The Terrorist Risk Calculus
The other day, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
But the risk of being proven wrong, even disastrously wrong, is no excuse for not grappling seriously with the facts. The events of September 11, 2001 were so horrific and catastrophic that we have a tendency to attribute a level of sophistication to the perpetrators of those attacks that they probably don't deserve. There was nothing particularly difficult about their plan. It was incredibly low-tech, required very few resources other than man-power, and succeeded largely because of a failure of imagination on our part. People just didn't imagine that hijackers would fly planes into buildings. And despite all that, despite the relative simplicity of the plan, it came very close to failing. Had various authorities been better about communicating with each other, had immigration or airport security officials done a better job, had the government been paying more attention to the chatter it was hearing, September 11, 2001 would have been just like any other day.
Now imagine how much more difficult it would be to execute a plan that involved acquiring a nuclear weapon, smuggling it into the U.S. without detection, and detonating it in a U.S. city. By any reasonable calculus, such a plan is many orders of magnitude more complex, resource-intensive, and difficult to carry out than the attacks of September 11. And that's not even taking into account the stepped up security and vigilance brought about by those attacks.
I think that shows like "24" have a tendency to exaggerate greatly the resources and capabilities of terrorist networks like al Qaeda. Getting your hands on a nuclear weapon is incredibly hard. There are any number of countries in the world that would like nothing better than to acquire such technology and yet can't seem to do it. And once acquired, terrorists would have to find a way to get the weapon (and themselves) into the U.S. undetected, and then figure out how to detonate it (which is actually pretty hard to do, from what I've read).
None of this is to say that such an attack is impossible. It's not. And because it would be so catastrophic we should make every effort to secure the world's supply of such weapons (particularly in Russia). But from a pure risk calculus perspective, the possibility of such an attack seems incredibly small.
I also think Sullivan's correspondent is correct to question how many actual terrorists are currently in the United States. I have no doubt that there are a number of wannabe jihadists in this country much like the "Miami 7", whose plans are, as the FBI famously put it, "more aspirational than operational." But how many hardcore al Qaeda types of the Mohammed Atta variety are there in this country? It seems that, based on what we've seen over the last few years, this number is probably pretty small, and that the few who are here are likely to be either 1) already on the government's radar screen, 2) not very sophisticated, or 3) both.
Again, I don't mean to unduly minimize the risk posed by terrorism. Clearly we need to be vigilant and take appropriate precautions (many of which have not yet been taken). But it strikes me as folly to state, as many routinely do, that our biggest risk is that some country will give WMD to terrorists, who will then use them against us. It seems highly unlikely to me that even the most despicable regimes would willingly hand over their hard-earned weapons to terrorist groups like al Qaeda (weapons that would almost surely be traced back to them). It also seems at least questionable that al Qaeda would have the wherewithal to successfully smuggle such weapons into the U.S. and use them. A lot would have to go right for such a plan to work.
The real lesson from 9/11 may be that our biggest risk is the one we haven't really considered. If terrorists are able to successfully carry out another major attack in this country, it seems far more likely to me that it will be some sort of creative, low-tech, low-sophistication attack--like 9/11--not one that involves expensive, hard to acquire weaponry. I think it's probably time to start questioning premises and time to do a little more thinking outside the box.
I take as a premise that there is a group of religiously-motivated terrorists attempting to inflict massive damage on the West with minimal resources and maximal impact. I consider this, after 9/11, to be the pre-eminent challenge of the time. And the danger of their acquisition of very seriously destructive weapons is easily the most pressing threat we face.Today he posts a response from a reader who says something that I think a lot of us are thinking but don't quite feel comfortable saying:
Perhaps re-thinking the war begins with a more careful examination of this very premise. For instance, there are those who believe that 9/11 was a "perfect storm," a confluence of events that included incompetent airline security on the ground and in the air, an administration who was warned of an impending attack and ignored it, and a number of "what could go wrong, did go wrong" scenarios. Some would suggest pulling something off of that scale is immensely difficult and unlikely to happen again.These are good questions, and ones that are seldom asked. I think part of the reason for that is that no one wants to be the guy who downplays the risk of a catastrophic terror attack right before one occurs, which, for all we know, could be tomorrow.
