To fight the war on terror is to demonstrate that the institutions and practices of the United States are resilient. That discourages terrorists from trying disruptive tricks, and makes it reasonable for people not to panic and over-react when the next attack comes. (It's the reaction to an attack that does the real damage.) Whenever officials face an unusual emergency (4 hurricanes in a row, a 50% cut in available flu vaccine), what smart people say spontaneously in response is a plan for becoming resilient, across a broad range of danger areas. The New York Times editorial page today said this about the flu vaccine shortfall: "there are bound to be a lot more deaths and illness from influenza this year among people unable to get immunized. The lesson for the future seems obvious. A stronger, faster-acting, more flexible manufacturing base for influenza vaccine is badly needed. Officials called yesterday for cell-culture technologies that could expand capacity or shift direction quickly in making flu vaccines, as well as for the greater availability of eggs to make vaccines the traditional way. Other experts have suggested that governments should buy a lot more vaccine in normal years, a move that could yield immediate health benefits while enticing more manufacturers to enter the field." One could say similar things about the blood supply, the availability of emergency personnel, backup computer facilities. (I was struck by a recent effort to train truckers to watch for sabotage at bridges and public buildings; one might deputize all sorts of people, put half-measures in place everywhere - a real safety net under the "best" solutions. One might entice many more people into the field of taking responsibility for the safety of their communities. )
One more quick point: this vaccine shortage took officials by surprise. That is an intelligence problem. Disaster happens as an interaction between harmful agents and the resiliency of the organism they are attacking. Intelligence agencies have to monitor both the impulse to do harm (the terrorist phone traffic) and the state of resiliency, or all problems will be presented at a kindergarden level: "There's a bear in the woods," "There are germs on your countertop. And putting problems in those terms is bad two ways: it distorts and simplifies the problems, and it encourages stupidity about causes and effects.
Someone I know suggested a bumper sticker for the last days of the campaign: "What would a grown-up do?"
"There is a Bear in the Woods" is a good way to express, "I'm afraid of something big and bad in the woods that I can't see or understand, so I'll prepare for the worst case and go on the offensive to prevent it from becoming a worst case." It seems to me the U.S. Government is taking this approach. I believe that there will be no real solution to terrorism until the root causes are discovered and resolved. To win the war on Terror our government has to address the causes, not the symptoms or effects. But that might require getting to know the bear in the woods.
There are surely root causes to this terrorism we experienced on 9/11, important root causes that we need to know about and work on. But the other act of terrorism, the anthrax mailed out, might have had no interesting root causes, and going after the root causes of it might do nothing to keep it from happening again. What I am inclined to say is that sometimes one should pay primary attention to the bear, and sometimes the bear is sort of a distraction. One should say, "Of course there are bears. There will always be bears." That's what would have been said if Bush had said, right after 9/11: "A terrible crime has been committed. We must mobilize the police forces of the world to catch these criminals."
Posted by: Peter at October 6, 2004 12:10 PM