
Terrorist Hunt Sends America Over the Edge - njrc
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/04/terrorist-hunt-sends-america-nuts.html
======
NateDad
As someone personally affected by the lockdown, I find this highly offensive.

We were not cowering, though it would not be illogical to do so... we're
talking about people proven willing to not only kill and injure hundreds of
innocent people, they were also willing to get into action-movie style shoot
outs with heavily armed police, tossing homemade grenades and pipe bombs, and
murdering a police officer in cold blood.

So, maybe keeping people inside for 12 hours isn't that much of a price to pay
to make sure they stay safe. But it was really more than that.

It was about finding this S.O.B. before he could get away.

We knew he was in the area, but couldn't be sure exactly where. By shutting
down public transportation and keeping people and vehicles off the road, we
made it nearly impossible for him to escape. ANYONE walking around, driving a
car, is then automatically suspect and can be stopped. There is no crowd you
can mingle in, no trains or buses you can slip onto, no taxis you can hail.
There are no cars you can carjack. You're trapped.

Suddenly, instead of being able to hide among all the people in the city,
you're in an urban ghost town where anything that moves can be pounced on.
It's a hell of a lot more effective than just hoping someone recognizes him
among the other 2 million people running around.

If you mess with Boston we will shut the whole city down to find you. Yes, we
will. And you know what, most people will be glad to do it, to get the guy who
killed 4 people and injured almost 200 others. It's just one day. I'd do it
again in a heartbeat. I think most other people here would too.

We weren't scared. We were pissed.

~~~
jrockway
Where do you draw the line? Would you lock down all of New York City if some
mother killed her four children by smothering them with a pillow? Why not?
She's armed and dangerous and already has 4 dead to her name!

What happened in Boston was an amateurish overreaction to the task of hunting
down and finding someone who had committed a handful of murders -- something
that happens _every day_ in the US.

~~~
D9u
There's really no logical comparison between your fictional scenario and what
occurred in Boston.

The Boston Marathon is a world renowned event, and the apprehension of the
perpetrators of the attacks was a necessary thing, because, as someone else
has mentioned here, sending a message of "We'll catch you" to any would-be
criminals is of the utmost importance.

Well done Boston. My condolences to those adversely affected by this tragedy.

~~~
cskau
> There's really no logical comparison between your fictional scenario and
> what occurred in Boston.

Care to elaborate? As he mentioned murders happen every day in the states, so
would you prefer a non-fictional comparison?

> The Boston Marathon is a world renowned event, and the apprehension of the
> perpetrators of the attacks was a necessary thing, because, as someone else
> has mentioned here, sending a message of "We'll catch you" to any would-be
> criminals is of the utmost importance.

What does being "world renowned" have to do with anything? And what makes this
case any different from any other criminal offence?

Don't we want to catch all criminals?

~~~
D9u
The Boston Marathon is a high profile event, and when explosives are involved,
the security response is elevated. Explosives != pillows.

The "world renowned" aspect is just that. The world is watching how we respond
to such incidents, and to attempt to marginalize this incident by comparing a
mother smothering her children with pillows to bombs targeting a crowd is
callous in the extreme.

Of course we'd prefer to catch all criminals, especially those who target high
profile events with explosives.

------
droithomme
These actions went far far beyond martial law powers, and yet martial law was
not declared. I don't know what legal authority there was to do this, I assume
it exists and comes from some recent Patriot Act like bill. Whatever it is, we
see that its power is greater than that of martial law and it is something
that doesn't have to be activated in an emergency, the power exists at all
times.

That in itself is terrifying and that undeclared power is not what I want for
a country that I live in.

The detail that the police ordered everyone to shut down even train service,
but with the sole exception being that they requested Dunkin Donuts shops stay
open and continue providing free donuts for police is straight out of
feudalism.

~~~
sliverstorm
I'd like to see evidence that the police shut down the city with martial
power. I'm inclined to think the Governor said, "Everybody should stay home
today", and the author of this article embellished a little.

~~~
Symbol
This. Exactly.