Then there have been numerous intelligence reports that suggest that, within the U.S. borders at least, the threat by religiously-motivated terrorists is surprisingly small. Any cells that have been disrupted turned out not to be anything of much seriousness (remember those who stated as an "aspiration" that they'd like to blow up the Sears Tower?).
Now, as an American-Israeli whose entire families live in Israel and New York, I'm in no way discounting the threat of terror. It is real. It is dangerous. My family and I are all too familiar with it, we've been living with since long before 9/11.
What I am suggesting is that where you've gone wrong is that you haven't done enough to examine the PREMISE of your question. Is it a real danger that terrorists can get ahold of seriously destructive weapons? If so, what is the evidence for that? Where would they get these weapons? And how would they use them? What are your sources of information that confirm, based on real evidence, that this is an impending possibility?
But the risk of being proven wrong, even disastrously wrong, is no excuse for not grappling seriously with the facts. The events of September 11, 2001 were so horrific and catastrophic that we have a tendency to attribute a level of sophistication to the perpetrators of those attacks that they probably don't deserve. There was nothing particularly difficult about their plan. It was incredibly low-tech, required very few resources other than man-power, and succeeded largely because of a failure of imagination on our part. People just didn't imagine that hijackers would fly planes into buildings. And despite all that, despite the relative simplicity of the plan, it came very close to failing. Had various authorities been better about communicating with each other, had immigration or airport security officials done a better job, had the government been paying more attention to the chatter it was hearing, September 11, 2001 would have been just like any other day.
Now imagine how much more difficult it would be to execute a plan that involved acquiring a nuclear weapon, smuggling it into the U.S. without detection, and detonating it in a U.S. city. By any reasonable calculus, such a plan is many orders of magnitude more complex, resource-intensive, and difficult to carry out than the attacks of September 11. And that's not even taking into account the stepped up security and vigilance brought about by those attacks.
I think that shows like "24" have a tendency to exaggerate greatly the resources and capabilities of terrorist networks like al Qaeda. Getting your hands on a nuclear weapon is incredibly hard. There are any number of countries in the world that would like nothing better than to acquire such technology and yet can't seem to do it. And once acquired, terrorists would have to find a way to get the weapon (and themselves) into the U.S. undetected, and then figure out how to detonate it (which is actually pretty hard to do, from what I've read).
None of this is to say that such an attack is impossible. It's not. And because it would be so catastrophic we should make every effort to secure the world's supply of such weapons (particularly in Russia). But from a pure risk calculus perspective, the possibility of such an attack seems incredibly small.
I also think Sullivan's correspondent is correct to question how many actual terrorists are currently in the United States. I have no doubt that there are a number of wannabe jihadists in this country much like the "Miami 7", whose plans are, as the FBI famously put it, "more aspirational than operational." But how many hardcore al Qaeda types of the Mohammed Atta variety are there in this country? It seems that, based on what we've seen over the last few years, this number is probably pretty small, and that the few who are here are likely to be either 1) already on the government's radar screen, 2) not very sophisticated, or 3) both.
Again, I don't mean to unduly minimize the risk posed by terrorism. Clearly we need to be vigilant and take appropriate precautions (many of which have not yet been taken). But it strikes me as folly to state, as many routinely do, that our biggest risk is that some country will give WMD to terrorists, who will then use them against us. It seems highly unlikely to me that even the most despicable regimes would willingly hand over their hard-earned weapons to terrorist groups like al Qaeda (weapons that would almost surely be traced back to them). It also seems at least questionable that al Qaeda would have the wherewithal to successfully smuggle such weapons into the U.S. and use them. A lot would have to go right for such a plan to work.
The real lesson from 9/11 may be that our biggest risk is the one we haven't really considered. If terrorists are able to successfully carry out another major attack in this country, it seems far more likely to me that it will be some sort of creative, low-tech, low-sophistication attack--like 9/11--not one that involves expensive, hard to acquire weaponry. I think it's probably time to start questioning premises and time to do a little more thinking outside the box.
posted by A.L. at 11:23 PM
10 Comments:
I disagree. Even more heresy than the opinion that its not probable, but that in the scheme of things its not so bad. I _would_ like to minimize the perception of the severity attacks on 9/11.
