To live under threat, staving off fear.
Today, a delivery truck was reported to have exploded on a highway in the St. Louis, Missouri vicinity. This gave rise, inevitably, to speculation that there were terrorists afoot. I thought, “Was it a bomb?” Later reports said that the truck went off the road, whereupon its fuel tank ruptured, causing a fire and, perhaps, an explosion. (*) It was an accident—not terrorism. Thankfully, no one was injured.
There have been innumerable false alarms here in the US since the 11 September 2001 attacks.
- A professional football game was delayed after a police officer used mace to break up a fight in the stands. The gas wafted onto the field and some players became nauseated. It wasn’t clear at first what was the cause of their condition. The fear was that there was a chemical or biological weapon involved. There was, but not a lethal one or one used inappropriately.
- Last November, when Flight 587 crashed, speculation turned to terrorism. At the time, I felt strongly that it must have been sabotage. Now the evidence shows that the tail fin swung wildly from side to side on the basis of cockpit controls, and that the crash occurred for a reason unrelated to terrorism. (†)
- At the time of the anthrax attacks, there were numerous false alarms related to white powdery substances.
- There have been numerous fighter jet escorts of passenger aircraft on the bases of false alarms.
- There have been a incidents where sky marshals drew their firearms aboard aircraft, when later it turned out that the suspicious activity that provoked them was not terrorism.
- Many airport terminals have been evacuated because someone broke through security. In most if not all of these cases, the security jumper turned out to be someone other than a terrorist.
- There was the Florida highway case, where some harmless Muslim students were overheard, I believe, joking about terrorism. A highway was shut down and a public relations fiasco resulted. (‡)
The unifying theme is that in the post–9/11 environment, every threat must be taken seriously. It makes every news broadcast a potentially horrifying experience. We try not to lapse into fear. Quality of life suffers under the threat of terrorism. So much more the reason to invest our society’s resources into winning the War on Terrorism.
Last updated: 9 April 2003. Title edited.