SudoSeth

The United States of America is more resistant to terrorist attacks than ever before because of recent policies, inducing the Bush Doctrine and The Patriot Act, but the huge economic and social consequences may negate many long term benefits. Our military has deployed troops to several different countries in order to combat terrorist groups. Without this military action, it is extremely likely that terrorism would have been a much larger threat than it is today. The troops have done an admirable job defending us from the hostile terrorist forces, and many Americans are no longer concerned with the possibility of dying in a terrorist attack. There has not been a major terrorist attack on American soil since September 11th 2001. Our government has spent vast sums of money to attempt to make sure that an event of that magnitude never happens again. In order to reduce the risk of such attacks, many ethically questionable policies have become standard practice. One such policy is the Patriot Act, which allows for warrant-less wiretapping, reading online communications, and adding citizens to do-not-fly lists, to name a few. Although the country as a whole is safer from terrorist attacks because of these measures, the cost for this added safety negatively impacts our civil liberties, domestic preparedness, and economics, which is more than citizens should be reasonably expected to bear.

According to J.B. Schramm, “There are no gated communities that are safe from the threat (of terrorism), and there are no professional, volunteer armed forces that can, alone, fight this enemy.” This means that no matter what the military does in an attempt to squelch terrorism, there is no way for them to eliminate the threat of terrorism completely. All that the military is able to do is reduce the risk of an attack, the key word being “reduce”. It is therefore impossible to prepare for every single terrorist attack. The issue soon becomes deciding how safe is safe enough. If Schramm is correct, and there is no community on earth that is safe from an attack, a decision must be made that establishes the point at which military action can be reduced.

The War on Terror was necessary. If the USA had not acted with force after the September 11th attack, it is logical to assume that there would have been more terrorist attacks attempted on American soil. Robert Kagan expressed the theory that if the United States had not acted to remove Saddam Hussein from power he would have grown more powerful and would have launched a larger scale assault against the United States. The world is certainly more secure now that Saddam Hussein is out of power. He would not have been removed from power had it not been for the War on Terror. Kagan also thinks that although management mistakes have been made by the Bush administration, the War on Terror can be considered successful.

That being said, the financial cost of the War on Terror has been enormous. Veronique de Rugy estimates that the war has already cost upwards of one trillion dollars. He stated that “(one trillion dollars is) 10 times more than what specialists predict it would take to eradicate malaria once and for all.” Although the money was needed to pay for the military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to reduce the amount we spend on the war in the future. This amount of expense is unsustainable and could ultimately prove to be much more of a problem than most people realize (Rugy). However, money is not the only thing American citizens have been giving up in order to further the war on terror

Joyce Slaton warned in November of 2001 that the Patriot Act grants the government far to much power. She was especially concerned with the ease at which the personal privacy of citizens could now be infringed upon. The Act grants the executive branch the ability to, with easy to obtain approval, track and view anyone’s online activity (Slaton). This monitoring is, according to Slaton, trivial to bypass using simple encryption, code words, and/or other obfuscation techniques. Any terrorist with the slightest desire to not be caught would use these techniques, leaving regular citizens with little benefit for their loss of online privacy. In addition to the privacy issue, monitoring vast amounts of internet traffic is expensive and requires large amounts of resources (Slaton). Because of the high cost and low effectiveness rate, the monitoring of internet activity should be be limited to already suspected terrorists only, and not include the general population as is currently the case.

Americans, Slaton claimed, have given up their privacy rights in order to be better protected from terrorists. This could possibly have been a good idea when the Patriot Act was introduced, but the American people need to reclaim the rights that they deserve. It is easy to see how being able to spy on someone who is planing to bomb a subway station would be beneficial to society and save lives. The problem arises when telecommunication providers look at everyone’s communications, not just suspected terrorists, on the off-chance that one of them turns out to be a terrorist. Slaton made the accurate assessment that it is counter productive to give up the rights that your country is going to war to protect.

The lack of privacy is not the only concern that faces many American citizens. American emergency systems are not prepared to deal with a terrorist attack of any magnitude. According to Arthur Kellerman, funding needed to maintain an adequate state of readiness in hospitals is being diverted to other areas of government. With the current medical system, hospitals are barely able to maintain their day-to-day operations, let alone a large scale emergency (Kellerman). Hospitals must be able to have surplus capacity in order to be an effective tool for assisting with a recovery after an attack. If hospitals are not able to cope with a large scale emergency or attack there will be many needless casualties that could have been avoided.

In addition to hospitals necessitating a larger operating capacity, ambulance technicians need to be trained in how to respond to common types of terrorist attacks, including bombings (Kellerman). The London subway bombings are a prime example of what emergency personnel need to be able to respond to.

Daniel Hamilton and Tara O’Toole used the Atlantic Storm project to demonstrate how woefully unprepared the current emergency system is for dealing with a bioterrorist attack. Atlantic Storm was a war-game that was designed to demonstrate the importance of how nations from all over the world would need to work together if there were ever to be a new pandemic virus, such as a bio-weapon (Hamilton and O’Toole). While a bioterrorist attack may be impossible to prevent, it is possible to reduce the effectiveness of an attack to very low levels (Hamilton and O’Toole). They stated that “The first step (to improve emergency preparedness) is to recognize that this (bioterrorist) threat requires something more holistic than buying more vaccine or training more doctors.” This means that hospitals cannot simply buy medicines that negate the damage done by an attack. Instead, the world as a whole must be ready to pool resources and work together to quickly develop and deploy vaccines in sufficient quantities to eradicate the contagion (Hamilton and O’Toole).

Because the War on Terror has so far been relatively successful with it’s goal of reducing the threat of terrorism, it is time to refocus our resources. While a military presence is still required in other countries, it is now time to begin strengthening the United States itself. As Hamilton and O’Toole have explained, our emergency response systems, specifically our ability to combat bioterrorist attacks, are not currently in a suitable condition to face an attack successfully. Funding for our hospitals needs to be increased dramatically in order to allow them to properly deal with the many threats that the military alone cannot combat. Although the War on Terror is fulfilling it’s objectives, the price in privacy and domestic emergency preparedness has been high. Now that the threat of a terrorist attack in the US is lower, it is time to refocus our objectives and to improve anti-terror preparedness domestically, in addition to other countries.

Works Cited:

Hamilton, Daniel, and Tara O’Toole. “Facing up to the bioterror threat.” International Herald Tribune. 31 Jan. 2005. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/30/opinion/edotoole.php?page=1

Kagan, Robert. “Whether This War Was Worth It.” Washingtonpost.com. 19 June 2005. The Washington Post. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2005/06/17/AR2005061701217.html

Kellerman, Arthur. “Still Not Ready in The ER.” Washingtonpost.com. 5 Aug. 2005. The Washington Post. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080401826.html

Rugy, Veronique. “The Trillion-Dollar War.” Reason Online. May 2008. Reason Magazine. 16 Dec. 2008 . http://www.reason.com/news/show/125438.html

Schramm, J.B. “The Best Anti-Terror Force: Us.” Operational Risk Management. 23 June 2004. 10 Dec. 2008 . http://operationalrisk.blogspot.com/2004/06/best-anti-terror-force-us.html

Slaton, Joyce. “What Price Patriotism?” SFGate. 15 Nov. 2001. San Francisco Chronicle. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/g/a/2001/11/15/patriotisp.DTL

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