It appears that the War on Terror is shaping up to be as decisive, efficient and effective as the War on Drugs: “Mission Accomplished since 1933”. The enemy is hard to define, hard to detect, and there is no exit strategy (see bureaucracies, below) in the unlikely case of a declared win.Terror is a state of mind, a reaction to extreme and unexpected negative events. Those Saudis who attacked on 9/11/01 (using materials and training acquired in the U.S.) set off a chain of events that is turning our country into a Police State. This is a win for them.
Here are some signs of a gathering Police State. Everyone must submit to search at all public gatherings, or for long distance transportation. The government requires everyone to carry ID (like the proposed unified driver’s licenses). The state requires communications companies (like the phone company and internet ISP’s) to record and store at least the endpoints of all communications, if not the content (even after the Carnivore controversy, the FBI still keeps summaries of every email). The country has a disproportionate percentage of its citizenry serving long terms of incarceration for non-violent crimes. More and more laws are passed and enforced “for their own good,” such as helmets or seat belts.
Back to the point: Both of these wars established new bureaucracies, and Parkinson’s Law [1] (a verifiable scientific theory) says that bureaucracy increases at approximately 6% per year, no matter what the task size and/or change in size of the task at hand. One of the prime activities of aging bureaucracies (in terms of man-hours) is to justify their continued existence. Our tax dollars at work.
Also, it is a military axiom that shield technology always lags behind that of penetrators. No matter how inconvenient a military, social, and political shield they try to build against terrorists (or drug traffickers), the attackers will always be a step ahead. Do we really need another arms race?
I think it is safe to assume that terrorists will not be able to use passenger planes as weapons. They can take down airplanes, I’m sure they will. But now passengers know that a hijack is a death sentance, and will fight to prevent it from being something worse. I would. I don’t think that confiscating drinking water and nail clippers from passengers will affect this in any significant way. But I digress…
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