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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (52085)	9/14/2001 10:40:04 AM
From: Fred Levine	Respond to of 70976

Another damn good post: ....This is one of the most important lessons of Tuesday's catastrophe. Our ability to prevent crimes is constrained not only by technical limits--money, intelligence assets, airport security administration--but also by conceptual limits. We can't prepare for what we don't anticipate. Furthermore, the range of scenarios we anticipate isn't limited merely by what we think others can do. It's also limited by what we think they will do. Given the countless possible permutations of human behavior, we confine our preparations and calculations to those acts that fall within the range of our implicit moral expectations. We're blind to the risk of unthinkable evil precisely because it's unthinkable. Terrorists don't have the technical assets that states enjoy. What they have instead is the advantage of surprise, by virtue of their willingness to defy moral expectations. If you can't imagine that they'd target children, they'll target children. If you can't imagine that they'd use your bus to do it, they'll use your bus to do it. If you can't imagine that they'd fly your plane into the World Trade Center, they'll fly your plane into the World Trade Center. Your conscience is their cover. fred