Two acts of terror, one of them avoidable…
It might seem like forever, but only two weeks ago the American public had to face two acts filled with terror. One of them was avoidable; the other, probably not. The avoidable one was the fire and explosion at that fertilizer plant just seventy plus miles from Dallas in West, Texas. The unavoidable one was the bombing at the Boston Marathon.
It’s ironic but expected that the event in Texas occurred where states’ rights and minimal federal government intervention is strong. Our federal inspection system has been anemic at best, traditionally starved for funding and personnel and filled with corruption. The GOP in general and the Tea Party in particular don’t want to fund anything that even carries the faint aroma of meddling in the affairs of the States, unless that meddling implies sending bacon back home to their constituent areas. The sequestering will only exacerbate this.
The consequence is a dearth of federal regulations and regulators. The States, either from lack of will, especially in this time of budget struggle, or just from laissez-faire capitalistic attitudes, where corporations are left to police themselves, have exhibited their incompetence as well in handling any kind of supervising role. I read somewhere that the fertilizer plant has to be inspected every 93 years in Texas. Whether that’s a federal requirement or state requirement, it’s just plain wrong.
I would argue that (1) the Texas event was a disaster waiting to happen, and (2) we hold the blame for letting it happen. Strong state or federal regulations (take your pick) need to be in place and enough honest and competent regulators fielded to guarantee that losses of life and property do NOT happen. Many people, myself included, laud those first responders who went in, knowing the plant fire was going to cause an explosion, to just buy enough time to get those nursing home patients to safety. I lament, though, the deaths of those good people, deaths that could have been avoided. If there’s a list of arguments for stronger government presence and control, then this is at the top. Our lack of foresight murdered these innocent victims.
The events in Boston are different. Although it’s not always true in team sports, in the defense business there’s an adage, “The offense has the advantage.” Terrorists can strike anywhere. 9/11 was a massive attack that succeeded for the terrorists beyond their wildest dreams. Surprise and building construction were on their side. But they can cause terror with more simpler means, as the events in Boston showed. Because we’re a free society, we have many accessible targets, from soft ones like crowds at sporting events to hard ones like chemical plants.
It’s impossible to protect all soft targets from terrorism. I recall a movie, starring Don Cheadle, where he thwarts a plan to blow up buses across the country (I can’t remember the name of the movie, but I’m sure some of my readers will). One bus might look like an accident; multiple ones would put fear in the hearts of the public using this type of transportation. The numbers of dead and injured in a terrorist attack give pause; the fear of being among those dead and injured in the next attack is the terror. That’s what it’s all about.
We need to do what we can do about protecting soft targets, of course, but we can’t cover everything. There’s always one more. We do this at great cost too, which is something else the terrorists want. We broke the back of the Soviet Union because they bankrupted their country trying to keep up with our weapons technology, a desire at least partly associated with their paranoid distrust of American leadership and its intentions. We are breaking our own backs now trying to keep up with the terrorists, both international and home-grown, who are intent on wreaking murder and mayhem here in our country. Many local cops and federal agents participated in just the manhunt in Boston, but that cost is nothing compared to what’s needed to protect every major target in this country.
The chemical industry, and this includes the fertilizer plant in Texas, has long opted and lobbied for self-regulation and protection. Chemical storage tanks are hard targets. The industry supposedly pays to secure them at a safe level, but that’s not true. They tell the government that if it wants the job done better, give them the funds. This is true of dams, nuclear power plants, transportation systems, weapons plants, and other hard targets. It’s ironic that corporations—some of them huge—are willing to provide health benefits for their employees, but will not provide health insurance for themselves (and those employees at work, of course) when it comes to terrorism. Government has to step in and take up the slack. If not, we might as well send an engraved invitation to the terrorists, saying, “Come and get me!”
These are the common and tattered threads linking Texas and Massachusetts. We wring our hands and say, “How could they let this happen?” Not enough people realize that there is no “they.” WE are letting this happen. While the incident in Texas could have been prevented, it’s also possible that the events in Boston could have been prevented too, although terrorist events are more difficult. Maybe we should emphasize more those possible events where a few more regulations and regulators could make a huge difference. In engineering, we often applied the rule of diminishing returns, the idea that a great amount of effort is only justified if the return is appreciable.
It’s difficult and at least morally ambiguous if not immoral to apply this to human pain and suffering, but we do it all the time in the medical field. Maybe it’s time to apply it to control potential catastrophes. I’d put more money on regulating those fertilizer and other chemical plants, something more tangible than increasing Homeland Security’s bloated budget. That should satisfy even the most ardent Tea Party supporter, assuming that such a person used any logic at all in his or her life. I’ve harped a lot about my belief that a solution to budget problems can be found in reform and setting priorities. Here we have a concrete case where both are needed.
And so it goes….
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