Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

I have a rant in TIME Magazine this week about the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253--and the ways in which the usual suspects (including the White House, Congress and the media) are totally missing the point.

Our national conversation about terrorism needs to become more sophisticated. We cannot expect zero terrorism attempts to ever happen in our airplanes ever again. We can and must work harder to reduce the chances. But this kind of crap drives me crazy:

“I’d rather, in the interest of protecting people, overreact rather than underreact.”--Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate intelligence committee.

Really?

Terrorism is a psychological war as much as a physical war. To win such a war, it is essential not to overreact. That is the crux of the matter. If you overreact, you become a force multiplier for the terrorists.

And yet, that is exactly what we are doing. How thrilling it must be for extremists to sit in Yemen and hear about the impact of a failed mission in American skies: The U.S. president is being forced to prove he is not weak on defense (despite the fact that he just helped Yemen bomb the crap out of militants this very month, with decidedly mixed results, and despite the fact that Obama has insisted on staying in Afghanistan over the objections of many in his party); Andrew Sullivan and at least one Congressional Republican have called for the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; passengers around the world are being subjected to inane no-blanket rules and invasive frisks, just when it seemed they had no more dignity left to surrender.

Wow. Quite an accomplishment for a young man who did not successfully detonate his bomb.

Our complicity in boosting the terrorism threat was explained well by James Fallows in a 2006 Atlantic piece, “Declaring Victory”:

“Does al-Qaeda still constitute an ‘existential’ threat?” asks David Kilcullen, who has written several influential papers on the need for a new strategy against Islamic insurgents. Kilcullen, who as an Australian army officer commanded counter-insurgency units in East Timor, recently served as an adviser in the Pentagon and is now a senior adviser on counterterrorism at the State Department. He was referring to the argument about whether the terrorism of the twenty-first century endangers the very existence of the United States and its allies, as the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons did throughout the Cold War (and as the remnants of that arsenal still might).

“I think it does, but not for the obvious reasons,” Kilcullen told me. He said the most useful analogy was the menace posed by European anarchists in the nineteenth century. “If you add up everyone they personally killed, it came to maybe 2,000 people, which is not an existential threat.” But one of their number assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. The act itself took the lives of two people. The unthinking response of European governments in effect started World War I. “So because of the reaction they provoked, they were able to kill millions of people and destroy a civilization.

“It is not the people al-Qaeda might kill that is the threat,” he concluded. “Our reaction is what can cause the damage. It’s al-Qaeda plus our response that creates the existential danger.”

A Nigerian national allegedly attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet as it descended into Detroit today around noon. The small explosive device burned the suspect’s hands but did no other serious damage, it appears. It’s too early to know exactly what to make of the incident, but a few thoughts to help sort through the frenzy of news that is already whipsawing into circulation.

* Who dunnit? Nigerian suspect, Yemeni device, al-Qaeda connection...?

The bomb, which the New York Times is saying was made partly of liquid, partly of powder, reportedly came from Yemen, and the suspect is said to be claiming an al-Qaeda connection. If true, this is not a shocker. We know that Yemen is a haven for al-Qaeda. In fact, al-Qaeda members have explicitly announced their intention to use Yemen as a regional base. The instability and weak government in Yemen make it very vulnerable to exploitation by extremists. To see footage from a very recent al-Qaeda rally in Yemen, check out this al Jazeera (in English) clip:

* Who’s to Blame? Obama! Yemen! Airport security! Fill in the blank!

Wasting no time, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee seized upon the news of the attack to criticize the Obama administration for not taking the Yemen threat more seriously and call for more aggressive action. “People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra told the Detroit Free Press.

An odd thing to say on the very same day that Yemeni forces, back by the United States, launched an air strike on suspected al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen. That strike killed some 30 people and was the latest attack in a series. Last week, a battery of strikes killed about 34 people. The attacks were ordered by President Obama himself, ABC News is reporting.

