Freedom vs Safety: Learning the right lesson from 9/11

Everyone is angry about the Mumbai attacks, and for good reason. Our government – irrespective of who is in power – has long proved unable, even unwilling, to protect its citizens. Let’s not forget the attacks took place a few days after the Kalka Mail tragedy which claimed 70 lives. Be it from unsafe drinking water, derailments, police brutality, toxic dumping, or uncontrolled crime, Indians die every day from government incompetence, negligence, and corruption. Terrorism is just the most spectacular symptom of this malaise. “We are not indifferent. We are angry, we are scared. I’m still worried about going to my office…the spot where the blast took place is just two minutes away. We are frustrated, we are fed up, we have deadlines at work…we don’t expect anything now,” said one young Mumbaikar, in a mixture of rage and despair. Yet anger is a dangerous emotion, more so when fused with fear and despair. “I fear martial law is the only solution for our nation’s problems. Civilian democracy has miserably failed us,” says an email message from a TV viewer on CNN-IBN. It’s an extreme but timely reminder of what is at stake. Terrorists strike dictatorships and free societies alike, but democracies have far more to lose. In one sense, all terrorists win because they force citizens to cede some measure of liberty to protect their lives. We accept constant surveillance and invasive security checks as necessary measures. And we are rightfully demanding better intelligence-gathering, policing, and emergency response systems. But in times of fear, the temptation is to claim that we want all this and more – perhaps an efficiently militarised, high-security society like Israel. It’s easy to point to London, New York, or Tel Aviv and wonder why we can’t be more like them. But even the most effective counter-terrorism measures will have to contend our messy, chaotic, overcrowded Indian reality. “Security is a charade and we all play our role. It’s true at the mall, the hospital, office buildings, government offices, hotels and the like,” writes Prashant Agrawal in India Real Time, but adds:

The charade of security is as much as we can expect or, frankly, tolerate. The disruption of our everyday lives would be too much if we had airport security lines at our train stations, malls, offices, theaters and schools. Nearly 7 million people use the local trains every day. Mumbai airport handles millions of travelers a year.

[caption id=“attachment_42029” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Anger is a dangerous emotion, more so when fused with fear and despair. Aijaz Rahi/AP”]  [/caption] Perhaps we can tolerate more than Agrawal claims, but even the most effective measures have not and will not be able to eliminate terrorism. There has never been another terrorist attack within the United States, but that’s only because the Time Square bomb failed to detonate. Despite MOSSAD’s legendary reputation, it has not been able to secure Israel from suicide bombings. In this age of global terror, the question is not if but when. “As a citizen of this country, I have a fundamental right to be safe when I leave my house,” declared one irate citizen on television. Not quite. No state can guarantee the safety of its citizens. And to secure such a right would require ceding all others. If we must look to America, let’s make sure we learn the right lesson. “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world,” said George Bush on September 11, 2001, addressing a grief-stricken nation. “None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.” The dark years that followed would prove otherwise. America instead became the nation of racial profiling, arrests without trial, torture, occupation, ‘collateral damage’ and inevitably Abu Ghraib. By the time Bush left office, it was deeply in debt, teetering on a recession, and embroiled in a crippling, no-win war. America wanted, above all, to be safe, but that desire has extracted a high price. If terrorists did indeed hate America for its freedom, they certainly succeeded in making it less free – and poorer, to boot. The ultimate irony: More Americans have died fighting the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan than in the 9/11 attacks. The ‘war on terror’ isn’t won by draconian laws, ethnic profiling, state-sanctioned torture or military retaliation. What it requires is far less sweeping but more effective: strong local policing, meticulous intelligence-gathering, effective monitoring, and timely information-sharing across national and international agencies. We citizens will need to embrace long lines, delays, and constant surveillance. All of it tedious, inconvenient, invasive and frustrating. But we will be safer. We will also still be a democracy.