Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

A useful reminder that terrorism isn't new or even worse now that in the past. In the 70s and 80s, palestinian movements were regularly blowing bombs and taking hostages, along with far left extremists. A lot of state sponsored terrorism in the 80s and 90s, from our new "friends" Iran and Syria. And a lot of that terrorism was home grown (IRA, ETA, left wing).

For instance in the EU: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_European_Un... The number of attacks and number of victims has been pretty much consistent since the 50s with a small spike with the Madrid bombings.

What has changed is our sensitivity to terrorism which has become absurdly high. There are violent crimes happening every day which kill an order of magnitude more people. Gang violence alone in the US kills several 9/11 every year. There are thousands of knife attacks just in London every year. None of that even make it to the news anymore.

And the number of deaths linked to terrorism (1,100 in Europe since the 50s according to that wiki article) is dwarfed by things like death due to accidental drowning (35,000 every year according to eurostat).

It is useful to remember this when we see politicians in pretty much every western countries throwing out of the window basic civil liberties in the name of the war on terror. The budget spent on anti-terrorism should be better spent teaching people to swim.

What terrifies people about terrorism is that it could affect anyone at any time, and there's no semblance of control over that.

You can reduce your odds of gang violence by not being affiliated with gangs or living in/near a ghetto. You can reduce your odds of a knife attack by not walking alone when it's dark. You can reduce accidental drowning by learning how to swim. There's not much you can do about terrorism other than not go in public or live in a remote area.

What terrifies people about terrorism is that it could affect anyone at any time, and there's no semblance of control over that

So could being struck by lightning, or someone falling asleep at the wheel and running you over, or [insert unlikely phenomenon here]. The reality is people are terrified because they are told to be.

All of those things are accidents. Whereas terrorism is an intentional act by an enemy.

We evolved in a world where most causes of death, you couldn't do anything about. If you got an infection, you either recover or die. Really all medical issues were untreatable. If you got struck by lightening, thats just bad luck. If a big predator attacks you, you probably can't outrun it or fight it. If a natural disaster happens, you can't do anything about it.

But an enemy plotting to kill you, that is something you can do something about. You can fight them. You can be prepared for them. You can strike first. Etc. Violence has never been the primary cause of death, but it's the primary cause of death you can do something about. We have evolved entire emotions and social instincts about dealing with enemies. From anger and hate to paranoia and suspicion/mistrust. We don't have instincts for evading lightening or car crashes.

Hence why shootings and terrorist attacks get far more media attention than natural disasters and accidents. The boston bombing happened around the same time as a massive chemical plant explosion which killed hundreds. Guess which one was all over the news? Guess which one people remember?

So then create shall-issue laws for concealed weapons nationwide and encourage ordinary, law abiding citizens to purchase and carry with them guns all the time. Also ensure that there are no exclusion zones, or else those become the prime target areas. If it is well documented that 1 in 5 Americans has a gun at any time, terrorists might think twice about their odds of success. Further, if they do carry out an attack, they won't be able to hurt many people before the people strike back.

If you want to put an immediate end to terrorist attacks the only way to do so is to ensure that there are people witnessing the unfolding events (so they know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys) and empower them to solve the problem right away. No matter how you slice it, you can't make 1 in 5 people permanent, paid police officers so you have to look at the citizenry. If you can't abide the idea of normal people carrying guns everywhere then you need to learn to live with the idea that the police can't be everywhere all the time, and that these are the risks you take regarding terrorism to feel safe from your fellow countrymen who you deem untrustworthy.

I can't tell if your post is sarcastic or not. If you cannot prevent terrorist acts on your soil, the solution is pretty obvious then, it's not to give weapons to everybody or to hire 20% of your population as cop, it's just to be sure that you're not giving reasons to anybody to come and bomb you.

That's the only realistic & cost-efficient approach given the threat model.

That's a long term solution and one I am in favor of. But what do you do in the interim, between the time that the US stops creating more terrorists through bad foreign policy and the time that everyone who is angry enough to want to kill Americans for revenge is either dead or doesn't care anymore?

