5 ms·

Or option C, 9/11 was a one-off, special circumstance that was difficult to create in the first place and nearly impossible to replicate.

mikeash 11y ago
9/11 certainly was pretty unusual, but packing a suitcase with explosives and nails and hauling it into a crowd of civilians is the sort of thing that happens fairly regularly in some parts of the world.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  See Boston marathon. I don't consider it a particularly sophisticated attack, but it was undeniably effective both at injuring people and at spreading FUD. Aircraft are an attractive target if you can cause the aircraft to crash, but most terrorist attacks on aircraft don't have that result.
  - peteretep 11y ago
    > and at spreading FUD It was? Has the behaviour of Bostonians changed significantly? Were political goals achieved?
    - dsr_ 11y ago
      Bostonianish person here: it hasn't changed Boston. My brother-in-law was running the Marathon that day, he finished about 30 minutes before the explosions. Watertown residents' cars are no longer universally decorated with "W Strong" stickers. The feds had to strain mightily at the jury pool to get jurors willing to consider the death penalty -- sentiment in Massachusetts was 2:1 in favor of having Tsarnaev rot in prison. Insofar as the Tsarnaevs had a political goal, I don't think they achieved it.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    The Boston maraton bombing cost a fuck ton to clean up and deal with too - many thousand times as much as the enemy used (what 100 dollars worth of cooking ware?). That is the problem with terrorism.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > 9/11 certainly was pretty unusual, but packing a suitcase with explosives and nails and hauling it into a crowd of civilians is the sort of thing that happens fairly regularly in some parts of the world. Sure, but the places where it happens anything that could even remotely be described as fairly regularly in parts of the world where the social and economic conditions and legitimate political outlets for dissatisfaction with those conditions are all vastly different than in the part of the world that has the TSA doing screening at airports, i.e., the US. While it has happened at times in the US (e.g., Boston Marathon), it doesn't happen enough that the expected number of times it would be expected to have happened in airport lines if such events were even distributed among similarly-sized crowds would be anywhere close to 1.

mikeash 11y ago

9/11 certainly was pretty unusual, but packing a suitcase with explosives and nails and hauling it into a crowd of civilians is the sort of thing that happens fairly regularly in some parts of the world.

Someone1234 11y ago
See Boston marathon. I don't consider it a particularly sophisticated attack, but it was undeniably effective both at injuring people and at spreading FUD. Aircraft are an attractive target if you can cause the aircraft to crash, but most terrorist attacks on aircraft don't have that result.
- peteretep 11y ago
  > and at spreading FUD It was? Has the behaviour of Bostonians changed significantly? Were political goals achieved?
  - dsr_ 11y ago
    Bostonianish person here: it hasn't changed Boston. My brother-in-law was running the Marathon that day, he finished about 30 minutes before the explosions. Watertown residents' cars are no longer universally decorated with "W Strong" stickers. The feds had to strain mightily at the jury pool to get jurors willing to consider the death penalty -- sentiment in Massachusetts was 2:1 in favor of having Tsarnaev rot in prison. Insofar as the Tsarnaevs had a political goal, I don't think they achieved it.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  The Boston maraton bombing cost a fuck ton to clean up and deal with too - many thousand times as much as the enemy used (what 100 dollars worth of cooking ware?). That is the problem with terrorism.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> 9/11 certainly was pretty unusual, but packing a suitcase with explosives and nails and hauling it into a crowd of civilians is the sort of thing that happens fairly regularly in some parts of the world. Sure, but the places where it happens anything that could even remotely be described as fairly regularly in parts of the world where the social and economic conditions and legitimate political outlets for dissatisfaction with those conditions are all vastly different than in the part of the world that has the TSA doing screening at airports, i.e., the US. While it has happened at times in the US (e.g., Boston Marathon), it doesn't happen enough that the expected number of times it would be expected to have happened in airport lines if such events were even distributed among similarly-sized crowds would be anywhere close to 1.