To further complicate the blame game, these kinds of military raids can actually make the al-Qaeda threat worse, at least in the short term, by boosting recruitment and support among locals. No cruise missile goes unpunished, that old American story. From TIME:

But regardless of who did what, a primary target in the attacks — Qasim al-Raymi, the al-Qaeda leader who is believed to be behind a 2007 bombing in central Yemen that killed seven Spanish tourists and two Yemenis — is still at large. And reports of a U.S. role, and mass civilian casualties at the sites of the attacks, have sparked a public outcry and added to anti-American sentiments across the country. ...
Indeed through the backlash that followed, the attacks have started to look like more of a boon than a bust for Yemen’s al-Qaeda revival, as well as for other opponents of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime. Iran — which Yemen accuses of backing the Shi’ite Houthi rebellion in the north — headlined the attacks on its state-sponsored Press TV with: “Obama ordered deadly blitz on Yemen.”

For now, most of the televised speculation will probably focus on airport security: How could a passenger carry incendiary materials from Nigeria through a connection in Amsterdam? And that’s worth exploring. But if it’s true that the suspect mixed the materials on the plane and injected the liquid with a syringe into powder, which was strapped on his leg, as the New York Times is reporting.... AND none of this worked...well, it’s probably worth focusing most of our energy on understanding U.S. policy and intelligence in Yemen and Nigeria.

* Who is Not to Blame?

Once again, we are reminded that are most reliable counter-terrorism assets are...regular people. As on 9/11, the people who took the most courageous and impactful action were fellow passengers--who helped tackle the suspect and put out the fire, according to the eye-witness account of a passenger sitting three rows back. Check out the blow by blow from the Detroit Free Press:

Syed Jafry of Holland, Ohio, who had flown from the United Arab Emirates, said after emerging from the airport that people ran out of their seats to tackle the man. Jafry was sitting in the 16th row—three rows behind the passenger—when he heard “a pop and saw some smoke and fire.” Then, he said, “a young man behind me jumped on him.”...He said the way passengers responded made him proud to be an American....By all accounts, the suspect was immediately tackled by at least one man, and several other passengers ran towards him immediately trying to put the fire out.

None of this will come as any surprise to regular readers of this blog. But it’s worth pointing out since, in all the hearings that Congress will inevitably hold about the Detroit incident, I doubt much time will be spent talking about how the people in charge should trust regular Americans with more information and work much harder to leverage the dedication of regular people with the same conviction the government invests in new (fallible but highly profitable) explosive-detection equipment. 

Thanks to a cocktail of fear, Internet technology and actual complexity, the misinformation spread this year faster than the actual virus. The end of the year (and hopefully the phase of the virus) seems like a good time for a wrap-up of rumors and all-out frauds about H1N1. Here’s a few that seem to still be in circulation:

**PEEL AN ONION!**

One email making the rounds claims that you can ward off the flu by placing onions around the house to absorb the badness. Apparently, this one dates back to the 1500s. People have long believed that peeled onions can rid the air of germs. People have long been wrong.

**GARGLE & SWAB!**

I actually got this one myself from a friend who had gotten it from her mother. It sounds just convincing enough to be believable. Apparently, this list of medical “tips” for avoiding H1N1 has been circulated under a variety of doctor’s names, none of whom appear to have written it. Some of the advice is sound (frequent hand washing). Others are reassuring, but not based in science. For example, the claim that even if H1N1 has infected your throat and nose, you still have 2-3 days to “prevent proliferation” by gargling with warm saltwater… I really wanted to believe that one, because it creates the illusion of control. But in a steel cage match, the influenza virus stomps saltwater. 

**JOIN THE VACCINE REGISTRY!**

The CDC is warning people about phishing scams disguised as H1N1 vaccination efforts. This email scam directs you to register your profile with the CDC. Should you click on the link, you could end up with malicious code invading your computer. (Speaking of viruses, my computer got one this year while I was searching for a place to get the H1N1 vaccine in DC. That is harsh… A virus directed at people trying to avoid a virus. Anyway, I got rid of it without much drama, but it was a good reminder never to click on weird-looking links.)

Please post a comment if you have any others to add!

Another emergency, another news story about ...(dramatic pause)… regular people behaving exactly as they normally do.

