Locking the Gates, Losing the War

In "Good Will Hunting," Matt Damon's character says to a Harvard grad student, "In 50 years...you're going to realize that you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you coulda got for a dollah fifty in late chahges at the public library." Well, sorry Mom, but that's what I'm getting this summer. So, as I sat listening to my professor in "Philosophy of Biology" regurgiate last night's reading, I wrote this:

"Locking the Gates, Losing The War"

After making sense of the news coming in on the morning of July 7th, I opened my window shade, to look out on the Columbia University campus, across 114th Street. The first thing that struck me was that, for the first time since I came to Columbia 2 years ago, the gates on 114th Street were locked. When I asked a security guard why the gates were locked, he said, somewhat nonchalantly, “Because of London.”

As I walked (the long way) to class, it began to dawn on me: terrorism is winning. The only reason we have yet to realize this is because we still measure victories by number of casualties—terrorists don’t. Terrorism is not about the number of people killed; terrorism is about the effect of their actions have on the psyche. In fact, if you look at the origin of the word terrorism, it comes from the Latin word terrere, which means “to frighten,” not “to kill” or “to hurt.” For terrorists, the casualties are just a means to an end. By closing the gates on that Thursday, we opened the flood gates to terrorists.

Beefing up airline security after September 11th was appropriate—there was obviously a need for it, to say the least. But when Columbia security decides that only the gates on 116th Street can be opened, then they are assisting the terrorists in their war, or even admitting defeat. They’re showing, essentially, that the terrorists have fully permeated their minds. Putting more police officers on the sunways was also understandable, since the last two major terrorist attacks were on mass-transit systems. Locking down the Columbia campus was not fitting, as I highly doubt that terrorists have a plan to blow up the stacks in Butler Library.

When tallying up the score for the War on Terrorism, we need to revise our scoring system. By significantly inconveniencing ourselves, we are conceding points to the terrorists. We lose when we allow the threat of terrorism to affect the way we conduct our day-to-day routine. We let terrorists win when we have a visceral reaction.

What we need now is to remember the lessons we learned dealing with the playground bully in 2nd grade. The bully won when we went out of way to avoid the swing-set, or when we went and “told on” him.

Political pundits will continue to tell us that we “live in a different time,” and signs on the highway will continue to flash “Report Any Suspicious Activity.” But just keep in mind that each time we do something like this, we are telling terrorists that what they are doing is working.

How did you get that 2nd grade bully to leave you alone? You ignored him, and his jibes. When he realized that he was no longer having an effect on you, he moved on. But every time you cried, or ran away, he just became worse.

The pundits may be right, we may live in a different time. But by inconveniencing ourselves, and conducting our lives based on fear, we are only giving terrorists another reason to terrorize.