As a resident of a neighboring town not technically on "lockdown", residents
nevertheless acted that way. Streets were empty. Businesses closed. It was
very very quiet. This was obviously done by choice, not mandate. Yes, there
was some fear driving this, as a police officer a few miles away was killed
for being in the wrong place at the wrong time (cop killings do not occur
often in the Boston-area suburbs). However, a large motivator was solidarity
with other towns on lockdown. We really wanted to give the police every chance
they could to catch this guy. The value judgement was made by private business
owners and employers to support that effort.

~~~
droithomme
An entire city cowering in fear of an incompetent 19 year old isn't what I
would call sound judgement and solidarity. Giving up because they have no
courage or sense of what it is to live in a free state, yeah that's what I'd
call it.

[http://georgedonnelly.com/libertarian/boston-police-state-
fa...](http://georgedonnelly.com/libertarian/boston-police-state-failed)

"If you allow an angsty teenager with a pressure cooker to frighten you into
abandoning your daily routine and cowering in your home as if it were a
prison, then you desperately need to re-evaluate your posture towards life.
Reclaim your self-respect, Boston."

"When a dozen paramilitary cops with fully automatic battle rifles backed by a
guy on a humvee turret and snipers come to my house, the words ‘voluntary’ and
‘cooperation’ have no place. I would be a fool to resist. They have guns to my
head and the heads of anyone with me. It’s now too late to resist. I don’t
blame anyone for cooperating. I blame them for cheering their oppressors."

"Boston was turned into a police state for a day. It was an experiment. It
failed miserably. The governments in operation there rallied all of the
military might at their disposal with a near-complete suspension of liberty
and they failed to find the man they were looking for – until they lifted
their siege."

"The bottom line is that the man on the street, the civilian, the regular joe,
is a more effective agent for public safety than any hopped-up government
employee with body armor, night vision, full-auto rifles and flash-bangs. Just
like with Flight 93, the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber, it was the
regular folks who played the key role in neutralizing a suspected terrorist –
not the cops or the TSA. That should be a sobering fact for any law
enforcement cheerleader."

Is this house search voluntary? What about the people pulled out by heavily
armed soldiers at gun point? What was their crime? Can you tell me?
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LrbsUVSVl8>

Did this guy have a right to film soldiers on the street outside his own home?
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A5vfyFyptQ>

Is that what you think living in a free country looks like? Or is it what
living in a totalitarian police state looks like?

------
sopooneo
Something to consider: it worked. It would still be presumptuous, but at least
a little less misdirected, to Monday-morning-quarterback a team that lost the
game.

~~~
nekojima
It didn't work, as the suspect was discovered after the curfew was over, by a
man who had been inside his house all day. Had the man been outside his house
earlier in the day, and seen the cover of his boat, its all but likely the
suspect could have been apprehended 8-12 hours earlier.

~~~
awwstn
Worked === Intended outcome achieved

At the point when the lockdown started, the intended outcome was likely to
catch the suspect without any more death, injury or destruction. It worked.
You can speculate as to whether it would have also worked with a different
approach, but you can't say the selected approach didn't work.

~~~
Camillo
And all this time I thought that _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ was a fallacy!

------
sliverstorm
Personally, I wonder if this wasn't _exactly_ the right sort of response. They
say that severity of punishment is not nearly as effective a deterrent as
certainty. If the image of the entirety of Boston so quickly working against
these two men isn't the very picture of swiftness and certainty/inevitability,
I don't know what is.

~~~
Pitarou
Would you advocate shutting down the city every time there's a hit-and-run
incident?

Surely, discouraging reckless driving would save FAR more lives than
discouraging terrorists.

~~~
sliverstorm
The next time you see a premeditated hit-and-run incident that critically
injures 130+ people and involves TV-style shootouts with the police, people
might consider it.

~~~
Pitarou
From your first comment, I thought you were talking about public safety and
deterring criminal acts. But it's clear now that what's really got your blood
pumping is the sense of spectacle.

I guess I should congratulate the terrorists for putting on such a good show.

~~~
sliverstorm
In my first comment I wasn't talking about safety, I was talking specifically
about deterrence. In my second comment, I was doing a poor job of getting to
the part where you need to get the populace on board to drive this. This is
why the magnitude of the incident is important. People are much, _much_ more
interested in stopping the bomber who injures 130 than the driver who flees an
accident. Maybe it's not rational, maybe proportionality can be called into
question, but the whole damn _world_ was on board for catching these two men.

