Brainstorming for Terrorists

Steven Levitt is already on my list of economists with an honesty problem--as the letter he had to write to settle a lawsuit recently pointed out--but now we have this incredibly stupid item by him in the New York Times that asks readers to post suggestions on how terrorists might attack us, taking advantage of our vunerabilities. Of course, since he is very supportive of disarming law-abiding people, he suggests that terrorists could take advantage of the relatively free access to rifles and ammunition by sending out 20 teams to randomly shoot people in American cities, provoking terror, in the style of the Beltway Sniper.

I'm sure that Levitt is hoping that such actions would give us the very restrictive gun control laws that he and many other liberals want; I think it would more likely give us martial law, and mass roundups of Muslims, especially since we now know that the Beltway Sniper team was, in fact, Muslim, and provoked by hatred of the United States.

Now, it is certainly true that there is some value in understanding our vunerabilities. Levitt could have performed a very useful public service by asking readers to email him their ideas, and then providing those to Homeland Security as a list of things to worry about. But making them publicly visible? A terrible idea. As much as Levitt and some of his readers want to believe that they aren't providing any new ideas to the terrorists, this is almost certainly not true.

Terrorists within the United States probably count in the dozens to hundreds (I'm hoping), and most of them haven't been here long enough to be fully engaged in our culture. Even if they are spending 16 hours a day looking for vunerabilities, and concocting schemes to take advantage of them, they are unlikely to figure out all the possibilities that Levitt's readers and commenters will. Making these ideas publicly visible is brainstorming for the terrorists. If the New York Times had any sense of responsibility, it would immediately take down the comments.

Once terrorist attacks start in the U.S., as much as some want to believe that it will make Americans see the error of their ways, cut off aid to Israel, withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, recognize Hamas and Iran, apologize for everything that we have ever done to anyone anywhere, etc.--it won't have that effect. It will lead to actions and laws that even the ACLU's puppets in black robes will be able to justify because of the exigent circumstances requiring it.