The Fool’s Errand of the Security State

The Christmas attempt to take down an American airliner and the following and predictable obsession with security is simply another reminder of how far we are from “defeating” the terrorists.

More pat-downs and high-tech scanners won’t do a thing; as long as there are sufficient numbers of people who are upset with Western foreign policy, a few of them will be motivated to randomly kill Westerners.

So here’s an idea: stop doing things that piss off the terrorists.

Of course, it’s not as simple as it sounds, but neither is building an ever-more invasive security regime. The difference between the two is that the former works and the latter does not.

And if anyone seriously believes that this would be somehow “coddling” terrorists or “negotiating” with them, consider that the terrorists may actually have a legitimate beef with us. That they choose an illegitimate means to redress their grievances is immaterial to their claims.

We know this process works because the British used it successfully to disarm the IRA. Granted, it took them a century of “troubles” to figure this out, but the violence in Northern Ireland has considerably declined since the Brits started listening to and taking seriously Sinn Fein’s complaints.

By not listening to the Afghans, Saudis, Yemenis, Pakistanis and so forth who are angry at us, we merely prove their case: that we don’t view them as fully human, as enough like us to have genuine thoughts and feelings. Thus we doom ourselves to another forty years or more of terrorism.

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