Booga-Booga Be Afraid!

Rudy Giuliani at the Republican debate.

And we just saw it just last week in New York, an attempt by Islamist terrorists to attack JFK airport; three weeks ago, an attempt to attack Fort Dix.

These are real problems. This war is not a bumper sticker. This war is a real war.

His handpicked successor, Michael Bloomberg, the actual Mayor of New York City, yesterday, about the "Islamist terror" plot to ignite jet fuel in pipelines, which is an almost entirely impossible action:

"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist."

I should mention that Giuliani was, in fact, almost struck by lightning last night.

FEAR Unit Mobilizes

My new rule of thumb is to wait a few days before talking about any thwarted terror plots. And this ties into Hillary Clinton's remarks about how we're safer but not yet safe. These things usually are significantly less than meets the eye, and that's a good thing. It means that we have the capacity, through our law enforcement, to identify potential threats before they turn operative. But this is another case, like Fort Dix, where you have an FBI informant very involved in the plot, a man who happens to be a convicted drug smuggler. And the plot seemed to be a great deal of talk with significantly less action, even less than the Fort Dix plot, where most of the action was driven by the informant himself. And the plot itself is unlikely to have worked. Jet fuel that isn't vaporized when burned just isn't that flammable, and fuel lines are insulated quite a bit to prevent the fires from moving down the line. This would maybe stop JFK from operating for a couple hours. So would a snowstorm.

When I was criticizing Hillary for her whole "safer but not yet safe" construction, I was criticizing her on the grounds of using a GOP talking point. In fact, to be counter-intuitive, were we EVER unsafe from lone nuts who bluster about various aspirations from attacks? I don't think so. Our security is threatened by situations abroad that have harmed us throughout the globe. Talking about bogus "terrorist attacks" by lone nuts has nothing to do with the fundamental security question, any more than right-wing militias impact our security. They can be contained by solid law enforcement like the excellent work done by the counter-terrorism unit at the NYPD. Misrepresenting the two does a disservice to anyone trying to understand the nature of this so-called war on terror.

Nora Ephron explains how this focus on numbers and finding terrorist plots becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

1. In order to foil a terrorist plot, you must first find a terrorist plot. This is not easy.

2. Not just anyone can find and then foil a terrorist plot. You must have an incentive. The best incentive is to be an accused felon, looking at a long prison term. Under such circumstances, your lawyer will explain to you, you may be able to reduce your sentence by acting as an informant in a criminal case, preferably one involving terrorists.

3. The fact that you do not know any actual terrorists should not in any way deter you. Necessity is the mother of invention: if you can find the right raw material -- a sad, sick, lonely, drunk, deranged, disgruntled or just plain anti-American Muslim somewhere in the United States -- you can make your very own terrorist.

4. Now the good part begins. Money! The FBI will give you lots of money to take your very own terrorist out to lots of dinners where you, wearing a wire, can record yourself making recommendations to him about possible targets and weapons that might be used in the impending terrorist attack that your very own terrorist is going to mastermind, with your help. It will even buy you a computer so you can go to Google Earth in order to show your very own terrorist a "top secret" aerial image of the target you have suggested.

Read the whole thing.