Fear. It is really just about fear itself. I'm not exactly sure of the mechanism. Is it 24 hour news barking day and night with its "Let's - See - That - Head - Rolling - In - SloMo - One - More - Time" hysteria? Is it the government shrilly shouting the threat level is now ORANGE - Only ONE STEP DOWN FROM RED !!!! ? I think it's kind of like the economy. How does a depression start? Somebody says one day out of the clear blue in a robust economy, "gee, things have been going good for a long time and how much longer can it go on?" Then a chain reaction happens and soon no one buys anything because they are saving their money in case they get laid off. Faster than you can say soup kitchen, everyone is out of work because no one bought anything. Fear wins, people suffer. Terrorists are about fear of course too. Right now we seem to be gripped by a world wide (read depression) of fear - IRRATIONAL fear. You would be right to say at this point, 'Come on Steve, don't be naïve - Didn't you watch the towers fall? Didn't you see the smoking ruins of the last 10 car bombings?'. The answer of course is sure I did, and we all see them over and over and over again. I have this theory that says photography hasn't been around long enough (speaking from a human evolutionary perspective) for us to sub-consciously separate old witness from new. In other words, I think on some level we see each of the replays as anew event on a real deep down level. So over and over we repeat the scenes of disaster and we feel that the worlds is by and large much more dangerous that it is. Terrorists know that their acts are going to be seen over and over until they are buried in the minds of their targets. They use this psychology well to make us all feel that they are much more pervasive and powerful than they really are. It's the weapon of choice for the disenfranchised because it is in fact so "cost effective" and for that matter just plain effective.
So why is it irrational not to be AS SPOOKED AS WE ARE about terrorist attacks? The numbers don't bear it out. In 2001, the year that was most heinous in this country with regard to terrorist loss of life your odds of dying in a terrorist attack were 1 in 100,000. Compare that to some other common stats - homicide victim, odds 1 in 14,000; car wreck, odds 1 in 6500; taking your own life, odds 1 in 9,200. These stats are being quoted from a book written by Michael Moore who is known for a pointed point of view but I think he makes a good point. Why are we willing to run from left to right with our hands in the air shouting the "terrorists are everywhere" when clearly we are a more imminent danger to ourselves from taking our own lives than from terrorists? Fear. Fear. Fear.
Let's look also for a moment at the most egregious terror incident of the last month, the school in Russia. I don't know if I ever heard the exact number of terrorists there but I think I heard it was about 30. Let's just go wild and say it was 50. Let's also assume (not rightly) that they all were al-Qaeda connected Islamic fundamentalists. Out of the roughly 148 million Russians, 26 million or 18% are Muslims. Let's do some quick math. 50 out of 26 million leaves us with a number that suggests our population of active Muslim terrorists in Russia is 0.0002%. Yet, Putin is changing the way governors are selected and backing away from other democratic principles because of the grave threat. Why? Powerful images that reek with the most core response of parents with regard to their children. Simply stated - Fear.
As long as we are talking Muslim numbers, how many of those "Arabs in the street" are really involved. According to the islamicweb page (http://www.islamicweb.com/begin/population.htm) the world Muslim population extracted from the CIA World book stood at about 1.5 billion. When I pulled out the North African and middle east populations from those numbers the number shrank to about 793 million. So about half of the world's Muslims live within the area of the world most of us see as "out of control and filled with terrorists." Truly, they are the majority in that part of the world. With those numbers in place, whatever the majority wants WILL come to pass. This leads me to the conclusion that the majority DON'T WANT THE KIND OF STUFF THEY ARE ACCUSED OF SUPPORTING. So why are we concerned? Let's roll the tape one more time...Fear.
Lastly (I know you were wondering when I would say that), terrorism itself is not new, nor is it a Muslim invention. Another website I looked at (http://www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/t/te/terrorism.html) had this to say about terrorism in the 20th century...
"Significant terrorist incidents include the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995), the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland (August 15, 1998) and the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack in the USA. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has also spawned a significant number of terrorist incidents, such as the 2002 Passover massacre. See Terrorism against Israel for more details and a timeline. There are also allegations of Israeli terrorism during the 1940s and 1950s.
Some famous terrorist organizations of the 20th century include the American Ku Klux Klan (founded in 1865 and revived several times since), the Irish Republican Army (founded 1919),the Pakistani Lashkar E Toiba and Jaish E Mohammed, the pre-state Zionist groups Irgun (founded 1931) and Lehi (founded 1940), the Spanish ETA (founded 1959),the Canadian Front de Libération du Québec (founded 1963), the Palestine Liberation Organization (founded 1964), the German Red Army Faction (also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, founded 1967), the Italian Red Brigade (founded 1969), the American Weathermen (founded in 1969), the Peruvian Shining Path (active since the late 1960s), the Palestinian Black September (founded 1970), Puerto Rico's Los Macheteros (founded 1976), the multi-Arab group Hezbollah (founded 1978), the Islamic Jihad (active in Egypt and Palestine since the late 1970s) and internationally acting al-Qaeda (founded in 1988).
Terrorism is exceedingly difficult for governments to control or prevent, especially when some of its practitioners are willing to risk their lives or (in some cases) even to embrace certain death. A few governments such as Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, the United States, Yemen and the countries that supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan have been accused of promoting or protecting certain terrorist groups."
Did you notice the one about the Israeli terrorists in the 40's & 50's? they had a link (http://www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/i/ir/irgun.html) describing some of the activities if the Israeli "Irgun" organization who did things like bombing the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Maybe someone should have built a wall to keep those guys out of Jerusalem, after all they were by today's definition terrorists. And on this side of the Atlantic I note the Klan, the Weathermen, the Shining Path ... heck even the Canadians have their own set of local terrorists in Quebec. The point is, terror is the tool of those who are in the minority to put FEAR in the hearts of the quite normally overwhelmingly large majority. Do we need to be concerned and prepare in case one of these organizations decides it needs to practice on us or our loved ones yes. Of course. Sure. Do we need to fear these folks in every waking hour? Do we need to see the folks in the Islamic world as part of some giant faith based movement plotting against us? No. I'm sorry, I refuse. I refuse to allow irrational fear and hype to stampede my better judgment. If I do then Fear would win. The devil is in the Fear and I will not join him there.