Yes, it was horrible. It was, roughly, as horrible as 3,000 horrible murders. We should do all we can to prevent such both by soothing the motivation, preventing the planning and stopping planned murders.
But, unless you think the victims of 9/11 were more special Americans than other murder victims, the 9/11 attacks should be 20% as much a concern to us as a year of murder in the US. That is, we should be 5 times a concerned about the murders in the US in 2002 as we should about the 9/11 event.
At that scale, which should be very big,
9/11 type things should be a big concern. But not a whole lot more than that, which is how everyone is treating it. Including AL.
I know this sounds heartless, but I don't get why 30 people being killed isn't just 30 times as bad as one person being killed.
If we had a campagn 5 times as big as
our war on terror that was a war on murder in the US, I wouldn't complain.
If you haven't seen this already, John Mueller wrote an article in "Foreign Affairs" last October making several similar and related points. There are endless millions of opportunities for terrorists to strike soft targets in the U.S., with relatively little expense. One has to ask, then why aren't they doing so?
I think part of the answer is that we fail to distinguish between the large number of people who strongly dislike the United States (even to the point of harboring hostile intent) and the relatively SMALL number of people who have the drive, resources, and ability to actually attempt an attack.
Forgive a bit of self-promotion, but you can check out a radio interview I did with John Mueller here.
Moreover, as much as I've always hated the "War on Terror" paradigm by which we've been operating, it needs be pointed out that if we must approach this problem as a kind of "war," there are TWO ways in which we can lose:
1. We can permit another even more catastrophic event to occur, of the kind that Sullivan is imagining.
2. We can forget who we are in the course of trying to prevent that catastrophic event.
In honor of my beloved - and recently eliminated - New York Rangers, I would direct Sullivan's (et al's) attention to a player named Sean Avery. A good player with skills, but one whose principal role is to annoy the other team, to get inside the other team's head, goad them into stupid penalties, and generally speaking knock them off their game. In round one of this year's playoffs, Avery succeeded brilliantly, pestering the Atlanta Thrashers to the point of preoccupation. They succumbed to his provocations, took dumb penalties, completely lost focus, and were eliminated in four quick games. The Thrashers were a much worse team than they had shown throughout the course of the regular season, all because the permitted a professional punk to distract them from their greater purpose.
In the second round of the playoffs, the Rangers met the Buffalo Sabres, who effectively ignored Avery and went about the business of proving that they were a slightly better, more experienced team than the Rangers. The Sabres won in six games.
I trust I don't have to connect the dots here, except to say that to this point, notwithstanding the absence of any stateside catastrophic terrorist attack since 9/11, Al Qaeda and OBL can chalk themselves up a nice big 'W.'
Yes, it was horrible. It was, roughly, as horrible as 3,000 horrible murders. We should do all we can to prevent such both by soothing the motivation, preventing the planning and stopping planned murders.
But, unless you think the victims of 9/11 were more special Americans than other murder victims, the 9/11 attacks should be 20% as much a concern to us as a year of murder in the US. That is, we should be 5 times a concerned about the murders in the US in 2002 as we should about the 9/11 event.
Andy, you make a good point, but I disagree with it somewhat. First, the 9/11 attacks very well could have killed far more than the 3000 or so who died. If they had occurred a little later in the day, or the buildings hadn't held up as long, or the 4th plane had found its target, the death toll would have been a lot higher. So 3000 isn't some magic number.
Second, and more importantly, there are collateral consequences associated with a massive terror attack that just don't exist when it comes to an equivalent number of aggregated murders. The 9/11 attacks demolished infrastructure and hurt the ecomony. They also had their natural and intended effect of terrorizing people.
While you're right that it would be nice if people were capable of assessing all threats in a dispassionate statistical manner, that's unrealistic. And as such, at a policy level, we do need to worry more about terrorist attacks that just the raw numbers would indicate. These kind of attacks are devastating to a country's morale and psyche in a way that everday crime is not.
