Terror Only Works If We're Terrorized

The true impact of terrorism is found in the ground truth that it is a self-inflicted wound. True, it is difficult in the extreme not to inflict this wound upon one's self. Lenin knew this when he famously remarked, "The purpose of terror is to terrorize."

Lenin was not engaged in making a tautology. Rather he was correctly characterizing the relationship between stimulus and response. His view--which has been repeatedly proven correct over the decades--was that a relatively small stimulus whether the assassination of a high profile personality or the killing of a larger number of no-profile people would rock the larger society and its government.

By extension, repetition of terror acts or the cumulative effects of both self-induced fear and the political/economic/social frictions of counterterror actions would erode the confidence, structural integrity, and political will of the target society and its government. The slow but steady erosion, or, more properly, enervation of political will would lead over time to the target bringing itself into compliance with the policy requirements of the terrorist.

The immediate aftermath of the Underwear Bomber and his Christmas Day misfire demonstrates that Lenin's dictum has lost none of its force with either age or a change in motivation from socialist revolution to Islamist jihadism. The combination of "enhanced" but not necessarily effective security techniques and "reform" of the intelligence community and process may give the appearance of a proper response but in actuality serves to decrease confidence, increase fear, place greater friction in the twin processes of detecting and interdicting threats.

The most important fact of the Underwear Bomber's effort is to properly appreciate how inept, not to say flat out amateur it was. Like Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber of eight years ago, this attack was doomed to fail by an improperly designed detonation system. Like the Reed attempt it did not have the rather sophisticated planning and coordination of 9/11 or the Madrid subway bombings or even the 7/7 attacks in London.

To put it bluntly, despite some rare out-of-theater operations such as that in Mumbai a little more than a year ago, the terrorists of the loose al-Qaeda congeries have lost their strategic vision and operational capacity alike. The use of terror has become far more localized over time centering on active combat venues--Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen--and not on what Osama bin Laden called "the far enemy."

This reality implies that what the US and other countries have been doing over the past several years has been far more effective than the reaction to the Christmas Day attempt has indicated. While this in no way signifies that there isn't room for continued improvement in both intelligence analysis (particularly in the "dot rich" environment of counterterrorism) and the passing of product to the interdiction tasked agencies, it does mean that the overreaction shows that we are inflicting another round of terror on ourselves.

As it was civilians--not the military or the government--who acted effectively to save either the White House or Capitol Hill on 9/11, it was civilian passengers who acted reflexively and effectively on Christmas Day. We are our own best protection.

This is even more the case when the matter of terrorism as a self-inflicted condition is considered. We must make the decision not to be terrorized. We must rationally consider the long odds in our favor. Terrorism is far less of a threat to any of us than the flu or being hit by lightning. All the vast equipment of "security" has not actually made us any safer when we board an airliner. All it has done in reality is lower the pleasure of flying into the deep negative numbers, increase costs, and hassles. Other than that it has provided jobs for the otherwise unemployable and vastly expanded the intrusive sway of the central government.

Think about that the next time you have to stand in a forever line under the baleful glare of a TSA thug.

Our political "leaders" love terrorism as earlier they loved the "war on drugs." Both take full advantage of overblown and carefully stoked fear to expand the public space, restrict private space, and develop more intrusive ways to manipulate perceptions, beliefs, and behavior.

Of course the war on drugs has been long lost. The equally specious war on terror is no where near either victory or even an end.

The only way to win, the way which was followed by the British when the IRA was bombing early and often, is to decouple the link between stimulus and response. Refuse to be terrorized when an act of "terror" happens--or nearly happens.

This is something that only we can do. Not government. Us. We the People. Refuse to be filled with fear--to be terrorized--and the Underwear Bombers, the Shoe Bombers, all the Brigade of Glorious Martyrdom Seekers, and those who wind them up and send them off are defeated. It is that simple. And that hard.