The limits of fear

Submitted by Edward Halper (United States), Jun 22, 2007 at 11:36

Thank you for your carefully thought and well put response, LDC. We are indeed fortunate to live in a country whose governmental system has the support of its citizenry, whose citizens can work to change the laws, and whose laws are enforced by competent, honest officers. That means that most of us are going to be unsympathetic (to say the least) to an American intifada and to do everything we can to suppress it. On this much, I think we agree.

How specifically Americans would react to Islamic terrorism here would depend on what form it took. You seem to have in mind sniper attacks that could be met by an armed citizenry. I think Dr. Pipes has a more likely scenario, bombings, and likely multiple bombings. They would aim to destroy symbolic sites and to cause carnage. We could expect suicide murders. An armed public would not be likely to be effective in preventing these attacks. Once the suicide bomb has gone off, there is no target. It is hard to identify perpetrators in advance. The American population is not homogeneous in appearance, especially in the large cities that would be the most likely targets. Vigilante groups targeting Arabs would be a real nightmare for all of us, and likely to be ineffective. I agree with Daniel Pipes that we should rather be allowing Muslims who are committed to this country to emerge: they would be better at policing Muslims than we could be.

The most insidious dimension of terrorism is not death and destruction, but fear. In Washington two people with a rifle were able to terrorize millions. That's the real point of terrorism. Bin Laden knew that toppling the WTC would not destroy the US, and he knows that he cannot win on a military level. He's counting on crushing our spirit, over time. What concerns me is how long the American people could endure terror attacks without crumbling. If you are right, then we would not have to endure them long. This is where we disagree. If we do have to endure attacks over a period, how long could we, as a society, live in fear before we are ready to make the concessions that begin the slide?

Hopefully, we will not have to answer this question.

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