Who benefits from new hysteria about security?

Who benefits from new hysteria about security?

'I used to know when I was being deeply cynical and when I wasn't," said a friend who just made it into London before they closed Heathrow airport for the terrorist scare. "Now, I don't."


It wasn't clear what they were supposed to do - crush the terrorists under their treads? - and no actual terrorists ever showed up, but it helped to shape public opinion. So how different is it this time?


Hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled. Twenty-four alleged conspirators arrested in East London, Thames Valley towns and Birmingham, many of them described by neighbours as bearded Muslims wearing traditional dress. Shocking revelations that they had a new technique for blowing up to 10 aircraft on the heavily travelled London-US routes out of the sky simultaneously by smuggling explosive liquids aboard. All cabin baggage banned on flights out of Britain. And in a classic case of panic envy, the US Department of Homeland Security declares a red alert in the United States, too.

That should scare the public into supporting the "war on terror" a bit longer, even if the real wars are about something else, and are going seriously wrong: Iraq sliding into civil war, the Taliban coming back in Afghanistan, Israel flattening Lebanon without making any significant dent in Hezbollah's capabilities. Most people will assume that with all that smoke, there must be some fire.

Of course there's some fire.

Terrorists of various sorts have been in business for about 40 years, and the present crop of Islamist terrorists are especially dangerous since they are willing to kill themselves along with their victims. But in the United States more people die on the roads every single month than Islamist terrorists have killed since the year 2000, and in Britain it's more people every week. Yet neither country has tried to restrict access to cars.










Or am I being too cynical? Maybe they're just stupid. I really don't know any more.

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