Reader Comment – 01-19-10 – Subjective Comments

Red Team posted an interesting question to my discussion with Fred Millar about TIH chemicals and subways. About my statement at the end of the post about my lack of confidence that “we have the tools in place to reduce the deaths from a mass casualty terrorist attack", Red Team asked: “This is a fairly subjective statement. How do you compare what is reduced and what is not. What are we comparing it to? Just a thought.” It certainly is a subjective analysis, though I thought I laid out pretty clearly the basis for my lack of confidence in the posting. Measuring confidence in the political field is nearly always a subjective exercise. That does not make it any less important. Confidence is the thing that makes soldiers follow their leaders into combat, or allows voters to support a complex bit of legislation they don’t understand. Lack of confidence causes soldiers and voters to question and oppose their leaders. A more important question, one that Fred and I have ignored in our many discussions, what is a fair cost to pay for preventing unlikely casualties? This is the question that should be brought up periodically in any discussion about response to terrorism. Unfortunately, the real answer to that question would also be subjective, but that should not stop the discussion. This is the question that the politicians dislike asking. Too low an acceptable cost set by the voters and their favored programs will be opposed as too costly. Too high a cost, and they will be forced to forgo their favorite program to pay for the costly preventive measures. Perhaps it is time that we explicitly asked this question. I’ll start it here; what is the maximum acceptable cost of measures to prevent the unlikely terrorist attack on a chlorine rail car? Who wants to take a stab at answering that?