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Critical Care
Medicine - List |
An editorial comment regarding terrorism (after the Atlanta Bomb 7/27/96)David Crippen We seem to have become the target of wackos who use mass fear and discomposure to elucidate obscure political agendas of concern to relatively few. The reason these tactics persist is simply because they are effective. Our overly pumped up media goes into a frenzy at each event, effectively giving them what they want....world wide media coverage for their particular provincial boondoggle. I think it is interesting that, during such disasters meant to show us up as a society, tales of individual heroism and unselfish public rescue always abound, shoring up the proposition that we are not nearly the vermin we are made out to be in (some) World media. And so the practical aftermath resembles the way the (US) Army dealt with outbreaks of meningitis when I was in basic training camp at Ft. Benning Georgia in 1967. The brass felt like they needed to do something about the problem. There was nothing that could be done about the problem because kids came from all over the country and lived in close quarters....an epidemiologic nightmare. So they made each soldier stuff his mattress out the windows of the barracks each morning before leaving for the day's activities (ostensibly to relieve them of harbored disease-causing bacteria). No one could prove it didn't work and so it was possibly effective. It showed the world that the brass was doing something about the problem. What we will do about the problem is incur awesome inconveniences on the population to ferret out the relatively small possibility of terrorist activities. Any politically incorrect organization will be hassled into oblivion by paperwork proving that they are benign, much like the endless signing of loyalty oaths in Catch-22. No one will be able to park a car in front of a public building without getting hassled. It will take three hours to get on a plane. They will check and re-check all luggage, turn up metal detectors so they alarm at the nails in your shoes, peer suspiciously at pagers and laptop computers. The paperwork and manpower expenditure will be awesome and expensive. The REAL chance that any of these measures will detect professional and committed terrorist activities will be negligable.....but we will prove to the population that something is being done. It is said in automobile circles that most anti-theft devices will detur amateurs, but if a professional car thief wants your car, there is nothing you can do about it. Similarly, if a professional and committed terrorist wants to make a media splash for his or her little cause by blowing up a plane or a building, there is no really meaningful way to stop it. But we will all feel better because....something is being done.
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