Every Terrorist is a Genius?

What is a terrorist? A terrorist, according to the dictionary, is someone who kills or destroys in an attempt to exert political influence. According to the media and almost all of America’s politicians and police forces, it’s pretty much anyone who’s ever had a seditious thought. Ever. And why is every one of these potential terrorists treated like the most capable evil mastermind to ever walk the earth? A thirty second sound byte is usually more than enough to show that the person (or people) in question are cripplingly imcompetent and throughly deluded.

The minute you even consider doing anything vaguely “terroristic”, you are a terrorist and the act you envisioned—regardless of how ludicrous—becomes a narrowly avoided cataclysm. There is no plot too small to make the front headline of the big papers or to run in the crawl of the big, American 24-hour news networks. Each wisp of information drops from the mouth of their blow-dried, vacuous news anchors as if it was part of the most dastardly, well-thought-out plan ever—as if every potential terrorist sits in a multi-billion dollar fortress stealing military hardware and stroking a white cat.[1] The media’s primary purpose is to keep the fear pumping, regardless of how far-fetched the idea, regardless of how impossible the plot.

Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot by Bruce Schneier on June 14, 2007 discusses this problem further in an article prompted by the recently thwarted “plot to blow up JFK”. As with the supposed plan to blow up Heathrow, which was heroically thwarted by Scotland Yard last year—in which the supposed terrorists hadn’t purchased any of the materials necessary to create the bombs they allegedly wanted to use (which can’t be created outside of lab conditions and which are highly unstable once made), hadn’t obtained passports or plane tickets and weren’t even anywhere near the airport when their “imminent” attack was derailed—the plan to blow up JFK was similarly infeasible and existed only in the fevered imaginings of an idiot. Hours later, it existed in the fevered imaginings of a hundred million idiots[2], but was no closer to having ever come to fruition for all of that mental effort.

“The only voice of reason out there seemed to be New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said: ‘There are lots of threats to you in the world. There’s the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life…. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist.‘[3]”

The press, of course, was having none of his attitude and ripped him a new one[4] for it. They were only too happy to pump their ratings and put some asses in seats with their criminal neglect of the truth. Though Reagan kicked off the modern era of terror hyperbole when he claimed that the overwhelming power of the Nicaraguan army was only a two day march from the Texas border, the press has been only too happy to play megaphone for every Chicken Little[5] politician with an anti-terrorist agenda. “The “Miami 7,” caught last year for plotting – among other things – to blow up the Sears Tower, were another incompetent group: no weapons, no bombs, no expertise, no money and no operational skill”. This doesn’t matter. They discussed, in the presence of an FBI officer, blowing up the Sears Tower; ergo, they could have done it. By the same logic, the discussion they’d had the previous evening—about banging Jenna Jameson[6]—was just as close to coming to fruition[7].

The excellent article from Schneier offers many more examples and links to more information and closes with the following good advice:

“I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have all the facts in any of these cases. None of us do. So let’s have some healthy skepticism. Skepticism when we read about these terrorist masterminds who were poised to kill thousands of people and do incalculable damage. Skepticism when we’re told that their arrest proves that we need to give away our own freedoms and liberties. And skepticism that those arrested are even guilty in the first place.”

Awww…lookit cute l’il Bruce Schneier…with his logic and rational thinking and all. Would that America could enter a golden age of common sense. However, Homeland Security pulls down a budget of over $40 billion and the Pentagon weighs in at an official number of over $650 billion. Fear of terrorism is big, big business and so much of the American economy is tied up in making sure that the wave of fear never crests, that it always finds a new bogeyman before we can stand down and enjoy our peace dividend.[8] Until it’s no longer profitable to scare people, there is sadly little chance that reason will play any large role in public discourse.