Freakonomics on Terrorism

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, speaks.

Terrorism, Part II

August 9, 2007, 3:30 pm
Terrorism, Part II
By Steven D. Levitt

On the very first day that our blog was hosted by the New York Times, I wrote a post that generated the most hate mail I’ve gotten since the abortion-crime story first broke almost a decade ago. The people e-mailing me can’t decide whether I am a moron, a traitor, or both. Let me try again.

A lot of the angry responses make me wonder what everyday Americans think terrorists do all day. My guess is that they brainstorm ideas for terrorist plots. And you have to believe that terrorists are total idiots if it never occurred to them after the Washington, D.C., sniper shootings that maybe a sniper plot wasn’t a bad idea. The point is this: there is a virtually infinite array of incredibly simple strategies available to terrorists. The fact that it has been six years since the last major terrorist attack in the United States suggests either that the terrorists are incompetent, or that perhaps their goal isn’t really to generate terror. (A separate factor is the prevention efforts by law enforcement and the government; I’ll address that later.)
....

The work of my University of Chicago colleague Robert Pape suggests that the strongest predictor of terrorist acts is the occupation of a group’s territory. From that perspective, having American troops in Iraq is probably not helping to reduce terrorism — although it may be serving other purposes.

[On the Road]

1. The Freakonomics Guy

is a little clueless politically, but he always comes up with an interesting angle.

[trof]

2. It's the flags:

Love this comment below the article:


The lack of terrorist activity in the U.S. can be empirically traced to the increased displays of the American flag in the past six years. They’re just simply intimidated. Can you blame them?

— Posted by Michael Jennings