International Terrorism and Lightning

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SIX PROPOSITIONS
SIX RATHER UNUSUAL PROPOSITIONS
ABOUT
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Critical threats to the United States
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Foreign policy goals saying very important
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1. Terrorism generally has only limited direct
effects
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--60 Minutes (CBS), 16 February 2003

• Michael Moore The chances of any of us dying in
  a terrorist incident is very, very, very small.
• Bob Simon No one sees the world like that.

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International Terrorism and Lightning
Previous high 329 in 1985 when Air India plane
blown up by Sikhs
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WMD
NUCLEAR WEAPONS BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS CHEMICAL
WEAPONS MISSILES RADIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
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Nuclear weapons
The mass production and widespread distribution
of increasingly sophisticated and increasingly
powerful man-portable weapons will greatly add to
the terrorist's arsenal and the world's
increasing dependence on nuclear power may
provide terrorists with weapons of mass
destruction.
--Brian Jenkins, 1975
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Biological weapons rarely, if ever, used Aum
Shinrikyo experience spread as aerosol explosion
can destroy storage difficult
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• Chemical weapons
• World War I experience
• Aum Shinrikyo in 1995 kill 12
• Iraq in Halabja in 1988 5000 dead?

Gas made war uncomfortable--to no purpose
A ton of Sarin nerve gas perfectly delivered
under absolutely ideal conditions over a heavily
populated area against unprotected people could
cause between 3000 and 8000 deaths. Under
slightly less ideal circumstances--if there was a
moderate wind or if the sun was out, for
example--the death rate would be only one-tenth
as great
A ton of nerve gas or five tons of mustard gas
could produce heavy casualties among unprotected
people in an open area of one kilometer square.
Even for nerve gas this would take the
concentrated delivery into a rather small area of
about 300 heavy artillery shells or seven
500-pound bombs
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Missiles cost accuracy
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Radiological weapons panic only
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9/11 aberration or harbinger?
Lockerbie 1988 Oklahoma City 1995 Aum Shinrikyo
1995 But WWI, WTC 1993

• al-Qaeda capacity?

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I think, therefore they are, 2003
The greatest threat is from al-Qaeda cells in the
US that we have not yet identified. al-Qaeda
maintains the ability and the intent to inflict
significant casualties in the US with little
warning. That threat is increasing partly
because of the publicity surrounding the DC
sniper shootings and the anthrax letter attacks.

• --Robert Mueller February 11, 2003 testimony

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I think, therefore they are, 2005
I remain very concerned about what we are not
seeing. (bolded) FBI's counter-terrorist
accomplishments in 2004 1. They picked up
evidence in that year that bad guys had conducted
surveillance of financial targets and called an
expensive orange alert. 2. The Brits picked up
some bad guys, and the FBI dutifully set up a
"task force" to see if there was a "U.S. nexus"
to these guys. 3. After receiving information
"suggesting" an attack was being planned
"possibly timed to coincide with the presidential
election," they set up another "task force"
consisting of "thousands of FBI personnel." Over
the course of six months, these thousands of
spooks found no evidence not only of a plot but
even of whether "an operation was indeed being
planned." On the positive side, however, he is
"certain that the FBI's tremendous response to
the threat not "suggested threat" or "imagined
threat" played an integral role in disrupting
any operational plans that may have been
underway." 4. They made three (3) arrests. One
was of a "spiritual leader" in Virginia who may
actually have been worth arresting. Another was
of a guy in Minneapolis who admitted to doing
some sniping in Afghanistan and Chechnya in the
1990s. And the third was arrested on money
laundering charges "connected" to a "possible"
plot to kill a Pakistani diplomat.

• --Robert Mueller February 16, 2005 testimony

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2. The costs of terrorism very often come mostly
from the fear and consequent reaction (or
overreaction) it characteristically inspires
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• 9/11 economic costs
• human costs
• opportunity costs

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Clinton and embassy bombings,1998

• 9/11 economic costs
• human costs
• opportunity costs

If terrorists force us to redirect resources away
from sensible programs and future growth, in
order to pursue unachievable but politically
popular levels of domestic security, then they
have won an important victory that mortgages our
future.
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3. The terrorism industry is a major part of the
terrorism problem
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An incentive to pass along vague and unconfirmed
threats of future violence, in order to protect
themselves from criticism in the event of another
attack.

