Bin Laden’s capture: should the U.S. military use “scapels” or “sledgehammers”

“Bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy,” was how Bin Laden described his goals.  [As if our elected representatives needed help bankrupting America. But unlike our politicians Bin Laden uses the term "bleeding" literally.]

In a blog post titled “Osama Won,” Reason magazine editor Radley Balko notes that Bin Laden succeeded in his related goals: “to draw the U.S. and the West into a prolonged war—an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.” Reuters reports that “the war expense topped $1 trillion in December 2009,” and CostOfWar.com keeps a running tally.

But have costly wars, a large troop presence, and nation building helped capture terrorists?  The operation to apprehend Bin Laden involved about two dozen Navy SEALs and years of surveillance and intelligence gathering.  ”A scalpel, not a sledgehammer, should be our primary counterterrorism tool,” notes Cato Institute policy analyst David Rittgers, a former Special Forces officer in Afghanistan.

The combination of intelligence and precisely-targeted force was also behind capturing 9/11 plotters Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh. “Most effective counterterrorism techniques do not rely on tens of thousands of troops stationed indefinitely in distant lands,” notes Christopher Preble, author of “The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free.”

Recent calls for pulling troops out of Afghanistan sound reasonable. The number of Al Qaeda members there is “at most … 50 to 100, maybe less,” said CIA director Leon Panetta last summer. Indiana Senator Richard Lugar argues that this does not justify “100,000 American troops and a $100 billion per year cost.”

A version of this was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on May 7, 2011.

A case for privatizing airline security

Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz have a very good article on the subject at USA Today.  It begins:

After the underwear bomber’s attempted mass murder, Americans are losing patience with the airline security system. It is bad enough that our screening process makes innocent people work far too hard to prove that they are not terrorists. It also manages to make it too easy for actual terrorists to be treated as innocent.

President Obama said the security system failed “in a potentially disastrous way.” He’s right. So how can we improve it?

The security process needs several things it is lacking. It needs continuous adaptation, with a strong focus on satisfying customers and improving results. It needs to find new and better methods of meeting the demands of customers who value safety as well as speed and efficiency. It needs to function in a dynamic environment, disciplined by rigorous competitive pressure.

In short, it needs the market.

Kiling and Schulz make great points, anticipate the opposition, and point out that

While most passengers don’t realize this, the TSA itself permits a handful of airports, such as Kansas City and Rochester, to use private security contractors under its Screening Partnership Program.

Read the whole article:

Airline security: Let’s go private: A market-based apparatus might lead to better service and — most important — safer air travel.