Indirect Victims of Terrorism

When we talked in class about the death of Osama Bin Laden and the feelings we had about the situation, I noticed a recurring theme of fear of retaliation. We talked about this in class a bit, and Mr. Bolos mentioned that Al Qaeda does not operate on a short timetable, so a retaliation attack is very unlikely. Personally, I was concerned with this recurring worry about retaliation because it shows the more long term effects of terrorism that persist after a bombing or attack; fear. I am not trying to blame those who feared retaliation for their feelings, but it is sad to see these feelings take place. Even when we are on the offensive and successfully execute an operation, the effects are the same, citizens experience fear just from the idea of conflict with terrorists. I recall reading a very interesting chapter in Freakonomics that addressed this point exactly. The section talks about Richard Reid, who attempted to detonate a shoe bomb on an airplane in an act of terrorism. Although he failed entirely to actually detonate the bomb, the attack prompted airport security around the world to require passengers to remove their shoes while passing through security, a process which I'm sure we are all familiar with. The authors, Levitt and Dubner, then calculate that if taking off, x-raying, and replacing one's shoes takes an average of 1 minute, then 1,065 years of security and passenger time are spent, per year, on this process, equivalent to the average life span of 14 people. In summary, although Reid failed to harm any people in his attack, he still "levied a tax that is the time equivalent of 14 lives per year." The chapter also talks about the actual risks of being involved in a terrorist attack, "roughly 1 in 5 million"and notes that, in fact, the average person is "575 times more likely to commit suicide." Again, this post is not trying to say that those who feared retaliation are being irrational, but merely that I saw an interesting connection between our classroom discussion and a Freakonomics section I read a while ago.