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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

I came to say exactly the same thing. The U.S. reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing was pretty muted, and I'm not surprised at the Norwegian reaction.

People are acting all impressed with the PM for saying this, but this was the work of one crazy man, not an organization dedicated to destroying you. No one would let one crazy person influence your county, so I'm not surprised at the PM's reaction.

When you face an enemy group dedicated to destroying you things are far different - it makes you worried there will be more.

No one thinks one crazy person who was caught will do anything else.

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But Jens said the same thing before the attacker had been identified, and before it was clear that it was one person (and not an organization or an enemy group.)

The PM actually said on the first press conference, on the night of the attacks, that the response will be more openness and more democracy.

This was before the identity of the attacker was known and everyone was still suggesting muslim extremists.

This.

After 9/11 there were enormous structural issues with the world order that made it easier for terrorist groups to proliferate. That's why the Treasury Secretary was in all the initial planning meetings- there were two prongs to our response, one financial, one military.

The military one was an unmitigated clusterfuck.

The financial one was a rousing success. We forced the world to tighten financial controls, largely ended anonymous banking, seized huge quantities of terrorist funds, and made it really, really hard for the people trying to kill us to get money and to move money around.

There was a financial War on Terror, and we won it. Just because the military side went so badly doesn't meant there wasn't a real threat.

I'm very interested in more info on the financial War on Terror - is there are good articles or books you can recommend?

Bob Woodward's are actually very good- he wrote a whole set on the Bush Presidency, from 9/11 through the Surge.

There was tons of collateral damage in that war. It's a huge pain to transfer funds overseas and is a major impediment to opening up offices in other countries. Many banks won't even deal with the hassle if you're an American with a small company or below a certain net worth.

I guess some of the people doing anonymous banking or with offshore funds were indeed terrorists. But most of the "financial war on terror" is about terrorizing payment processors and banks, not actual terrorists.

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