Living with terrorism

Or maybe they won't. Whatever happens, I do not believe we can make the threat go away with outside force. Not with police work, not by invading terrorist states, not by solving any social problems, nor by making the world more peaceful and wealthy, and not - certainly not! - by giving them what they want. We can reduce the threat, we can make it difficult for terrorists to succeed, but the threat is not going away. The risk of terrorism will always be there, until they choose to remove it.

And if the Islamists do give up terrorism, others will pick it up. Islamists are not the first to use this tactic - anarchists used it in the 19th century, radical leftists in the 1970's - and they won't be the last. It is a very odd idea to be infected with, that the world is evil and must be put right with explosives, but the world is full odd ideas, and people who will believe them. The Internet and the new global culture will help the crazy fringes more than it helps the rest of us, it will help them to discover each other and maintain their closed little world views - and then it will help them to plan and carry out their attacks.

Do you think surveillance will put an end to terrorism? Read up on cryptography. Today's terrorists may not have understood the potential of information technology, but the next generation will. It will never be easy to carry out a spectacular terrorist attack, and there are many things we can do to make it more difficult, but there will always be a risk of success. Do what you like, our fight against terrorism will always have a component of luck. Flip a coin: Heads, a neighbour sees something suspicious and reports it, tails, they don't, and a bus gets blown up.

When we talk about terrorism, it is usually to say how horrible it is, and to ask what we can do to fight it. A lot of people died! Or they could have died! What are we going to do about it? Who's to blame? Is there a law we could pass? Should we give more money to somebody, or maybe invade some place?

This is useful. There are many things we can do, and there's no reason to make it easy for terrorists to kill us. New laws can be useful, and so can money, and even sometimes invasions. But there is another thing I believe we should also talk about, and think about, which we usually forget, and that is how to live with terrorism. How to deal with terrorism as a part of our lives.

What?! Live with terrorism? What are you, a defeatist? We must fight it! We must end the terror threat once and for all! Fight everyone who supports it and makes it possible, teach everyone the futility and immorality of terrorism, until no one is left alive and free who would even want to be a terrorist.

Right, so let us do all this. Whatever it is you have in mind, imagine it done. And then what? Have we now eradicated terrorism? Unless your solution is a police state, walled in and trigger-happy and suspicious of everyone and everything, afraid of strangers and obedient to the state, (and maybe not even then), I believe the answer is no. Let us do all that we can do without becoming something we despise, and there is still a terrorist threat to worry about.

So we need to learn how to live with terrorism. It is a part of our lives that no power we have (or want) can fully take away. No matter how you want to fight terrorism, you also need to find a way to live with it. Live with the possibility of hijackings and plane bombings, of suicide bombers on trains and buses, of snipers killing random people in the street. Terrorism is here to stay, deal with it.

And we are dealing with it, in our own different ways. In the years since September 11, several strategies have come up. One is to pretend that there is no threat. "Of course it could happen there, but never here!" Or "terrorism is really scary, I'm so glad we have police and airport security to protect us!" Or "it's all a conspiracy anyway, it just crazy to think that Muslims would be evil enough to blow themselves up!". Denial is an effective strategy, but it is not for me. I like to keep my brain free from lies, I have this funny obsession.

Denial is often combined with another popular strategy: Retreat. Pretend that the threat is concentrated in certain places, and then stay away from those places. If bombs go off in London, cancel your London vacation. If they go off on Bali, stay away from Indonesia. If a plot to blow up aeroplanes is uncovered, avoid flying for a couple of months - or at least get off the plane if you see any Arabs on it.

Legislation is a popular strategy, well in keeping with our political culture: If Something Bad happens, pass a law. Don't think, don't ask if it will work, don't ask what it will cost, just write it, pass it, and sign it. In fact, the more expensive it is and the more it hurts, the more it feels like we're doing something.

Others deal with terrorism by distracting themselves with the fight against terrorism, thus avoiding the question of how to live with it. Be very angry about terrorism, write about it on your blog, blame your political enemies for helping the terrorists - do anything but face the inevitability of terrorism. These are usually the people who go furthest in losing their sense of proportion, to a point where they embrace autocratic ideas. "No trial for terror suspects? Torture, unaccountable surveillance, and harebrained identity schemes? Fine, I don't care! Just do whatever it takes to protect me!"

I have a different strategy. It is not for everyone, but I believe it is honest and politically safe. Let us take away the most powerful weapon the terrorists have: Fear. Be less afraid of terrorism. Make it your personal project not to fear terrorism, and not to let the fear that remains influence your life. Don't panic over newspaper headlines. Don't cancel your vacation because of terror alerts. Don't hold back your plane because there are some Arabs on it. Don't support hasty laws and careless political decisions, simple because we "have to do something".

Accept that there is a threat, but don't exaggerate it. Don't trust your instinct to guide you, our instincts are notoriously bad at risk assessment, use reason and facts instead. When people are afraid of flying, they remind themselves that they're much more likely to die in their car on the way to the airport than on the plane itself. Do the same with terrorism. Fight your fears with facts. I don't believe in denial, and it is not denial to say that terrorism is one of the smallest threats that any of us face. It is simple irrational to fear terrorism more than traffic.

