{"id":2869,"date":"2002-09-04T13:32:17","date_gmt":"2002-09-04T13:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=267"},"modified":"2002-09-04T13:32:17","modified_gmt":"2002-09-04T13:32:17","slug":"the-grownups-are-talking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2869","title":{"rendered":"THE GROWNUPS ARE TALKING"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Slate<\/a>, an interesting series<\/a> by Robert Wright has begun, on Terrorism. So far two parts are up, and in them, he makes these assertions (with which I agree completely):
\nProposition No. 1: Al-Qaida and radical Islam are not the problem.
\nProposition No. 2: For the foreseeable future, smaller and smaller groups of intensely motivated people will have the ability to kill larger and larger numbers of people.<\/I>
\nGo read it, it\u0092s gonna be interesting. I was referred there by Matt Yglesias<\/a>, who comments regarding assertion#2:<\/p>\n

I think this is basically wrong because at the same time as technology reduces the number of people you need to carry out a destructive attack it also makes it easier and easier for big rich states like the United States to locate their would-be attackers. Admittedly, all our satellites and communications gear may still have let bin Laden get away (though it does seem like he’s dead) but even so they let us find and target rather precisely any number of Al Qaeda facilities that would have taken forever to find without 21st century IT.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u0092ll respectfully disagree with Matt, simply because of the disparity between the potential number of attackers to monitor and the resources (and level of intrusiveness) necessary to monitor them. Plus, if I\u0092m correct (and Wright makes a parallel argument when he says:<\/p>\n

This high-tech mobilization of radical constituencies needn’t be centrally orchestrated. Since 9\/11, American pundits have griped about the propaganda issuing from TV channels run by Arab governments. But take a look at the free market at work: The new, unregulated satellite TV channels\u0097notably Al Jazeera, founded in 1996\u0097haven’t exactly been a sedative for irate Muslims. The uncomfortable fact is that a free press often fuels antagonisms because people choose channels that bolster their biases. (Which is the most popular American cable news channel? The most ideological one\u0097Fox.) Increasingly, “tribes”\u0097interest groups of any kind, including radical ones\u0097will be, in effect, self-organizing.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

the overall level of \u0091spontaneous\u0092, or \u0091self-generated\u0092 terror will increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Slate, an interesting series by Robert Wright has begun, on Terrorism. So far two parts are up, and in them, he makes these assertions (with which I agree completely): Proposition No. 1: Al-Qaida and radical Islam are not the problem. Proposition No. 2: For the foreseeable future, smaller and smaller groups of intensely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}