Posted on 02/22/2003 1:51:36 PM PST by Pokey78
In the past few weeks I've started to have a heretical thought: Are we overreacting to 9/11? Are we going to drive ourselves crazy long before Osama bin Laden ever does?
Having argued that 9/11 was the start of World War III, I would never diminish its significance. And I do not have an ounce of criticism for the F.B.I., C.I.A. or Department of Homeland Security for issuing terrorism warnings at the hint of a threat. They are doing their job. But increasingly I wonder whether we're doing ours — which is learning to live with these dangers, instead of going to excesses that provide no additional security but a ton of additional anxiety.
This little voice first started creeping into my head as I watched the layers of airport security mount. It started with just pushing your bag through the X-ray machine and walking through the metal detector. Then it went to taking your computer out. Then it went to taking the tweezers out of your overnight kit. Then it went to taking off your shoes. Now it's your belt. Sometimes I look around me at airport security and I feel as if I'm at some weird adult pajama party. I now fear that a tongue-in-cheek column I wrote 14 months ago, called "Naked Air," about how we should all just fly naked and save the hassle, is going to come true in my lifetime.
Then there was Code Orange. Again, I have no problem with the warnings. But do CNN and MSNBC really have to add the terror alert status to the bottom right corner of their screens, just above the stock market reports: "Nasdaq down, terror up — have a nice day." What do these networks expect their viewers to do when they see those warnings — other than get worried? The Daily News in New York quoted a local radio executive as saying what a relief the recent East Coast blizzard was because it drove out all the terrorism stories: "It was . . . a Saddam-free day — just the break we needed."
When a colleague asked me what was my family's emergency exit plan — in case Washington was attacked — I told her I didn't have one. I later felt pangs of parental guilt. But then I thought: How is anyone going to get out of this town in a panic? The Beltway is gridlock on normal days.
Another friend asked me, half seriously, about a counterterrorism etiquette joke making the rounds. Say you're driving home and, on your way, there is a terror alert that someone has released poison into the air. Your wife is home and has sealed herself into your family's "safe room" with duct tape and plastic wrap. When you arrive home, does your wife unseal the room to let you in or not? Hmmmmm. I suggested he ask Miss Manners — or a marriage counselor.
But what finally put me over the top was the report that Turkey initially demanded $32 billion in return for U.S. troops' using Turkish bases in an Iraqi invasion. I want to help the Turks, but you could almost hear them laughing at us, saying, "These Americans are so obsessed with Saddam and Osama, let's shake them down a little."
And then there is the new layer of pseudo security, like when you go to Washington Wizards basketball games and they demand you open your purse or bag — as if any serious terrorist couldn't just hide his gun or bomb under a jacket. I wouldn't mind if this were actually making people feel more secure, but it's actually having the opposite effect — making people feel more insecure by making them feel as if they are living in a national security state.
In an open society, there are simply too many threats, too many openings and too many interactions that are built on trust. You can't even begin to secure them all without also choking that open society. Which is why the right response, after a point, is not to demand more and more security — but to learn to live with more and more anxiety.
Because the question is not whether there will be more attacks. There will be. The question is whether we can survive them and still maintain an open society. What good is it to have Osama trapped in a basement somewhere if, by just whispering a few threats on Al Jazeera TV, he can trap us in self-sealed rooms?
No good at all, which is why the only survival purchase I've made since Code Orange is a new set of Ben Hogan Apex irons, and why my all-American survival kit would include: a movie guide, a concert schedule, Rollerblades, a bicycle — plus a reminder to attend your local PTA meetings, Little League games, neighborhood block parties and your book club and to get plenty of tickets for your favorite sports team.
Leave the cave-dwelling to Osama.
Tom doesn't watch Fox News; anyone surprised?
I'd be satisfied with an admin. warning of "duck and cover".
Just watch the buying and selling on the stock market.
Eventually they get to an even keel and outperform anybody else!!
The whole "duct tape and plastic" scenario has a giant flaw that apparently the government isn't aware of.
Almost all the plastic sheeting sold, certainly that from Home Depot, is coated with a thin film of oil to make it easier to unfold. The oil makes it very difficult for duct tape to stick to.
I teach classes in how to set up containments using plastic sheeting, and we instruct the students to only buy plastic sheeting from asbestos abatement materials suppliers.
So all those people who rushed out to buy plastic and duct tape will find out that their sealing won't work if they ever need it.
You are not a man unless you have a roll of duct tape lying around.
I'd be satisfied with an admin. warning of "duck and cover".
Duct tapes works great fro taping your mag light under the barrel of your M-1A for night patrolling.
Duct tape also wroks fine is taping magazines together (2 X 30-round clips).
That's my contribution. Other FReepers will ad to that.
If that happens to you one day, "Lie back and think of England".
I understand the gist of your argument, but a couple of things come to mind.
If I were to buy plastic to seal my windows, that goofy shrink wrap 'winsulation' stuff that you use your hairdryer on with the double stick tape seems more promising and less of a hassle.
Another thought is that, back when Saddam gassed his people, contemporary accounts of survivors indicated that simply walking upwind or away from the smell was enough to save people.
It would be my guess that the plastic scenario is more likely to do good in densely populated areas (being that that is where gas would have the most effect and seemingly more likely used). Those in less densely populated areas would probably benefit from a dispersal effect more than duct tape and plastic.
I think it's lamentable that duct tape was seized upon and mocked by the media.
It's a singular obsession of the left to discourage self-reliance.
Thanks for the post.
A couple of relatively large pieces have since worked their way out but since I have not tried to go aboard an aircraft since I do not know if I still will set off the detector.
The references to 'duct tape' originally appeared in FEMA documents that had been available for years. The documents have information on dealing with many types of emergencies from flooding to hurricanes to National Emergencies.
It is only after the White house took the FEMA material on the topic of responding to National Emergencies and placed it on the WH site that the duct tape silliness began, first by the usual Democrat detractors, and then by the media lapdogs.
I'm sure there was nothing poitical in this.
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