Transcript International Terrorism and Lightning

SIX
PROPOSITIONS
RATHER
UNUSUAL
PROPOSITIONS
ABOUT
“Critical threats” to the United States
100
International terrorism
Unfriendly countries becom ing nuclear
75
Chem ical and biological w eapons
AIDS and epidem ics
Developm ent of China as w orld pow er
Large num bers of im m igrants and refugees
50
Econom ic pow er of (com petition from ) Japan
Islam ic fundm entalism
Military pow er of Russia (Soviet Union)
Econom ic com petion from Europe
25
0
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1982
1986
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2002
2006
Foreign policy goals
% saying “very important”
Combating international
terrorism
Protect US jobs
100
Prevent nuclear spread
Defend allies' security
75
Protect US business
abroad
Strengthen UN
Protect weak against
aggression
Bring democracy
50
25
0
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1978
1982
1986
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1994
1998
2002
2006
1. Terrorism generally has only limited direct effects
 Michael Moore: The chances
of any of us dying in a terrorist
incident is very, very, very small.
 Bob Simon: No one sees the
world like that.
--60 Minutes (CBS), 16 February 2003
International Terrorism and Lightning
1500
1300
Total number of international terrorist incidents
1100
U.S. deaths from international terrorism
U.S. deaths from lightning
900
Previous high: 329 in 1985 when Air India plane blown up by Sikhs
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100
-100
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NUCLEAR WEAPONS
BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
MISSILES
RADIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
Nuclear weapons:
The mass production and widespread
distribution of increasingly sophisticated and
increasingly powerful man-portable weapons
will greatly add to the terrorist's arsenal and
the world's increasing dependence on
nuclear power may provide terrorists with
weapons of mass destruction.
--Brian Jenkins, 1975
Biological weapons:
rarely, if ever, used
Aum Shinrikyo experience
spread as aerosol
explosion can destroy
storage difficult
Chemical weapons:
World War I experience
Aum Shinrikyo in 1995: kill 12
Iraq in Halabja in 1988: 5000 dead?
A ton of nerve gas or five tons of
mustard gas could produce heavy
casualties among unprotected
people in an open area of one
kilometer square. Even for nerve
gas this would take the concentrated
delivery into a rather small area of
about 300 heavy artillery shells or
seven 500-pound bombs
Gas made war
uncomfortable--to no
purpose
A ton of Sarin nerve gas perfectly
delivered under absolutely ideal
conditions over a heavily populated
area against unprotected people
could cause between 3000 and
8000 deaths. Under slightly less
ideal circumstances--if there was a
moderate wind or if the sun was
out, for example--the death rate
would be only one-tenth as great
Missiles:
cost
accuracy
Radiological weapons:
panic only
9/11: aberration or harbinger?
Lockerbie 1988
Oklahoma City 1995
Aum Shinrikyo 1995
But WWI, WTC 1993
al-Qaeda capacity?
I think, therefore they are, 2003
The greatest threat is from al-Qaeda cells in the US
that we have not yet identified.
al-Qaeda maintains the ability and the intent to inflict
significant casualties in the US with little warning.
That threat is increasing partly because of the publicity
surrounding the DC sniper shootings and the anthrax
letter attacks.
--Robert Mueller February 11, 2003 testimony
I think, therefore they are, 2005
I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing. (bolded)
FBI's counter-terrorist accomplishments in 2004
1. They picked up evidence in that year that bad guys had conducted surveillance of
financial targets and called an expensive orange alert.
2. The Brits picked up some bad guys, and the FBI dutifully set up a "task force" to see if
there was a "U.S. nexus" to these guys.
3. After receiving information "suggesting" an attack was being planned "possibly timed to
coincide with the presidential election," they set up another "task force" consisting of
"thousands of FBI personnel." Over the course of six months, these thousands of spooks
found no evidence not only of a plot but even of whether "an operation was indeed
being planned." On the positive side, however, he is "certain that the FBI's tremendous
response to the threat [not "suggested threat" or "imagined threat"] played an integral
role in disrupting any operational plans that may have been underway."
4. They made three (3) arrests. One was of a "spiritual leader" in Virginia who may
actually have been worth arresting. Another was of a guy in Minneapolis who admitted
to doing some sniping in Afghanistan and Chechnya in the 1990s. And the third was
arrested on money laundering charges "connected" to a "possible" plot to kill a Pakistani
diplomat.
