Here’s yet another example of how governments — democracies, in particular — must constantly re-evaluate their internal security due to the terrorist threat:
BERLIN – With the second suspect in a nearly successful train bombing now in custody, Germany is being forced to reevaluate how secure it really is, given that the attacks were stopped by a technical glitch, not by the work of security agencies.
A technical glitch=luck. MORE:
Though it’s still unclear whether the bombing suspects – both young Lebanese men – were part of a larger network of Islamic radicals, their attempted attacks have awakened Germany to its vulnerabilities and cast new scrutiny on counterterrorism efforts.
In the five years since Al Qaeda hijacker Mohammed Atta executed the final details of the 9/11 plot here, Germany’s counterterrorism landscape has changed markedly. Germans have largely accepted new security measures, including expanded surveillance powers of security agencies, loosened privacy-protection laws, and computer profiling by police.
But they’ve been hesitant to support tougher measures, such as a proposed antiterror database, as many Germans feel their opposition to the Iraq war has made them largely immune to the attacks like bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.
That’s a lot of words meaning: there is complacency. AND:
“From the terrorists’ point of view, of course we are a target,” says Rolf Tophoven, a prominent German terrorism expert. Analysts say hosting US military bases, Germany’s post-World War II closeness with Israel, and sending German troops to Afghanistan, could all put Germany on militants’ target list.
That realization has spurred discussion about new security measures. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has endorsed “carefully” increasing video surveillance of public areas and creating an antiterrorism database. A draft proposal of a law expanding security agencies’ counterterrorism measures, which includes a provision for police and intelligence agents to pool information in an antiterror database, is currently circulating in the German parliament.
In the recent attempted attack, bombs were brought onto two trains headed for the western German cities of Dortmund and Koblenz on July 31. The detonators on both went off, but the gas-canister bombs failed to explode.
This re-evaluation comes after a close call. The problem is: often governments act to shore up security after an actual event — a characteristic that doesn’t just apply to terrorism. Good policy making is anticipating worst-case scenarios and being ready for them by enacting policy in a way where it’s “sold” to diverse segments of the society so there’s a consensus that it’s something in the (nonpartisan) national interest. In the U.S. this has become (and is) a wedge issue == and the wedge issue aspect has weakened national unity on this most critical of issues.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.