefly to some of the comments.
I do not know on what basis Mr. Fallows in the Atlantic Monthly believes that we have broken al Qaeda's operational capacity. Granted, we have seized or killed many of bin Laden's henchmen, and his sanctuary in Pakistan is less secure than his pre-9/11 sanctuary in Afghanistan, so it is fair to surmise that we have weakened al Qaeda. But the Heathrow plot suggests (though does not prove) that al Qaeda can still orchestrate a devastating, though fortunately foiled (well, al Qaeda's 1995 plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific was also foiled, and that didn't prove that al Qaeda had been broken), attack on the United States. It makes no difference whether al Qaeda employs British Muslims or Saudi Arabians to carry out the attacks that it plans.
I disagree with the comment that says that we should spend less on antiterrorism because terrorism kills fewer people than ordinary crimes. First, it is harder to limit terrorism than to limit ordinary crime; the terrorists are more determined and less deterrable. More important, the potential threat posed by terrorists in an era of proliferation is much greater than the potential threat posed by ordinary criminals.
When I said that our current expansive conception of civil liberties dates from a time we felt safer, I didn't mean to disparage the fear of nuclear war during the Cold War. After communist subversion in the United States was defeated in the late 1940s and early 1950s, we felt pretty safe from domestic threats, the kind of threats that put pressure on civil liberties. We no longer have that feeling of safety.
Finally, I was asked about profiling. I am not an enthusiast for profiling. Apart from the resentment it causes on the part of people (American Muslims) whom we very much want to keep loyal to the United States, it can be circumvented by recruitment of terrorists who do not fit th eprofile. More and more "white" Europeans are being converted to Islam and some of them may become terrorists. On the other hand, some limited, discreet profiling is efficient and I very much agree with the commenter who said there should be a "pass" from security checks for people who have security clearances or are otherwise certifiable as safe.
Response on Counteracting Terrorism-BECKER
Many good comments on obviously a controversial subject. I will respond to a few of them.
Freedom is not an absolute in any society, including the most democratic. There are tradeoffs between freedom and other values, such as security. The threat of terrorism has shifted the balance. All this seems rather obvious. The main issue is how far one should go in restricting freedom. That is far more complicated, and there is room for much difference of opinion.
Yes, I am skeptical of government since government actions are typically very inefficient and heavy-handed. Yet I support public police, a public armed forces, various regulations, and so on. In many areas even inefficient government actions are better than leaving them to the private sector alone. Terrorism is one of these important areas.
The quote from Benjamin Franklin about his reluctance to sacrifice any freedom for additional security is interesting. But I do not know of any evidence that Franklin opposed the harsh treatment given to Tories during the revolutionary war. Does any one?
Everyone "profiles" in their daily behavior since all this means is that in the absence of much information about an individual, one judges the individual in part by the groups he or she belong to. For example, anyone who sees an 80 year old female (or male) would doubt if they would rob us or commit a terrorist act.
So the issue in this discussion can only be about whether it is worth subjecting young Muslim males to special scrutiny and surveillance. My answer is yes precisely because it has been difficulty for Islamic terrorist groups to enlist others to engage in suicide attacks. Of course, all such policies deal in probabilities, not certainties. Muslim terrorists might offer compensation and use persuasion to get a few non-Muslims to be willing to commit suicide, but experience shows not many succumb. That some female Muslims or converts, etc might be persuaded to be terrorists is why everyone goes through a certain amount of security checking, and so forth, but the degree of checking will be less severe than for the primary profiled groups.
As I stated in my original post, I agree with the comment that innocent Muslim have an even greater stake in preventing terrorism since they suffer when Muslim terrorists blow up planes or engage in other terrorists. I speak from some experience since my wife was born in Baghdad and grew up in Iran. She, her brothers, and nephews and nieces have had first hand experience of profiling in entering the United States and other countries. When done in a pleasant manner they have typically accepted the necessity of the process-their main objection has been when it was heavy-handed and nasty.
I like the idea of paying those profiled for the inconvenience and time involved. Probably a manageable system could be worked out, and the pay might involve money, other forms of compensation, or both.