My thoughts on the failed terror attack

I am usually not a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, but for once I find his crotchety sarcasm deeply refreshing. His recent Slate column asks, "Why are we so bad at detecting the guilty and so good at collective punishment of the innocent?"

In my boyhood, there were signs on English buses that declared, in bold letters, "No Spitting." At a tender age, I was able to work out that most people don't need to be told this, while those who do feel a desire to expectorate on public transport will require more discouragement than a mere sign. But I'd be wasting my time pointing this out to our majestic and sleepless protectors, who now boldly propose to prevent airline passengers from getting out of their seats for the last hour of any flight. Abdulmutallab made his bid in the last hour of his flight, after all. Yes, that ought to do it. It's also incredibly, nay, almost diabolically clever of our guardians to let it be known what the precise time limit will be. Oh, and by the way, any passenger courageous or resourceful enough to stand up and fight back will also have broken the brave new law.

I'm endlessly frustrated by security measures that punish the innocent and are useless against the guilty. The "last hour" takes the trophy for the dumbest airline rule I've ever seen, so I was happy to see Hitchens point out the obvious. For more on the subject, read Little Brother by the technological reverend Cory Doctorow, in which high school hackers use off-the-shelf-technology and a lot of creativity to consistently outwit the expensive and ultimately useless surveillance efforts of a draconian Department of Homeland Security.

This leads me to John Robb's fantastic response at Global Guerrillas. He points out that even when attacks fail, they can result in strategic gains for terrorists. Even failed attacks shake up organizations, prompt expensive and time-consuming policy reviews, and result in costly knee-jerk reactions. If the long-term strategy is to bleed America out, failed attacks can be just as useful as successful attacks. This is, of course, consistent with Robb's overall theory of network disruption. It's an interesting thought experiment to consider how various types of attack--even if unsuccessful--would the same system "ping" and overreact.

So what we do? First, I'm with zenpundit: we have to get past political correctness and actually focus our security on probable terrorists. That doesn't mean we target Muslims in general, but it means we target radical activists with ties to extremist organizations or mosques. Second, we have to avoid the costly knee-jerk reactions that will bleed us out and ultimately do nothing to prevent terrorism.