James Joyner has an admirable round-up of coverage of the search for the person or persons who left an SUV containing a crude bomb that failed to detonate in Times Square over the weekend. It’s a bit early in the day to start drawing any conclusions about the attempted attack but I’ll wade into it anyway.
First, those who’ve said that we have nothing to be concerned about were wrong. They have always been wrong and they will continue to be wrong. Had the car bomb detonated it would have caused loss of life, significant damage, a substantial response, and national political repercussions. The reason it didn’t go off was dumb luck.
Second, if anyone thinks that the measures we’ve taken, foreign or domestic, to prevent terrorist attacks on our shores have been effective, they are clearly wrong, too. We’ve spent ten years squandering time, money, and lives. Invading Iraq and Afghanistan hasn’t prevented attacks on our shores. Neither has further centralizing security and intelligence gathering. We’ve spent billions, possibly trillions. That we haven’t had another major attack with mass casualties is just dumb luck.
Third, those who believe that citizen vigilance is enough to prevent future attacks are wrong, too. The street vendor reported it; the police took a look at it. Both did their part. That the car bomb didn’t detonate was just dumb luck.
It was probably said best more than a century ago by the Abbé Correa and frequently attributed to Otto von Bismarck:
There is a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America
I don’t think we should depend on that providence to protect us. I don’t think we can rely on our opponents being stupid and incompetent forever. I also don’t think that we should be wasting money and lives on a security strategy that doesn’t work.
I think we should stop wasting out money on security strategies. Yes, I know sounds shocking, but I agree largely with everything you’ve written. For example you wrote,
You also wrote,
Centralized approaches to preventing terrorist attacks didn’t work. Neither did de-centralized. Further, given all the special interests and such trying to change our security structure is going to be next to impossible.
So lets just stop trying to do anything to make it better because we can’t. Keep the structure we have in place (we can’t get rid of it, see the bit above about special interests) and stop flinging good money after wasted money. Stop eating away at civil liberties, stop granting police greater and greater powers, just realize that there isn’t much we can do to stop a determined enemy from doing these kinds of things in an open and free society.
Either that or give up the notion of an open and free society.
Change you can believe in.