--Robert Mueller February 16, 2005 testimony
2. The costs of terrorism very often come mostly
from the fear and consequent reaction (or
overreaction) it characteristically inspires
9/11: economic costs
human costs
opportunity costs
Clinton and embassy bombings,1998
9/11: economic costs
human costs
opportunity costs
If terrorists force us to redirect resources away
from sensible programs and future growth, in
order to pursue unachievable but politically
popular levels of domestic security, then they
have won an important victory that mortgages
our future.
3. The terrorism industry is a major part of the
terrorism problem
Politicians
Bureaucracy
Media
Risk entrepreneurs
An incentive to pass along vague and unconfirmed
threats of future violence, in order to protect
themselves from criticism in the event of another
attack.
Stay away from crowds
Treat official reassurances circumspectly
Ask yourself where you stand in the hierarchy of terrorist targets
Determine whether someone is paying too much attention to one
particular thing
Keep in mind that a terrorist may be one of your customers
Be wary of odd-looking neighbors
Try yoga-type breathing exercises to relax
Separate small pets from large ones
Know the five primary means of assassination
Never take the first taxicab in line
In a department store or other crowded public place, be careful
not to get trampled
Forgo eating food from salad bars or restaurant smorgasbords
Wash your hands after returning from an outing, especially if you
used mass transit or a taxicab
Juval Aviv, Staying Safe New York: HarperResource, 2004
Hardcover: The Complete Terrorism Survival Guide, Juris Publishing, 2003
Don’t eat, drink, or smoke around mail
In a multipurpose household, designate one person as the
primary mail opener
Make it a standard practice to wash with antibacterial soap
immediately after touching mail
Never shake a suspect piece of mail
Avoid long waits at U.S. border crossings
Don’t exchange currency at the airport
Never park in underground garages
Avoid aisle seats on airplanes
Spend as little time at the airport as possible
Stay away from heavily glassed areas in airports
At an airport baggage carousel, position yourself near the
luggage chute
Try to fly wide-body planes, because terrorists often avoid
hijacking them
Juval Aviv, Staying Safe New York: HarperResource, 2004
Hardcover: The Complete Terrorism Survival Guide, Juris Publishing, 2003
The Islamists in al Qaeda, in other similar groups, and
ordinary Muslims worldwide have been infected by
hatred for U.S. policies toward the Muslim world.
America’s support for Israel, Russia, China, India,
Algeria, Uzbekistan, and others against Islamists; its
protection of multiple Muslim tyrannies; its efforts to
control oil policy and pricing; and its military activities
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula, and
elsewhere—these are the sources of the infection of
hatred spreading in the Islamic world….
Until those policies change, the United States has no
option but an increasingly fierce military response to the
forces marshaled by bin Laden, an option that will
prolong America’s survival but at as yet undreamed of
costs in blood, money, and civil liberties.
--Anonymous, Imperial Hubris (2004), cheery last pages
To secure as much of our way of life as possible, we will have to use
military force in the way Americans used it on the fields of Virginia
and Georgia, in France and on the Pacific islands, and from skies
over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by the pace of
killing and, yes, by body counts. Not the fatuous body counts of
Vietnam, but precise counts that will run to extremely large
numbers. The piles of dead will include as many or more civilians as
combatants because our enemies wear no uniforms. Killing in large
number is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must
come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation
systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer
plants and grain mills--all these and more will need to be destroyed
to deny the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover, will be
massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes too
long, high, or numerous to close with U.S. soldiers. As noted, such
actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and
refugee flows.
I would like to thank Ms. Christina
Davidson who labored mightily to
delete from the text excess vitriol.
--Anonymous, Imperial Hubris (2004), pp. 241-42
Fragile, vulnerable, existential, survival
Myers: do away with our way of life
Athens Olympics
Democratic convention
Republican convention
Election campaign
Presidential vote
Y2K effect
As serious and potentially catastrophic as a
domestic CBRN attack might prove, it is highly
unlikely that it could ever completely
undermine the national security, much less
threaten the survival, of the United States as a
nation....To take any other position risks
surrendering to the fear and intimidation that is
precisely the terrorist's stock
in trade.