I was trying to avoid typing an essay on a subject I can't write a good essay
about, but to try and keep things short my theory is that terrorists evoke an
unusually strong response because it feels more personal, for a number of
reasons. The first that I always think about is the magnification through
social connections. Those 130+ people probably have at least 5 family members,
5 friends, and 5 co-workers each. So we've got at least 2,000 people who feel
_directly impacted_ \- someone they know was personally hurt. Fan that out to
only one more degree, and you've got 30,000 people who know somebody whose
friend was injured.

Summary: You've got to get the people on-board to make such an effort.
Terrorism can get people on-board like nothing else, aside from open war.

~~~
Pitarou
Friends and family I've lost to:

\- vehicle accidents: 4

\- terrorism: 0

But that's not really the issue.

If you believe that this was a matter of community cohesion -- of a society
being strengthened by the annealing blows of terrorists incidents -- then I'd
concede your point. But, judging from earlier experience, something else is
happening. A climate of fear is being generated that is vastly
disproportionate to the objective risks.

Remember: the people at the marathon were not the target. That was just a
means to an end. The real target was the American psyche. Did they succeed?

Or, since you started by talking about deterrence, let's look at it through
the eyes of potential future terrorists. What are they thinking right now? Are
they thinking, "Oh no. Those guys got caught. I guess I'd better not try
anything like that." Or are they thinking, "OMG they shut down the whole city.
We got the attention of the whole damn WORLD! AWESOME!"

~~~
sliverstorm
"Cohesion" is a nice way to sum up what I was attempting to get to.

As for potential terrorists, I guess I still struggle with what their goals
are. I think a lot of people are way off the mark. How many terrorists
celebrate that Americans take off their shoes at the airport? Many people seem
to think terrorist ballads must be written about American Shoe Removal, but I
personally don't think they give a crap.

As for simply giving the event attention, I don't think there's any way around
that. People hate it when the government tries to hide things. Now, villain-
worshipping the two men (comparing how their "score" compares to other
attacks, etc) is certainly a terrible idea, but I am hoping we won't go there
this time.

~~~
Pitarou
> As for potential terrorists, I guess I still struggle with what their goals
> are. I think a lot of people are way off the mark.

Hmm. You're right

The grievances that drive terrorism are well understood. But beyond that I'm
making confident assumptions that, on examination, I can't back up with any
solid evidence or experience. I guess this is a case of "more research is
needed".

> As for simply giving the event attention, I don't think there's any way
> around that.

You're right, of course, but I'll continue to rant about it.

If traffic accidents received anything like the attention that terrorism did
-- if videos of fatal car crashes were replayed ad nauseum on the nightly news
-- maybe some of those 4 people I mentioned above might still be alive today.

------
kevin_morrill
I imagine very few people will question the political decisions here because
it requires imagination to account for the unseen. Hazlitt famously wrote
about this in Economics in One Lesson. What ground breaking research at MIT
didn't get done Friday? What important meetings were delayed? And then what
does that add up to when you multiply it by millions?

------
freshhawk
"I don’t think that’s quite right. I’d bet the American people, if given the
opportunity, are as capable as the Israelis and the Brits of withstanding the
occasional deadly attack by extremist groups or individuals [...]

It’s the authorities and the media that tend to go a little crazy, and their
actions reinforce each other."

So the Israelis and Brits don't have authorities or media? Or are their
authorities and media not Israelis and Brits? Or does he mean that the
authorities and the media in America are not made up of American people?

Seems quite a stretch to make this distinction without a difference to try and
sidestep any actual discussion of why these differences among cultures exist.
Cheap rhetorical trick. Not that I can blame him I guess, it's "un-american"
to propose rational reactions that might decrease terrorism rather than
scorched-earth vengeance seeking.

------
lttlrck
Reads like someone was upset their train was canceled.

Pretty damn clear why some airspace needed to be closed isn't? Fool.

------
youngerdryas
"Boston is probably the only major city that if you fuck with them, they will
shut down the city, stop everything, and find you."

Happy Gilmore

------
tkahn6
1\. I'm getting really good at predicting what the intellectual hipster
perspective on a particular issue will be. I knew yesterday we would see op
eds like this.

2\. Not Hacker News. Flagged.

~~~
harlanlewis
“Everyone has a different definition for hipster. Usually, they just find a
person with qualities they don’t like and say “That’s a hipster”.”

<http://bearskinrug.co.uk/hipsters/>

~~~
tkahn6
I'm using this definition of 'intellectual hipster'.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metacontrarianism/)

