Antidotes to Terror

by Theron Dash


These are not easy days to live in America, as we wonder what sort of storm this is the calm before. War in the land beloved of apocalyptics, for certain. Slow strangulation of public services and further squeeze in the economy very likely. But what about terror-that is, the kind we associate with terrorist evildoers? The kind we were once told we were at war with?

Two impressions are finally beginning to penetrate the American consciousness, and they aren't pretty: that the commencement of the Iraq invasion is probably a signal for terrorist acts to begin, and we in America are woefully, inexcusably unprepared.

Last week the PBS series "Nova" ran back to back hours on dirty bombs and on biological weapons. Apart from this maddening trend of repeating every fact two or three times in a row, these were reasonable treatments on origins, the nature of the problems and relative risks such weapons pose. Even so, they aren't easy to watch. (I haven't even gotten through the whole biological weapons hour.) But it seems at least the dirty bomb threat could be greatly minimized by more attention to detection and to preparation. The technology to detect radioactive material is available. And the most severe effects of a dirty bomb would be the terror that explodes in a panicked and unprepared population.

These programs aired when America was supposed at a high state of alert, and it was quite clear that nobody really knows what that means, or what they are supposed to do about it. The information that came from the federal government is already a well-known joke. Duct tape became a punch line.

Then it snowed in Washington. Again. And again a snowstorm pretty much paralyzed the nation's capital. Let's not even mention for the moment that such freakish weather suggests the climate crisis is already having consequences. (And yes, just because they call it global warming doesn't mean the effects are sometimes going to be unusual cold.) But it didn't pass unnoticed that a city supposedly on alert for terrorist catastrophe couldn't even handle a little bad weather.

None of this exactly inspires confidence, does it? In most places, local governments are probably the best prepared for known threats and disasters, though they complain that the resources and funding promised them for terrorism preparations has never materialized. What about information delivery? We're largely dependent on local media for emergency information that is necessarily local. That's not very comforting. In many places, there is less in the way of news media that is truly local. Many if not most radio and TV stations, and even newspapers, are mostly just a transfer point for whatever their absent corporate owners supply in bulk. Few radio stations even have a news staff anymore, and local television stations don't have the numbers of reporters with the kind of training and experience that they used to. Even five years ago there were still (barely) enough seasoned newspeople working at TV stations in large to medium sized cities to rise to the occasion of emergencies. I doubt that's true now.

If we have to rely on the kind of people I see on Fox and other cable "news" stations, we're better off on our own. All they will transmit is panic, because all they transmit now is anger, silliness, idiocy and fear.

Of course a terrorist attack on the electronic infrastructure would make that moot anyway.

As for our federal leaders...You'd think that by now, the President or somebody would have gone on TV and said: Here are the basic possibilities for terrorist attacks. Here's what we are doing to keep it from happening. But if it occurs, here's what might happen, and here's what you should do. Here's who will be in charge. Here's what you and your family, your neighbors, your town, your county, can do to prepare.

For example, this is what a dirty bomb is and what it does (a small explosion can set off radiation that can eventually cause cancers.) We can detect radiation, and we've deployed this many thousands of detection units. We aren't going to say where they are, but we can tell you that some will be concentrated all the time at high risk places, and others will move around general public places.

This is the kind of thing you would expect leaders to do. It's what President Kennedy would have done, or President Eisenhower. Or President Ford or President Carter. In fact I expect that it's what every single president in my lifetime would have done, with the exception of presidents named Bush. (Reagan would have wanted to, but I'm not sure his people would have let him, since an awful lot of them are running the government now.)

But it hasn't been done, and the American people have not demanded, have not even asked, that it be done. Is it just that we don't want to think about it? Do we trust our Washington leaders so much, or so little? Do we have such absolute confidence in them, or maybe we can't face our suspicions that nobody there has their eye on the ball?

Do they in Washington have so little confidence in ordinary people? Maybe they didn't notice who took care of things on 9/11/01.

Some are starting to call this government to account for its lack of preparation. But what if it is intentional? What if America remains vulnerable to another terrorist attack, not just by default but by design?

I know this sounds paranoid. Pretty soon I'll be having delusions that our leaders are committing this nation to a long costly holy war while cutting taxes on the very wealthy and bankrupting the public sector simultaneously. But look at what happened after 9-11. Look at how easily this administration took absolute power, trashed civil liberties and used that crisis to pursue a radical foreign policy it essentially designed half a decade or more ago.

They were able to do this because people were shocked and they were scared. If in the many months since then, Americans had been actively involved in preparing to handle emergencies caused by terrorist acts (as opposed to either turning in suspicious looking foreigners or forgetting the whole thing and going shopping), then the level of fear would have diminished. Because we wouldn't feel so vulnerable to attack and helpless if it happens.

But as Michael Moore and others have pointed out, fear sells. News media use fear to capture viewers, ratings, advertising. Politicians use fear to raise money, motivate votes and now, perhaps, to enact an agenda for their own ends.

And fear will be used again, I fear. To keep that proven weapon in the arsenal could even be why so little has been done to prepare the country for terrorist threats, other than to color code them.

If the Iraq invasion does signal a successful act of terror, that fear will come in handy to solidify support for the war that is losing credibility by the minute, all over the world.

But maybe at least we can be prepared for that possibility-not just of terrorism, but of the use of terrorism for political ends. And if we just imagine that such manipulation might be coming---though of course it's really too paranoid to contemplate as a real possibility---we might know it when we see it. And we won't get fooled again.

There are lots of reasons why terrorist acts are terrifying. But one way to lessen their terror somewhat is to domesticate them by looking at prevention and response as problems of organization, participation and action. Many of us live in parts of America that are prone to one natural disaster or another: to earthquakes or tornadoes, floods or fires. They are all scary. Some of them can happen without warning, and most of them can be as devastating as 9/11 in terms of lives lost, buildings destroyed, and trauma to families as well as the civic infrastructure.

But all we can do is prepare as best we can, as individuals, families, neighborhoods, civic entities. And we do so with a sense of balance. We know that thousands might die in an earthquake. But we know that millions do die in car accidents, so we have to think about safety and sobriety. We know that hundreds of millions do die every year of preventable cancers, and many hundreds of millions around the world die of easily preventable diseases. We can't become obsessed with any one problem or prospect, and we can't become so obsessed with preventing or preparing for disasters that we no longer live; nor can we ignore them. Then we are easy prey for fear.

If we thought the same way about terrorism-especially if we would work together to address the problems that might arise-terrorism might lose enough of its terror to be dealt with as you'd expect a generally wealthy, healthy and educated citizenry of human beings should approach its challenges.