It's not my intention to "fear monger".

I intend only to point out that when some claim "terrorism isn't a serious problem" they're using statistics collected while we do everything we can to prevent it.

No one is ever going to give the terrorists free reign to do what they want for a year so we can collect control data.

So we can only speculate about the consequences of not doing all we can to prevent terror attacks.

According to the Cato Institute [1], the probability of being involved in a terrorist attack by a foreign-born terrorist from 1975 to 2015 was 0.00003%, or 1/3,609,709. The probability of you being struck by lightning this year is 1/960,000.

Terrorism ISN'T a serious problem, compared to homelessness, obesity and other health issues, lack of access to healthcare (see: obesity and other health issues), minority rights (especially for Muslims and Mexican immigrants), labor rights, poor public transportation, etc. It just isn't. God, if people cared 1/10th as much about some of these issues as they did about "being hard on terrorism", imagine how much we could get done. Instead we're groping ten-year-old boys at airports in the name of "safety".

Edit: add source.

[1] https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa798_...

> The probability of you being struck by lightning this year is 1/960,000.

And most people take precautions to avoid being hit by lightning.

A one in a million risk of death is easily enough to inspire action to reduce the risk.

The objective of terrorism is not to kill. The objective is to induce fear.

If you do not take a balanced approach at protection, you risk losing out the mind war. The result? The US becomes a closed country, no longer the land of the free much less the brave. The ultimate goal of terrorism is achieved.

My reference for correct behavior towards terrorism is the UK during the IRA campaign. Security was handled as a serious affair, but as silently as possible. Some fatalities were deemed innevitable, and reported as such by the media.

Yes, the security response to the Provisional IRA campaign in the 70s, 80s & 90s was often low key. IMHO the British govt didn't want the British population to be so alarmed that they'd demand NI be expelled from the UK. I've got to differ on the aim of terrorism in this case. Obviously the aim of PIRA was and is a united Ireland: a 32 county Republic. The twin watchwords of the PIRA campaign were endurance & infliction. Endure everything that your opponent can throw at you, and inflict maximum damage on them. Which tacitly recognises that the campaign couldn't be won militarily. So the bombing campaign aimed to inflict economic damage. Just the same aim as the bombing campaign organised by Nelson Mandela as leader of the ANC's MK military wing in response to the Sharpeville massacre in early 60s South Africa. A secondary goal is polarise public opinion, so that moderates are forced to take sides. Bloody Sunday, internment and the hunger strikes all drained support from non violent nationalism in NI and bolstered support for Republicans. However, there's no comparison between the ANC and the PIRA on the one hand, and ISIS, Al Shabaab, Al Qaed & Boko Haram on the other. The ANC & PIRA were rational actors pursuing limited and legitimate goals. Jihadi extremist see shedding infidel blood as an end in itself, and they're quite explicit about wanting world domination.

You assume that SIS, Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda don't have goals beyond killing, and I think that's incorrect. AQAP seems to mostly want Western interests out of Yemen and Saudi. Al Shabab are loosely Stalinists and seem to be looking to control territory in Somalia and Ethiopia with Islamic jurisprudence , and I think they have some land issues not dissimilar to the EZLN(though I'm not sure I understand that correctly). ISIS/DAESH seem to want to draw Western powers into a costly proxy war with the aim of toppling regional powers. As evidenced by their early successes they seem to aim to use this chaos to build a state and call upon adherents to their brand of violent and regressive Sunni(esque) philosophy.

While these groups are less sympathetic than the IRA, early ANC, or ETA(to an extent), it's a mistake, I think, to view them as wholly different, or less human.

*Edit to clarify, these guys are definitely assholes and we need to have strategies to counter their goals.

Well no; my last sentence was quite explicit about their aim being world domination. Al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, has been quite open about wanting a global caliphate. That why western Jihadis travel to the middle east to join them. That's what makes them qualitatively different than ANC, IRA, ETA etc. And that's why we should take them very seriously. If they were to get hold of weapons of mass destruction, they would use them.