• Politicians
• Bureaucracy
• Media
• Risk entrepreneurs

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Juval Aviv, Staying Safe New York
HarperResource, 2004Hardcover The Complete
Terrorism Survival Guide, Juris Publishing, 2003

• Stay away from crowds
• Treat official reassurances circumspectly
• Ask yourself where you stand in the hierarchy of
  terrorist targets
• Determine whether someone is paying too much
  attention to one particular thing
• Keep in mind that a terrorist may be one of your
  customers
• Be wary of odd-looking neighbors
• Try yoga-type breathing exercises to relax
• Separate small pets from large ones
• Know the five primary means of assassination
• Never take the first taxicab in line
• In a department store or other crowded public
  place, be careful not to get trampled
• Forgo eating food from salad bars or restaurant
  smorgasbords
• Wash your hands after returning from an outing,
  especially if you used mass transit or a taxicab

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Juval Aviv, Staying Safe New York
HarperResource, 2004Hardcover The Complete
Terrorism Survival Guide, Juris Publishing, 2003

• Dont eat, drink, or smoke around mail
• In a multipurpose household, designate one person
  as the primary mail opener
• Make it a standard practice to wash with
  antibacterial soap immediately after touching
  mail
• Never shake a suspect piece of mail
• Avoid long waits at U.S. border crossings
• Dont exchange currency at the airport
• Never park in underground garages
• Avoid aisle seats on airplanes
• Spend as little time at the airport as possible
• Stay away from heavily glassed areas in airports
• At an airport baggage carousel, position yourself
  near the luggage chute
• Try to fly wide-body planes, because terrorists
  often avoid hijacking them

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The Islamists in al Qaeda, in other similar
groups, and ordinary Muslims worldwide have been
infected by hatred for U.S. policies toward the
Muslim world. Americas support for Israel,
Russia, China, India, Algeria, Uzbekistan, and
others against Islamists its protection of
multiple Muslim tyrannies its efforts to control
oil policy and pricing and its military
activities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Arabian
Peninsula, and elsewherethese are the sources of
the infection of hatred spreading in the Islamic
world.
survival!
Until those policies change, the United States
has no option but an increasingly fierce military
response to the forces marshaled by bin Laden, an
option that will prolong Americas survival but
at as yet undreamed of costs in blood, money, and
civil liberties.
--Anonymous, Imperial Hubris (2004), cheery last
pages
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To secure as much of our way of life as possible,
we will have to use military force in the way
Americans used it on the fields of Virginia and
Georgia, in France and on the Pacific islands,
and from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress
will be measured by the pace of killing and, yes,
by body counts. Not the fatuous body counts of
Vietnam, but precise counts that will run to
extremely large numbers. The piles of dead will
include as many or more civilians as combatants
because our enemies wear no uniforms. Killing in
large number is not enough to defeat our Muslim
foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like
razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation
systems bridges, power plants, and crops in the
field fertilizer plants and grain mills--all
these and more will need to be destroyed to deny
the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover,
will be massively reintroduced to seal borders
and mountain passes too long, high, or numerous
to close with U.S. soldiers. As noted, such
actions will yield large civilian casualties,
displaced populations, and refugee flows.
I would like to thank Ms. Christina Davidson who
labored mightily to delete from the text excess
vitriol.
--Anonymous, Imperial Hubris (2004), pp. 241-42
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• Fragile, vulnerable, existential, survival
• Myers do away with our way of life
• Y2K effect

Athens Olympics Democratic convention Republican
convention Election campaign Presidential vote
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--Bernard Brodie
WORST CASE FANTASIES
As serious and potentially catastrophic as a
domestic CBRN attack might prove, it is highly
unlikely that it could ever completely undermine
the national security, much less threaten the
survival, of the United States as a nation....To
take any other position risks surrendering to the
fear and intimidation that is precisely the
terrorist's stock in trade.
--Gilmore Commission, 1999
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4. Policies designed to deal with terrorism
should focus more on reducing fear and anxiety as
inexpensively as possible than on objectively
reducing the rather limited dangers terrorism is
likely actually to pose
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Bin Laden goal overreaction

• It is easy for us to provoke and bait....All that
  we have to do is to send two mujahidin...to raise
  a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda in
  order to make the generals race there to cause
  America to suffer human, economic, and political
  losses. Our policy is one of bleeding America to
  the point of bankruptcy. The terrorist attacks
  cost al-Qaeda 500,000 while the attack and its
  aftermath inflicted a cost of more than 500
  billion on the United States.

