What Really Worries Me About the Terrorists

I was reflecting over the weekend on Kung Fu Monkey's fantastic piece about the well-timed and wonderfully-executed nab of the 23 or so terrorists in Britain and Pakistan last Friday. There was one part of his blog that really struck me:

The fact that these wingnuts could have been rolled up, at will, at any time, seems to have competely escaped the media buzz.

This is terrorism's A-game? Sack up, people.

Actually, I think this is a small part of the terrorists A-game, and this is what worries me the most.

To begin: I am unaware of any comprehensive study of the economic "cost" each time we either foil or succumb to a terrorist plot. For example, what did last Friday cost America and the U.K. in terms of cancelled and delayed flights, business transactions thusly cancelled or delayed, extra dollars put towards increased human and mechanical resources at airports, and the like? And more importantly, what are the long-term costs and how long-term are they. As KFM points out, there is no measurable winning-point. Given that, how do we determine the economic cost of fewer air travellers (due either to fear or the increased hassle of flying), less flights, resultant layoffs, etc.

I am absolutely not saying that we are not responding properly. I don't really care if I have to keep taking my shoes off in security lines (which in and of itself presents a significant biological threat to those down-wind) or if I have to pack my shampoo instead of carry it on. No big deal. This question...my real worry...isn't about that.

Back to the quote from KFM above, and my thought process: This is the terrorists A-game? Sort of. I think the real war here is an economic war, not a war of attrition. If the terrorists do happen to take out a few hundred or a few thousand Brits or Yankees, I am sure that suits them just fine. But their real victory comes in the exploitation of our greatest strength, which in this case is our flexible and fluid economy.

By way of example, for as much of an amoral book as it is, it has good points, consider: the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. One of Robert Greene's laws is to attack your opponent's strengths. Nothing new to anyone who has read Sun Tzu or Karl Von Clausewitz. But on his blog today, he talked about Karl Rove's use of that particular law in the defeat of John Kerry. Nobody attacks someone's military service, least of all the Bush camp, who really didn't have a leg to stand on. It was a great strength of Kerry. But attack it they did...and how'd that election turn out?

So how are the terrorist going to beat such a foe as the U.S.? They certainly can't take it to us in a Western-style war. Eventually, given the fluidity of our military, even the insurgency in Iraq will be hard-pressed to keep going (once we stop treating them as a Western Heirarchical leadership framework - kill the head and the rest dies - which isn't working so well). Coming over here to kill our citizens adds fuel to our fire and really makes Hulk maaaaaaaad. But they can - and will - hamstring our economy.

This is why I want to see if there is a good study out there, not just some dreamt-up figures from the ABC News Senior Economic Correspondent, but a real, bona-fide study from a whole ton of nerds in a nerdery somewhere, on the real and estimated future impact of our responses to terrorist threats. This is because I think we have to start looking at our enemy as fighting our economy, and when we spend billions in a single day in response and lose billions over a short period of time from the business and government impact of our response (and the long-term ramifications that fear produces), I have to think that we are being nickled-and-dimed to death.

So 9/11 and last Friay's broken-up plot are not an end. They are means to an end. It wouldn't matter to the Al Queda leadership if either of those attacks were or were not successful. What matters is the damage to our "way of life" those attacks and attempts mean, where "way of life" means our ability to move our economy forward, rather than have it crumble to the point of wheelbarrows full of cash to pay for loaves of bread or day-long waits for basic amenities. Case in point: a knuckle-brained dimwit with an IQ of about 6 1/2 made us take our shoes off at airports and cost the travel industry probably millions over the course of a few weeks. So imagine hundreds of these attempts every year, but don't imagine them in terms of success = explosion. Think of them as success = a major dip in the stock market, a few thousand layoffs and a .1% increase in unemployment.

I think that if our security planners understand these attacks for what they actually are, it will allow us to devise and execute a strategy to counter the attacks and turn the tables, rather than spend upwards of 70 years (which is the time NBC Nightly News said last night it would take to put state-of-the-art bomb sniffers in all major U.S. airports) simply reacting to the attempts and attacks.

It is a very different form of warfare when your opponent sees killing you as a possible byproduct of their attack, but not its true intent. But if we understood how an attempt or an attack impacts our economy, how do we armor ourselves against that kind of outcome? While we respond with the obvious - fight - are we missing the real attack? I am afraid we are. So indeed, KFM, this is the terrorists' A-game. It's just not what we thought.