Poor reaction to foreign terrorism?

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mr_dove

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All our our security measures have been in reaction to events that already took place.

We increased airport security AFTER 9/11. An explosion in British train stations and NY city is spending millions of dollars to boost security. I'm sure there have been other examples of this as well.

This is both a fear of mine and also a thought that we are putting our resources in the wrong places. My personal opinion is that the terrorists are smart enough to know that the same plan won't work more than once. Our government on the other hand seems to believe that terrorists will come back and try the same trick again.

Terrorists already blew up a subway station. I highly doubt that they will try it again. I think our money is wasted that way.

Or perhaps its the increased security that keeps them from repeating the same event over and over. What do you think?
 
Part of it is the folks who don't have enough imagination to envision an untried method. And part of it is the fault of the voters, who might have the same mentality.

Hear me out before you get mad at me for not putting it all on the shoulders of the folks in charge. I'm talking about the voters who want big government. They may talk about spending reductions and freedom, but what they want most is for the government to take care of them. This may show itself in social security, seat belt laws, and public health care, but for security purposes these voters want big brother to protect them. The threat they worry about is usually the last one that happened, so they will only vote for politicians that are "doing something" about the threat. How many canidates would get elected telling the voters "there isn't much the government can do to protect you from everything, so you are on your own"?
 
Hindsight being 20/20, human nature at work.

I expect that several people would howl if they started doing strip searches at your kids schools, place of work, worship or shopping mall before one was used in some form of terrorist attack... doncha think?

And if ya don't close the barn door after the first horse gets out, ya think the others will wonder if they can get away with the same trick?
 
Bureacracy, it's all about bureaucracy.

Bureacracy, it's all about bureaucracy. Example, the war on drugs. Agencies come to exist simply to further their existence, they become like living beings.

As such, whichever bureaucracy happens to have the ball in their court, they will suddenly announce that they will boldly take new measures to rectify whatever the newspapers headline worries your average houswife the most.

They know, deep down, that it is futile, but they can't help their nature. They are guaranteed to get a permanent addition to their budget, a 100% guarantee, and they cannot turn it down.

Perhaps the worst aspects are that the public is almost required to praise the grandiose posturing which follows a new acquisition. Or maybe the worst is that agencies can subliminally begin to create new problems, so that they will be tasked with eradicating them later.

And of course, the other worst part is that if the agency solves the problem, they fail. They lose the money and the power and the employees they used to have, they shrink, they become weaker. This is intolerable, a bureaucracy despises losing money people or power (which are all nearly the same). Thus 'solutions' to problems are inevitably indefinate - by this I mean that the bureaucratic policy for any situation is to never solve it, but always 'combat' it. 'Solutions' are against the interests of most every agency, whereas indefinite combat is exactly what they require.
 
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