In Cape Cod yesterday, an ambulance got stuck in the snow on its way to help a man who had collapsed outside his home. Out of the haze, an untrained force of neighbors appeared. Five neighbors used snow blowers to clear the road ahead while the others dug out the snow around the ambulance with snow shovels. It took two hours, but the elite squad of regular people and emergency medical technicians eventually got the man out, and he’s doing fine.

I like stories like these, but it is always intriguing how they are portrayed as exceptional. We know by now that the people who do most of the rescuing in big emergencies are regular people. God love ‘em.

When I give talks about my book, people often ask me about how they should prepare for a disaster, what they should have in their “kits,” etc. I tell them: Put batteries in your smoke detector. Exercise. Get good insurance. And if your neighbors invite you over, drop the duct tape and go, man, go.

This year, I’m proud to report, we got invited to three neighborhood holiday parties--all on our block, and we went to all of them. Finally some advice I can follow while drinking wine…

Fascinating piece by Jill Lepore in the New Yorker about why Americans are so much more likely to murder each other than people in other comparable developed nations.

As you might imagine, the answer is: no one knows! But a couple of new books are making provocative new arguments based on actual data, not just conjecture. One thing seems clear: the answer is probably not what you think--or at least not that one thing alone. Not just the prevalence of guns, nor just the violence of our popular culture, etc.

The most startling data point in the piece comes early on, when Lepore reviews the murder rates around the world, over time. It may not surprise you to hear that America’s murder rate is twice that of any other rich democracy. But how to explain the fact that it has always been so--if not worse? In fact, America’s homicide rate has been dramatically higher than comparable nations since, well, the beginning of America.

If there is any solace in the numbers, then it is that the citizens of developed nations (even Americans!) are much less murderous than they were hundreds of years ago. Today, the American murder rate is just over five victims per hundred thousand people per year. (In Europe, the rate has been below two for much of the past century.) But in medieval times, the European rate was closer to 35. It dropped to five by 1700.

Then again, the murder rate has been dramatically lowered in recent decades by the progress of emergency medicine. It’s not simply that people are getting more peaceful, in other words; it’s that a violent assault (like a car accident) is far less likely to end in death. Good news, but not especially heartening.

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is right to impose a 50% tax on banker bonuses, as announced earlier today. I know, I know: It could lead to an exodus of “talent,” as everyone in the financial “talent” industry likes to tell us. (Although that is less likely if more countries sign up for such a tax, reducing the number of alternative options for banks in search of relocation.) And I know that clever banks will find a way to slither out of some of the taxes. I don’t care. Fairness matters. Even if we can’t get fairness, it’s important to make every effort. That’s how the human brain works, something the Obama administration doesn’t seem to understand.

The best explanation I have heard about the brain’s need for punishment came from social psychologist Jennifer Lerner, the head of Harvard University’s Decision Science Laboratory. We spoke last year for a story I was working on. The economy was imploding, and she predicted, right from the very beginning, that voters would not forgive Obama for the bailout unless and until they perceived a sense of justice:

”People often care more about fairness than they do about financial outcomes. Anger and a desire for fairness and punishment [are] very human phenomena. I’ve yet to see a public leader addressing this desire. And there is, in my view, unlikely to be widespread support for these policies unless the anger and punishment is addressed.”

Since we spoke, the U.S. Congress considered a 90 percent tax on bonuses at companies that got more than $5 billion in aid. The measure died in the Senate after President Obama said the U.S. shouldn’t “govern out of anger” and AIG employees promised to repay their bonuses.

What happened instead? Well, Obama appointed Kenneth Feinberg to be the country’s pay czar, a nice idea that hasn’t yet produced any surge in fairness. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase’s investment bank combined will hand out $29.7 billion in 2009 bonuses, up 60 percent from last year, according to Bloomberg, and since they repaid the government aid they received last year, those banks aren’t subject to Feinberg’s review.

So while Obama refuses to govern out of anger, the anger has not gone away. That’s not how anger works. A recent Washington Post poll suggests that, in the void, anger has found a new target--in Obama:

“Republicans and GOP-leaning independents are overwhelmingly negative about Obama and the Democratic Party more broadly, with nearly all dissatisfied with the administration’s policies and almost half saying they are “angry” about them. About three-quarters have a more basic complaint, saying Obama does not stand for “traditional American values.” More than eight in 10 say there is no chance they would support his reelection.”

