The Right State

There is news coming out of Washington that the Bush Administration may be leaning towards a Cold War era style of deterrence to ward off possible terrorist attacks by terrorists.  Since this is coming from the New York Times, I hope this news is wrong, anything seems to be possible.

The idea is to use police and others to keep the terrorists off balance.  This would dissuade them from carrying out attacks in this country.  Does this sound familiar?  Maybe like the Clinton stance against terrorism in the 1990s.  I did not work then and it will not work now.  In this age of political correctness run amok, how would the police keep the terrorists off balance when they can not use profiling? 

In New York City, as many as 100 police officers in squad cars from every precinct converge twice daily at randomly selected times and at randomly selected sites, like Times Square or the financial district, to rehearse their response to a terrorist attack. City police officials say the operations are believed to be a crucial tactic to keep extremists guessing as to when and where a large police presence may materialize at any hour.

This is another way of saying New York will wait until after another attack to do anything.  So we turn back the clock to the 1990s and wait for another 3000+ people to die before we become serious about fighting terrorism.  Even officials acknowledge that deterrence “represents a second-best solution” to fighting the terrorists, the first being to kill or capture them. 

Another ploy being discussed by the military is “countermessaging.”  The idea is to use the internet and the terrorists’ own chat room and videos against them in an effort to turn the people against the jihadists.  This process is too slow.  Changing minds is a lengthy process.  In the long run this might work, but in conjunction with killing the terrorists wherever they may be found.

I hope the idea of deterrence is just another ploy by the liberal New York Times to again bash the Bush Administration, though I doubt it.  Killing terrorists works, trying to understand them kills Americans.  I just hope the administration understands this simple fact.

Tags: Terrorism //