While I am obviously on the same side of the fence as Diego Gambetta, who does a good job of getting a sober perspective on terrorist acts in his piece "Reason and Terror" at Boston Review, I think Gambetta's analysis is too lenient, too soft, in its assessment of 9/11-related irrationality in America. To consider Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" and whatnot even as a failed but real attempt at rational thinking--and not an obvious, deliberate political subterfuge aimed at keeping the agenda of his bosses, who care little about any pragmatic strategy for opposing terrorism or terrorist acts--seems unduly credulous.

Concluding, Gambetta says: "And while we may be prepared to put up with some infringements on our civil liberties, we can do without those that come merely from overestimating the threat. As the social scientist Jon Elster told me, 'Traditionally, liberties could be overridden only in the case of a "clear and present danger." Now it seems as if they can be overridden if the danger, although far from clear, is sufficiently large.' And if we work on the principle that we do not know what we do not know, anything can look large enough to merit the intrusion of the authorities and the trampling of liberty."

This seems slippery to me, and I can't help thinking of Franklin (again) when I read this: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." What, if anything at all, merits "the intrusion of the authorities and the trampling of liberty"? (The Franklin quotation and other related stuff can be found here.)