Cut back to Prof. Lerner, who saw all this coming a year ago:

“The anger is not likely to go away without some feeling of it being resolved. The angrier people get, the more they will continue to blame. The problem is unlikely to die out on its own....Most policies in the United States are informed by an economic analysis that assumes people behave in order to maximize their monetary outcomes. That assumption is being increasingly eroded from this new field of decision finance....There is no council of psychological advisers in Washington, just a council of economic advisers.”

Granted, angry Republicans are unlikely to be overjoyed by a new tax on rich people. But I think it could be one (of several) steps that would ameliorate the ambient anger with an injection of fairness. There is a sense among many Americans that Washington is allowing its own institutions and certain industries to take risks and spend money without consequences or limit. And there is some truth to it. I say, write a smart tax to hold the bankers accountable and give our brains a sense of fairness--in a civilized, reasoned fashion. (Also, we should totally start up a Council of Psychological Advisers!)

OK, first of all, my apologies for the recent silence. I’ve been deep in the weeds on a story that is now finished--and will come out in January. It was an epic ride, one that I thoroughly enjoyed and am glad is over. But more on that later.

Now seems like a good time to revisit the slow-motion disaster of the year. To be sure, we still don’t know how the swine flu story ends. But we finally know the headline. Beyond all the noise about H1N1, the CDC, pigs and Mexico, this will go down as a story about outdated technology--the kind that we should have been embarrased about a long time ago.

As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today:

“We were fighting the 2009 H1N1 flu with vaccine technology from the 1950s. We could race to begin vaccine production, but there was nothing we could do if vaccine grew slowly in eggs. We could make deals with foreign vaccine producers ahead of time, but we still wouldn’t have as much control over the vaccine as if they were based in the U.S....We were working to squeeze every last bit of efficiency and dependability out of a safe but outdated technology. It was like an old car we had tuned up but still didn’t accelerate like we needed it to. And for us, the conclusion was clear: If we wanted to avoid these problems in the future, we needed to make some long-term investments in developing countermeasures that were just as safe and effective, but could be produced faster and more reliably.”

I hope this pandemic has peaked, and I hope there is no third wave. But regardless, this problem ain’t going away. To see what I mean (and make the magical connection between swine flu and terrorism--yes, there really is one! Not just pure fear mongering...!), check out this short H1N1 video from the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.

Preparing for the release of The Road and 2012, my TIME colleague Rebecca Winters Keegan investigates how to survive the end of the world--Hollywood style. Best tip (from Viggo Mortensen): Resist the urge to eat your children.

Our cinematic fascination with the end of the world is perplexing and somewhat perverse, but not new. According to Wheeler Winston Dixon, a film studies professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, one of the early sound films was 1931’s “The End of the World,” in which a comet slams in the the Earth. Dixon’s theory for why we love to imagine the destruction of our own civilization, as he recently described it to CNN:

“I think it’s a desire to sort of say ... ‘We won’t have to worry about the future, because there is no future,’ “ he says. “And so therefore, we can do what we want now, and all the debts are put off and all the responsibilities are avoided.” Besides, “the complete destruction of the world has always been attractive, because ... by witnessing that act and staying outside of it, you’ve witnessed the apocalypse,” he says. “It’s much like a horror movie. It allows you to participate without risk.”

Personally, I can’t get into these movies. And I tried to read The Road, but I found it too disturbing. (Though the writing was outstanding.) I don’t know, maybe I’m too literal or too soft. But I find no escapist value in watching atrocious things happen to society. That’s my job, after all, and it’s not particularly hilarious. So when I try to watch these movies, I am no fun… I find myself either walking out--or pointing out all the things that are unrealistic. (Watching the first episode of Lost, I kept muttering under my breath because all the injured airplane passengers were hanging out, treating their wounds, exchanging information--right next to the burning plane. Literally in its shadow! In real life, survivors of plane crashes get the hell away from the plane as soon as they can. Which makes more sense. Sigh.) So if you go to these movies, I hope for your sake that there’s no one like me in the theater.