When you have reduced your fear to a rational level as much as you can, face what remains of it with open eyes. Don't let the fear influence your behaviour, except after careful thought. Life is full of risks, and terrorism is no different from all the others. So there's a tiny risk you might die today. That's no excuse to act like a fool or a coward. Death is a part of life.

Terrorism is naturally more frightening than, say, car accidents or natural disasters. Accidents are impersonal and random, terrorism is personal, it is evil. But that is precisely why we have to think rationally about it, so that terrorists cannot exploit the irrational fear that their actions create in us.

After all, what other weapons do terrorists have to harm us with than fear? They have some guns and explosives. They can kill a few people, once in a while, at high cost and high chance of failure. That is all they have. Measured in terms of pure damage to people and property, the terrorist threat is small. Only with nuclear weapons might terrorists come close to the threat posed to us by cars.

It is the fear of it that makes terrorism uniquely dangerous. The killing is only a means, a way to trigger the destruction of their enemies. Make us angry, make us fearful, make us do something stupid.

I'm not saying that "if we do X the terrorists will have won", as if Islamist terrorists want nothing more than to trick us into passing a couple of bad laws. Can you imagine it? "Osama, did you hear? The infidels have removed their legal protection for terrorist suspects! Allah be praised!"

There is an overlap between what terrorists want and what terrorism actually makes us do - excessive retribution and suspicion is a useful recruitment tool - but on the whole we should not spend much time thinking about what terrorists want, and how to avoid it. They live in their own crazy little world, a world where their enemies are weak and ready to break, and all that is needed is a push in in the right place. It is the world Alan Moore imagines in V for Vendetta, where an authoritarian government is brought down through surgical use of terrorism. A small cut here, another there, and down it all falls, and come now everyone and embrace our truth, let us build a new world together in the name of our God/ideology.

This is not the real world. Terrorists have a different reality, and it is silly to obsess about what they really "want" with their attacks. Whatever it is it has little relation to our reality. "Victory" for an Islamist terrorist is the submission of the globe to their form of Islam, not that we introduce some bad laws.

But it is bad for us when terrorism makes us do this. Islamist terrorists will never succeed at whatever it is they're aiming for, but they often make us do foolish things. The fear makes us stupid. It makes us want to throw out centuries of experience with democracy and rule of law, it makes us consider identity cards and massive surveillance, it makes us treat all Muslim immigrants as suspects, it makes us take hasty and clumsy decisions in foreign policy, and give massive powers to the state, and bog our airports down with pointless security measures.

And that's just the mainstream - consider the fringes, as they prepare for The Great War With The Muslims, dismissing liberal democracy as weak and inefficient, branding moderation as treason, and creating a new nationalism.

Dangerous ideas like these will always be with us, but hystericism makes them more appealing. So. Remove the fear, or reduce it to a rational level, and we will have changed terrorism from a major disruptive force to a minor physical threat, far below the level of accidents and disease. Take away the panic, and then we can think rationally of how to balance our efforts against terrorism against other things that are important to us. Things such as political freedom, human rights, decent behaviour, and not acting like panicked chickens.

The irony is that the ones who want to go furthest in placating their own fears, have succeeded in presenting themselves as "brave", and their opponents, who worry about civil rights and discrimination, as "cowardly". I don't see much bravery anywhere, but least off all among the loudest of the anti-terror warriors. It's not brave to scream on your blog for even more anti-terror laws. It's not brave to be willing to torture innocent people because there's a chance they might be guilty.

Brave is sitting down calmly on a plane behind a row of suspicious-looking Arabs, ignoring your own fears, because you know those fears are irrational, and because even if there's a chance that they are terrorists, it is more important to you to preserve an open and tolerant society than to survive this trip. Brave is insisting that Arabs not be searched more carefully in airport security than anyone else, because you believe that it is more important not to discriminate against people based on their race than to keep the occasional terrorist from getting on a plane. Brave is not watching the news anxiously for hours whenever there's been an attack, or a new plot has been uncovered.

"You call that brave?! Why, that's nothing!" Yes, it's barely anything. I'm presenting a minimum standard here. Something almost anyone should be able to do, small acts of bravery to begin with. Once you've managed this, go and seek larger challenges. Go on vacation to a city that has recently been bombed, for instance.

Some anti-terror warriors will say that I hate my own culture and secretly want the terrorists to win, (maybe even subconsciously - yay Freud!) Others will say that if everyone thinks like me the Islamists can just walk in and take over. Suicidal tolerance! But if the only major weapon the terrorists have is fear, then the best way to fight them is surely to confront that fear? Hack it away, piece by piece. Liberate yourself.

And then what can terrorists do to us? Tell me that. If we learn to be rational about our fear of terrorism, while also doing as much as an open and free society can do to fight it - which is plenty - what more can they do to us?

(Update: This essay has made quite a few people angry, and I recommend that you read these comments that I wrote at Dhimmi Watch and Ace of Spades HQ before calling me any further names.)

Artikkelforfatteren regnes som en av pionerene innen norsk blogging, og har siden 2001 levert store mengder innsiktsfulle analyser og kommentarer på engelsk i sin blogg. Stærk har gjennom årene hatt spesielt fokus på utenriks- og sikkerhetspolitikk, med et politisk konservativt utgangspunkt. Denne artikkelen ble publisert på Bearstrong alt 23. september 2006, men er stadig like aktuell