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Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane!
Calculate the odds of being har med by a
terrorist! Its still about as likely as being
swept out to sea by a tidal wave.Suck it up, for
crying out loud. Youre almost certainly going to
be okay. And in the unlikely event youre not, do
you really want to spend your last days cowering
behind plastic sheets and duct tape? Thats not a
life worth living, is it?
Watch the terrorist alert and go outside again
when it falls below yellow.
--John McCain, Why Courage Matters (2004)
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?
Watch the terrorist alert and go outside again
when it falls below yellow.
--John McCain, Why Courage Matters (2004)
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--Michael Sivak and Michael J. Flannagan in
American Scientist, Jan-Feb 2003

• An American's chance of being killed in one
  non-stop airline flight
• one in
  13 million
• An Americans chance of being killed while
  driving 11.2 miles on America's safest roads,
  rural interstate highways
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  one in 13 million
• Number of 9/11-type airline crashes required to
  make flying as dangerous as driving the same
  distance on America's safest roads
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  one a month

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Risk of death for an American over a 50-year
period
Botulism 1 in 2,000,000 Fireworks 1 in
1,000,000 Tornado 1 in 50,000 Airplane crash 1
in 20,000 Electrocution 1 in 5,000 Firearms
accident 1 in 2,000 Automobile accident 1 in 100
Asteroid impact 1 in 6,000
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• Airplane hijacking?
• Cheap reassurance
• Cry wolf
• Keep track of predictions
• Reduce costs
• Check literature on witches
• Absorb?

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Risk communication

• people tend greatly to overestimate the chances
  of dramatic or sensational causes of death
• realistically informing people about risks
  sometimes only makes them more frightened
• strong beliefs are very difficult to modify
• a new sort of calamity tends to be taken as
  harbinger of future mishaps
• a disaster tends to increase fears not only about
  that kind of danger but of all kinds
• people, even professionals, are susceptible to
  the way risks are expressed--far less likely, for
  example, to choose radiation therapy if told the
  chances of death are 32 rather than that the
  chances of survival are 68
• when presented with two estimations of risk from
  reasonably authoritative sources, people choose
  to embrace the high risk opinion regardless of
  its source that is, there is a predilection
  toward alarmist responses and excessive weighting
  of the worst case scenario

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Dirty bomb?

• Average background radiation in US 360 mrem per
  year
• High end of low level radiation range 10,000
  total mrem
• Well-known cause of cancer 30,000 total mrem
• Blood cell changes, infections, temporary
  sterility 200,000 short-term mrem
• Death with days or weeks 400,000 short-term mrem

LNT
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To live at 245 mrem per year

• Dont have a pacemaker
• Dont have porcelain crowns or false teeth
• Dont use a gas camping lantern
• Dont have X-rays or a CAT Scan
• Dont live in a stone, adobe brick, or concrete
  building
• Dont wear a luminous wristwatch
• Dont watch TV
• Dont use a computer terminal
• Dont have a smoke detector in your home
• Dont live within 50 miles of a nuclear or
  coal-fired power plant
• Dont consume food or water
• Live in Biloxi
• Dont fly or go to airports

• 100 1
• 7
• 1
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Columbus 16 Denver
68 Leadville 117
1 mrem per two hours in the air Airline
crews 100 mrem per year
Source National Safety Council
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5. Doing nothing (or at least refraining from
overreacting) after a terrorist attack is not
necessarily unacceptable
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• Lebanon 1983
• Somalia 1993
• World Trade Center 1993
• Oklahoma City 1995
• Khobar Towers 1996
• U.S.S. Cole 2000
• Anthrax 2001
• Madrid 2003

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6. Despite U.S. overreaction, the campaign
against terror is generally going rather well
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The United States is living on borrowed time--and
squandering it.
How much security is enough when the American
people can conclude that a future attack on U.S.
soil will be an exceptional event that does not
require wholesale changes in how they go about
their lives.
The entire nation...must be organized for the
long, deadly struggle against terrorism.
--Stephen Flynn
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GWOT
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THE END