Does that include inappropriately frisking children because what if they're secretly lightning rods and they're going to kill us all? No. Because that's ridiculous. Just like it's ridiculous in airports.

Terrorists have been known to place bombs on children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_suicide_bombers_in_the_I...

You see where this is going, right? This is exactly why terrorism "works": because the kinds of people who will frisk children "because terrorists have been known to use children" can be goaded into doing just about anything in that fashion. That's the real threat from terrorism: not to our overall physical security, which even at their worst no terrorist group has ever threatened existentially, but to our psychological security --- which they demonstrably have threatened to that degree.

Whereas some people will object to any security measure on the grounds that "terrorists aren't a threat".

But if we actually followed their advice, terrorists would be an enormous threat because we'd take no steps to protect ourselves.

So far we seem to be objecting to the wholesale copying of phones, aggressive physical inspection of women with back braces, and the frisking of children --- each of which you've defended as vital to defending against the terrorist threat.

I feel as if you might be making my point for me.

Whatever exception you make - for children, for back braces, whatever - will be the exception terrorists will exploit.

If terrorists know you don't search children, they'll place bombs on children.

It's little use locking the front door while leaving the back door wide open.

I think you underestimate the difficulty in loading a child with explosives and successfully getting them onto a plane then detonating them in flight. There are so many places along the chain where this would almost certainly fail. We could easily make this a nearly impossible threat without abandoning our civil rights. We already have sniffer dogs, explosive materials swabs, backscatter machines, and layers of human intelligence before this point. If we're at the point where TSA has to grope everyone, why bother, the terrorists have achieved their goal, as we are no longer a free society.

Additionally I think you are vastly overestimating the number of terrorists out there trying to carry out these attacks. We didn't do much at all in the 1970's and 1980's beyond signals and human intelligence and attacks were very rare then. And this was when we were engaged in several proxy wars with Russia. There just aren't that many people out there that are both willing, interested, and capable of attacking US civilians in spectacularly deadly ways.

You are fear mongering. You are part of the problem, and people making you arguments are destroying our freedom of movement and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

To quote Franklin: "They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

> We already have sniffer dogs, explosive materials swabs, backscatter machines, and layers of human intelligence before this point. If we're at the point where TSA has to grope everyone, why bother, the terrorists have achieved their goal, as we are no longer a free society.

Perhaps I'm misinformed, but I thought pat-downs were only used on people who refused to go through the back scatter machines.

And I haven't seen sniffer dogs or explosive detection swabs routinely used on all passengers.

Insult me if you wish, but at least try to be honest about reality.

The pat downs are used for people who refuse, and arbitrary other people at the "discretion" of the TSA. As for the swabs, my carry on gets swabbed at almost every airport I go through. I can't remember the last time it wasn't.

And my main point was the even before the security theatre, at the height of post WWII global violence, terrorist attacks in the US were exceedingly rare and they still are. This suggests that we likely didn't buy anything for the sale of individual liberty.

> If terrorists know you don't search children, they'll place bombs on children.

Do they have the operational capacity to carry out thousands of attacks like this a year? You might as well say: "if we only lock cockpit doors, but don't weld them shut, well then they'll cut through them."

We make exceptions all of the time based on feasibility and cost/benefit.

> Do they have the operational capacity to carry out thousands of attacks like this a year?

They don't have operational capacity to carry out thousands of attacks per year outside their primary area of strength by any means, and this isn't really all that relevant to attacks in that area.

So the question is: how much of an impact on their operational capacity to strike into, say, the US would it be to do this. Doesn't seem like it would be much.

Do terrorists have children? Sure.

Do terrorists have bombs? They seem to know how to make them with extremely limited resources.

What do you think they're missing?

The operational ability to successfully carry out sophisticated attacks with children and the will to sacrifice (many) children in this manner.