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On Terrorism Alert ...

As a historian, I can't help but think that, generations from now, our descendants will look back on 9/11 and be amazed at our odd reactions to it, even three years later.

*While there is still no adequate means of scanning shipping containers into our ports, FBI agents in Whatcom County, Washington, subpoenaed public library records in order to try to determine who may have scrawled an allegedly pro-Ossama bin Laden note in the margin of a book.

*Public schools across the United States were put on alert this week because of reports that the floor plan of a public school in Jones County, Georgia, was downloaded to a computer in Iraq. Do you have any idea where Jones County, Georgia, is? Neither did I and I live here. So I looked it up. It's northeast of Macon. A good bit of the county is covered by the Oconee National Forest. The county seat is at Gray, Georgia: population, 2,189. Do you begin to get the picture? This is the biggest event in Jones County history since Sherman's boys marched roughly through Georgia a 140 years ago. A loon could think that Muslim terrorists were planning to repeat what Yankee terrorists did then. Officials in Jones County have been told to keep an eye out for "prolonged 'static surveillance' by people disguised as panhandlers, shoe shiners, or newspaper or flower vendors." What a hoot! I'll have to remember not to peddle my papers anywhere near Jones County.

*The events of 9/11 were apparently planned by a network of terrorists centered in Afghanistan, so the president of the United States concentrates available military personnel and resources on an invasion of Iraq, where they are mired in guerilla warfare.

These are problems, large and small, in what "management science" calls "resource allocation."

Posted on Saturday, October 9, 2004 at 3:45 AM | Comments (15) | Return

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