The impossibility of stopping all terrorist attacks

Fareed Zakaria, one of the few reasons to read Newsweek, had a piece in last weeks issue which discussed the Muslim world's harsh negative reaction to the Londom bombings, and what they and western leaders need to do to better combat terrorism. But instead of coming away from the article feeling hopeful, Zakaria tosses this paragraph at his readers.

These kinds of events will continue. There should be much, much greater condemnation from mainstream Islam. Moderates must adopt a zero-tolerance policy on terrorism, regardless of what they think of Iraq, Palestine or any other policy issue. But those clamoring for such condemnations should bear in mind that this will not solve the problem. Even if the moderates win and overwhelm the extremists, there will always be some number of unconverted jihadists, who either out of depravity or conviction seek to do evil. If 99.99 percent of the Arab world rejects terrorism, that still leaves 20,000 people to worry about. If 99.9 percent of the Muslim world is against the terrorists, there's 1 million people out there who are dangerous. And the technologies of destruction ensure that they will, on occasion, be successful.

There's absoultely no way that we're ever going to stop all of the attacks. None at all. Never in the history of humankind has there been a way to make an entire population follow one single idealogy. Never. Even Nazi Germany faced dissent. There's never going to be a way to convince all of Islam's followers not to practice terrorism, just like there will never be a way to convince every anti-choice person in America that violence is not the answer. There's no way to stop all the potential attacks. So we mine as well cut the "ending all terrorism" bullshit and face the facts, right?

Of course, that's never going to happen because this very scenario is the Republican party's wet dream. For a party which derives it's strength from fear, what a shot in the arm! A certain segment of the populace, sparsely spread around the globe and virtually undetectable, committing random acts of violence under the banner of al-Qa'ida which is shifting from being a centralized organization to a flag that anyone can claim as their own, and say that they are fighting under. It's literally true that these people can bring the fight to anywhere. What better bargaining chip for the Republicans to hold over voters... Just as long as the voters stay convinced that terrorism itself can be completely stopped.

Problem is that it can't be. But this can't be admitted by either major political party. While the Republicans instill paranoid voters with fear, Democrats have to compete by generating the hawkish perception that they will be just as tough on terrorism; that they will also stop it. But it can't be stopped.

This troubled political climate isn't anything new. The right raised the specter of fear throughout the twenthy century, and it got American into boatloads of trouble. Remember Vietnam? Kennedy probably wouldn't have even bothered if the Republicans didn't continue to stipulate that it was the Democrats who "lost" China after WWII. Looking upon the Democrats acquiescence to the Republicans on Iraq since they felt the pressure to look just as hawkish as the right on the issue of terrorism, I'd say that history has repeated itself.

Fact is that, as long as the Republicans have a sliver of a reason to project fear and use it as a political bargaining chip, we're never going to have a serious debate concerning how to develop a sound policy to defend this nation, and other parts of the world, from a serious terrorist attack. And what I mean by that is stopping an attack using nuclear, chemical weapons, or other means of inflicting mass destruction. We're not going to stop conventional attacks. Fuck, any idiot can make a bomb; I downloaded the anarchist's cookbook when I was 15 and there was no such thing called the World Wide Web. Look, it's an archive of anarchy files that teenagers from 15 years ago were memorizing! The art of cheap destruction is common knowledge to anyone who wishes to find it. This just feeds more into the fact that we're never, ever going to stop conventional attacks. So we need to place our focus on making sure that nations like Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Syria, etc., aren't selling WMDs to potential terrorists. And securing our ports would help, too. It sure would be a cheaper solution than waging a useless war in Iraq. But until we can talk openly about the hopelessness of trying to stop all terrorism, we'll continue to see more Iraqs.

[Hattip: Zakaria link via Red State, of all places...]

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