Lest we forget...

Today marks both the five year anniversary of the September 11 attacks in America and the start of at least a week-long bout of masturbatory frenzy in the mass media.

No doubt we'll see those planes smash into those buildings again and again, because you know, we just haven't seen that enough and it was five years ago after all. Happened in New York, I think.

But, I am not here to mock nor denigrate the losses sustained on that day, nor the losses in the Madrid train bombings, the multiple bombings in Bali, the London underground bombings (in which I lost a friend), the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Indonesia, the bombings in Cairo, nor the other equally as heinous terrorists attacks since that day in New York. What I do want to discuss is the fear. The perfectly manufactured patina of fear that covers us all. To continue momentarily with that awful metaphor -- Osama laid the undercoat, Bush. Blair and Howard have been layering on top coat over top coat until now no one remembers what the original colour was.

I found myself watching an anchor on CNN the other day, presenting statistics from polls conducted both in the months after the 9/11 attacks and followed up last month. When asked if they felt more unsafe now, in the months following 9/11 44% or respondents said they did. The follow-up almost five years on had seen that number rise to around 68%. (Note: I was not entirely paying attention but there had been a remarkable increase.)

In this time we've seen public freedoms repressed and suppressed more rapidly and markedly than the terrorists could ever hope for. While the nebulously defined War on Terrorism continues, we've seen new Wars -- the War of Shoes and the new War on Moisture. I'm all for finding and quashing the bastards responsible, and I'm particularly for pressing them hard and deep into the Earth's crust, but what I cannot abide is this terrible and insensate fear that's permeating society.

Fear is a powerful force. It's a primal, survival force in fact. The best horror movies never show the creature or ghost who kills. When it's left to the imagination the effects are starker and more horrific, but they are also personal to each person. Compared to the delicious terror of the imagination, the blood-spattered animatronic that shuffles into scene is laughable. Poe knew this, as did Lovecraft, and their stories are timeless.

Bush must watch a lot of these classic movies (I doubt he reads the books) as he's telling us everything, but showing us nothing. The War on Terror purports to say a lot, but means nothing. It's nebulous, ill-defined. I'm not the first to comment on this, and won't be the last, but other things that similarly sound good but mean nothing are Bush's assertions that the terrorists 'hate our freedom'. Bush says a lot of dumb things, but that's a whopper to swallow.

And here I pass the baton to David Cross, a very funny comedian, who said while discussing Bush's 'they hate our freedom' rhetoric:

"I don't think Osama bin Laden sent those planes in to attack us because he hated our freedom.

I think he did it because of our support for Israel, and our ties with the Saudi family and all our military bases in Saudi Arabia.

You know why I think that?

Because that's what he fucking said!

It's sad that that has to come from a comedian, but there you have it. That's why Osama had the planes hijacked. It's the same reason why he had them blow a huge fucking hole in the U.S.S Cole years earlier, and why they even tried to bomb the WTC earlier than that.

Saying it's about a hatred of freedom just muddies the waters...and that's probably Bush's point.

So here we are, five years on from one of the most horrific acts of war on America, and we're all feeling worse off. The boogeyman could be anywhere, anytime, and he wants to kill us because we are free.

To be honest, I fly a lot, and I never really dwell on terrorists. I'm more worried about the idiot driving the taxi to the airport, or just how much job-satisfaction the low-paid maintenance ground crew who are responsible for checking my plane have. Statistically you are vastly more likely to slip and die in the shower, get kicked to death by a donkey or be killed by a falling coconut than you are to be killed by an act of terrorism.

Anyway, security expert Bruce Schneier has an excellent Scorecard from the War on Terror with some interesting findings. As he says 'This is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in how the U.S. is prosecuting terrorism. Put aside the rhetoric and the posturing; this is what is actually happening.'

In the twelve months immediately after 9/11, the prosecution of individuals the government classified as international terrorists surged sharply higher than in the previous year. But timely data show that five years later, in the latest available period, the total number of these prosecutions has returned to roughly what they were just before the attacks. Given the widely accepted belief that the threat of terrorism in all parts of the world is much larger today than it was six or seven years ago, the extent of the recent decline in prosecutions is unexpected. See Figure 1 and supporting table.

Federal prosecutors by law and custom are authorized to decline cases that are brought to them for prosecution by the investigative agencies. And over the years the prosecutors have used this power to weed out matters that for one reason or another they felt should be dropped. For international terrorism the declination rate has been high, especially in recent years. In fact, timely data show that in the first eight months of FY 2006 the assistant U.S. Attorneys rejected slightly more than nine out of ten of the referrals. Given the assumption that the investigation of international terrorism must be the single most important target area for the FBI and other agencies, the turn-down rate is hard to understand. See Figure 2 and supporting table.

The typical sentences recently imposed on individuals considered to be international terrorists are not impressive. For all those convicted as a result of cases initiated in the two years after 9//11, for example, the median sentence -- half got more and half got less-- was 28 days. For those referrals that came in more recently -- through May 31, 2006 -- the median sentence was 20 days. For cases started in the two year period before the 9/11 attack, the typical sentence was much longer, 41 months. See Figure 3.

Yowch. Maybe we are right to feel more frightened.