Edit: I am not being sarcastic at all. It will be exceedingly difficult to get rid of all the guns in the US so suggesting disarmament is a non-starter here. That means that terrorists will be able to get their hands on guns if they desire. Which means that you need someone to counter them with something. The logical conclusion is another person (preferably many people) with guns also. And since the police ratio in the US is on the order of 0.1% that's not going to give you an adequate response time as we've seen from mass shootings.

The real question is "would the cure be worse than the disease?" and while I personally think the answer is "no" that doesn't make me right. And given how much the left hates guns, I suspect that we'll never actually find out, so don't worry.

"not giving reasons to anybody to come and bomb you"

Power needs to be attacked, otherwise it's protection racket wouldn't work.

Seems obvious that humans should at their option have the ability to defend life with effective tools.

Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble has something to say about it: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/exclusive-westgate-interpol-ch...

"The budget spent on anti-terrorism should be better spent teaching people to swim."

That's true assuming the goal is to reduce harm.

If the goal is to increase the power and control of the state, then teaching people to swim wouldn't be very helpful.

Well, terrorism is really not about the number of deaths, it is more about the (frightening) spectacle, about instilling terror, this could, but doesn't have to, involve a large number of deaths.

Its whole point is that it weakens the prestige of the state being attacked, i.e. it's not a personal but rather a national level attack, hence the retaliation.

Except terrorism doesn't instill terror, as proven by the terrorism in the previous century, when we just defiantly went about our business the same as before. And I say "defiantly", but it doesn't take much bravery if you know that the odds of being blown up by terrorists are so much smaller than having an accident during your daily commute.

The government and the media are the ones that leverage terrorism to instill terror.

Terrorism as a tactic in itself is a proven failure. It requires the support of media and government to have any impact.

Which makes the conspiracy theories of our own governments deliberately encouraging terrorism quite realistic.

Especially given that it has happened before (CCC, Gladio, etcetera). Western governments have never shied away for faking or aiding terrorism, it's remarkable that we keep referring to this as tin foil hattery despite a) the long track record and b) the simple fact that they are the only ones who profit from it.

All opinion:

I think there's two sides to that argument: what victims think and what terrorists think.

Terrorists believe that they instill terror and historically (and still in some countries) that was often the case.

> we just defiantly went about our business the same as before.

That is the American and PARTIALLY western way of dealing with it. It also happens to be the only viable thing I can think of to do against terrorism - although it's not effective at halting terrorism:

The "defiant" solution is sadly only effective as a deep cutting form of revenge, I doubt it will truly ever deter terrorism as it takes a special kind of stupidity to think that fear will turn hearts to your cause in the long run. As defiantly as America stands against terrorism; so will terrorists blindly continue to believe that it actually achieves anything.

This is possibly something that only evolution could fix.

Excellent comment! Although of course one has to remember that the impact of terrorism cannot be measured purely by a body count. There is a strong symbolic dimension to it - if al-Quaeda had killed a few thousand people in some remote town in America instead of targeting the World Trade Center, the response would have been much different.

this happens when emotions take over rational thinking and decision process. as non-american, and apologies upfront to our US friends, whole WTC was more like 'meh', just another ugly day, what's the big deal... no reason to prefer some clerks over some other kids/women hacked with machetes, smashed by earthquake or other tragedies happening left and right. Manmade or not, not a big difference

But when emotions kick in, when YOU feel YOU are attacked (and those are some powerful emotions!), proportions change, and you just want to nuke 'em to hell, twice. I think I react in similar way in... +- similar situations (more personal ones rather than attack on the nation). Sad story that whole USA got swayed into blind acceptance of any security measure to stop that ugly terrorist

It is very much like the risk of flying. The media got the message and now, pretty much anytime a plane crashes, will repeat again and again that the risk is extremely low and that it is safer to take a plane than cross a street.

For terrorism (or any disease for that matter) they do exactly the opposite. The message is pretty much "this could happen to you".

The reality is that plane crashes in Europe probably killed a multiple of what terrorism killed the past few years. We have 100+ deads in a single accident at least once a year. Us being afraid of terrorism is like an elephant afraid of a mosquito.

There has always been terrorism - living in the UK in the 70's and 80's we were constantly aware - but 9/11 was an order of magnitude larger than anything that happened before. I would suggest that would be what increased the sensitivity.

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