We do need to keep things in perspective, but I don't think it's at all unreasonable to view the impact of a terrorist attack as being much more than the raw number of people killed.
Thanks for the link, Don.
The other thing to keep in mind is that every participant in 9/11 (and, as I recall, just about every participant in the Millenium Plot) was an import. No US citizens or permanent residents. We don't have the sort of angry, disaffected Muslim community most European countries do. Our best counter-terrorism measure is to keep it that way.
"I think it's probably time to start questioning premises and time to do a little more thinking outside the box."
Yes, it is time for us to think outside of the box and not to have the Bush's mentality of thinking that terrorists are the bad guys on the T.V. show: Gunsmoke.
Richard Clarke makes some excellent points in his op-ed in the NY Daily News:
U.S. military raids in Iraq have uncovered evidence that Iraqis are planning attacks in America, perhaps to be carried out by terrorists with European Union passports that require no U.S. visas. But such attacks here over the next several years are likely now no matter what happens next in Iraq - and that is because of what Bush has already done, not because of any future course we choose in Iraq.
But we can be sure that when the next attacks come in the U.S., if Bush is down on the ranch cutting trees, he and whatever few followers he retains by then will blame his successor. You can almost hear them now: If only hissuccessor had left enough U.S. troops in the Iraqi shooting gallery to satisfy the blood lust of the enemy, as Bush did, then they wouldn't have come here.
It has always struck me how much we over-reacted to Al Qaeda. When Al Qaeda struck on 9/11, I have read that their membership was in the 15,000 range. Even if you double it that estimate, that would be about 30,000 people, max. That is a fair amount, but most of those people were uneducated ex-mujahideen who might be good guerilla fighers in a place like Afghanistan, but were of little use in any sort of direct attack on the U.S. They certainly were not a real threat to us in the way that German and Japan were during WWII.
The plan 9/11 plan almost fell through because Al Qaeda had so few people educated enough to simply live in this country and fly an airplane into buildings. Yet we reacted as though we had been directly attacked by a major nation, which was never true.
This over-reaction, which I think in part was a conscious choice to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to do something this administration wanted to do anyway, has caused more harm to our country that the original attack did by a large margin. We can recover from 9/11, but recovering from our reaction to it will take a lot longer.
Its the ol' flypaper strategy - kind of like atrio's and crooks and liars - all the stupid people blog over there so we don't have to read their crap over here.
Of course, providing a forum for idiots by idiots is all good and fun - creating a nightmare of death and destruction is quite another.
The chimp and his band of thieves are guilty or war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet the MSM "catapults the propaganda" that somehow their war profiteering is all about national security.
People just didn't imagine that hijackers would fly planes into buildings.
Actually, this is not true. There was an attempt thwarted in Paris to do just this, and there was material in the intelligence pipeline suggesting that such an attack could take place.
The central failure in stopping this was that the Bush administration did not credit non-state actors as actual threats, although the evidence was right there--the Cole, the African embassies.
But the real point here is that this is a trivial threat. Even as horrific as 9/11 was--and I will never forget the days when the wind shifted and you could smell ground zero up in my neighborhood just south of Spanish Harlem--it looks to be a once in a decade kind of thing. Or even less often, perhaps much less often. It's not hard to imagine operations that would kill hundreds and terrify many more, but they haven't taken place. For example, four suitcase bombs going off in the Oyster Bar would kill dozens and would frighten many commuters. Such an attack would be very hard to stop. But we haven't seen any indication of any kind of realistic attack by effective (or even organized) al qaeda lookalikes.
Also, keep in mind that bin Laden scaled down the 9/11 attacks. He only had the manpower for what he did. And those effectives are now long gone.
james fallows had a lead article in the Atlantic about a year ago, noting that the administration has done much more hard to this country be responding in ways that amplify the sends of fear and have significantly eroded our civil liberties and, arguably, resulted in a stolen election.
So, yes, the time has come to recognize that terrorism is not a major threat. Not like obesity. Not like drunken driving. More like a lightning strike, in its impact on Americans over the space of decades.
There's no reason to apologize for this view.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home