--Bernard
Brodie
--Gilmore Commission, 1999
4. Policies designed to deal with terrorism should
focus more on reducing fear and anxiety as
inexpensively as possible than on objectively
reducing the rather limited dangers terrorism is
likely actually to pose
Bin Laden goal: overreaction
It is easy for us to provoke and bait....All that we
have to do is to send two mujahidin...to raise a
piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda in
order to make the generals race there to cause
America to suffer human, economic, and political
losses. Our policy is one of bleeding America to
the point of bankruptcy. The terrorist attacks cost
al-Qaeda $500,000 while the attack and its
aftermath inflicted a cost of more than $500
billion on the United States.
Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the
damn plane! Calculate the odds of being
Watch the
har med by a terrorist!
It’s still about as
terrorist
likely as being swept
out to sea by a
alert and
tidal wave….Suck
up, for crying out
go it
outside
again
loud. You’re almost
certainly going to
when it
be okay. And in the unlikely
event you’re
falls
not, do you really want
below to spend your
yellow.
last days cowering
behind plastic
sheets and duct tape? That’s not a life
worth living, is it?
--John McCain, Why Courage Matters (2004)
Watch the
terrorist
alert and
go outside
again
when it
falls
below
yellow.
--John McCain, Why Courage Matters (2004)
 An American's chance of being killed in one
non-stop airline flight:
one in 13 million
 An American’s chance of being killed while
driving 11.2 miles on America's safest roads,
rural interstate highways:
one in 13 million
 Number of 9/11-type airline crashes required to
make flying as dangerous as driving the same
distance on America's safest roads:
one a month
--Michael Sivak and Michael J. Flannagan in American Scientist, Jan-Feb 2003
Risk of death for an American over a 50-year period
Botulism
Fireworks
Tornado
Airplane crash
1 in 2,000,000
1 in 1,000,000
1 in 50,000
1 in 20,000
Asteroid impact
Electrocution
Firearms accident
Automobile accident
1 in 6,000
1 in 5,000
1 in 2,000
1 in 100
Airplane hijacking?
Cheap reassurance
Cry wolf
Keep track of predictions
Reduce costs
Check literature on witches
Absorb?
Risk communication
people tend greatly to overestimate the chances of
dramatic or sensational causes of death
realistically informing people about risks sometimes only
makes them more frightened
strong beliefs are very difficult to modify
a new sort of calamity tends to be taken as harbinger of
future mishaps
a disaster tends to increase fears not only about that kind
of danger but of all kinds
people, even professionals, are susceptible to the way risks
are expressed--far less likely, for example, to choose
radiation therapy if told the chances of death are 32%
rather than that the chances of survival are 68%
when presented with two estimations of risk from
reasonably authoritative sources, people choose to
embrace the high risk opinion regardless of its source;
that is, there is a predilection toward alarmist responses
and excessive weighting of the worst case scenario
Dirty bomb?
Average background radiation in US
360 mrem per year
High end of low level radiation range
10,000 total mrem
Well-known cause of cancer
30,000 total mrem
Blood cell changes, infections, temporary sterility
200,000 short-term mrem
Death with days or weeks
400,000 short-term mrem
LNT
To live at 245 mrem per year:
Don’t have a pacemaker
Don’t have porcelain crowns or false teeth
Don’t use a gas camping lantern
Don’t have X-rays or a CAT Scan
Don’t live in a stone, adobe brick, or concrete building
Don’t wear a luminous wristwatch
Don’t watch TV
Don’t use a computer terminal
Don’t have a smoke detector in your home
Don’t live within 50 miles of a nuclear or coal-fired power
plant
Don’t consume food or water
Live in Biloxi
Columbus
Don’t fly or go to airports
Denver
1 mrem per two hours in the air
Airline crews: 100 mrem per year
Leadville
100
1
7
1
40
16
68
117
Source: National Safety Council
5. Doing nothing (or at least refraining from
overreacting) after a terrorist attack is not
necessarily unacceptable
Lebanon 1983
Somalia 1993
World Trade Center 1993
Oklahoma City 1995
Khobar Towers 1996
U.S.S. Cole 2000
Anthrax 2001
Madrid 2003
6. Despite U.S. overreaction, the campaign against
terror is generally going rather well
The United States is living on borrowed
time--and squandering it.
How much security is enough: when the
American people can conclude that a future
attack on U.S. soil will be an exceptional
event that does not require wholesale changes
in how they go about their lives.
The entire nation...must be organized for the
long, deadly struggle against terrorism.
--Stephen Flynn
THE
END