The Desert of the Real

Another 9/11 come and gone. More commemoration…and more exploitation of the lives lost, and of the unfounded fears of the people of this country. Yesterday, in his address to the nation Bush said:

We face an enemy determined to bring death and suffering into our homes. America did not ask for this war, and every American wishes it were over. So do I. But the war is not over, and it will not be over until either we or the extremists emerge victorious.

Does he honestly believe that we’re ever going to defeat terrorism? If this is really the goal then he’s wasting time. If he wants to end terrorism, the only way he’s going to accomplish it is indiscriminate bloodshed. In other words, our own brand of terrorism. We need to wipe out everyone who disagrees with us, who might ever have motivation to hurt us. Basically…everyone. At the very least pretty much everyone of middle eastern descent.

If that’s not what he’s doing, and thankfully it’s not, he’s blowing smoke. The war will never be won, and he doesn’t want it to be. It’s like the drug war…we don’t fight it because we can win, we fight it because it brings money and power with it.

This struggle has been called a clash of civilizations. In truth, it is a struggle for civilization. We are fighting to maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations. And we are fighting for the possibility that good and decent people across the Middle East can raise up societies based on freedom, and tolerance, and personal dignity.

Right…we’re fighting to protect the freedom of free nations to subjugate their people and trample the cause of liberty. We are fighting so they can raise up these societies under the thumb of foreign governments. Sovereign…as long as you do what we want you to do. And then we’ll look all surprised and hurt when you try to throw off this oppression.

Worst of all….

Our nation has endured trials, and we face a difficult road ahead. Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country. So we must put aside our differences, and work together to meet the test that history has given us. We will defeat our enemies, we will protect our people, and we will lead the 21st century into a shining age of human liberty.

Right…liberty…. The freedom to be searched when travelling. The freedom to be required to carry and present papers on request. The freedom to have your movements tracked by an ever increasing central government power. The freedom to have the content of the press reviewed by the government before release. The freedom to have your home invaded by storm troopers for posession of materials disliked by the government. The freedom to have no form of redress of greivances against the government. The freedom to be incarcerated indefinitely, without being charged, because the government views you as potentially hostile.

Yes….a shining age of liberty. Lets all put aside our differences. Lets abandon the silly pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and come together in the common cause of government power. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Look at this shiny thing over here…look look, one day we might possibly maybe in some chain of events in the future be attacked by a terrorist with some sort of devestating weapon. (Nuclear or otherwise)

Well, I’m not buying it. Alan Harris has calculated that the chance of any single individual in the world, (not just the united states) being killed by an international terrorist over the course of an 80-year lifespan is about the same as the likelihood of being killed over the same interval by the impact on the earth of an asteroid or comet. We are vastly more likely to be killed by ordinary causes…drowning in our bathtubs, lightning strikes, or deer jumping out in front of our car…than we are by terrorism within our country.

Even if Al’Qaeda were somehow able to radically turn around their organization, find all new funding, and become masters of planning, and then pull off a ‘9/11’ every three months for the next five years, the chance of any individual Amercian being killed in one of them would still be two one-hundredths of one percent.

The reality is that the number of americans killed by international terrorists in the united states SINCE 9/11 is the same number as were killed by them in the 5 years prior: 0. Even those killed overseas by terrorism is statistically insignificant. In five years we have not been able to find a single true Al Qaeda cell operating within the United States…despite all of our rampant wiretapping and other government snooping.

Now, just recently we had the big “scare” of people carrying liquid explosives on a plane, and so we all had to give up carrying on just about anything. Coffee, tea, water, fruit juice, medicines, gel-filled breasts/bras, etc. We were told they were about to commit mass-murder on an unprecedented scale. (Of course, what they really meant was unprecedented in Britain…which is rather a different story.) Even now, politicians continue to beat this drum.

So what about this? Well, as Bruce Schneier has pointed out Chemists are debunking this as really next to impossible to accomplish. Just because movies love to put forward the idea that there are two substances that are perfectly safe to handle apart, but which become incredibly dangerous mixed doesn’t mean they exist. Particularly at a level of danger that would be effective for bringing down a plane. (Which is harder than most people think it is.) All of us know, in one way or another, that movies make things up. People in my line of work groan repeatedly at cyber-crime type movies. Computers don’t have interfaces like are often put forward, and passwords are (usually) not cracked with a couple seconds effort sitting at a remote terminal randomly guessing passwords. Real life just doesn’t work the way it works in the movies. But we suspend belief for the sake of the entertainment.

The trouble is, that sometimes that suspension sticks with us. We then carry the things we see on “24” and in Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwartzenegger movies into reality with us and when we hear that someone wanted to mix liquids and blow up a plane we believe it is possible. Especially when politicians and so-called national security experts (who are really just experts at stirring up fear to raise money for their pet projects) come out and assure everyone that it’s a real threat and reinforce it with stupid policies.

So, here is the reality, as collected from the writings of various chemists (most of which you can find the full reports of from links in Bruce’s post). What they wanted to make was called Triacetone Triperoxide. It’s a high explosive that can supposedly be made from common household agents…or at least that’s what we’re told. The three primary active ingredients here are H₂O₂ (or Hydrogen peroxide), H₂SO₄ (or sulfuric acid), and Acetone (i.e. nail polish remover). Seems easy enough to find…most of us have these compounds in one form or another in our homes right now. The problem is, you need very concentrated forms of the first two compounds. Hydrogen Peroxide like you likely have in your house is usually a rougly 3% solution. You can get concentrated version by boiling off the water, but it’s a painstaking and risky process, and it would take a lot of bottles to get a decent amount of the pure stuff.

Then, you have to mix it with, (again, a very high concentration of) sulfuric acid. This must be done very carefully, as it will heat as you mix it. If it gets too hot, boom, you will at the very least be severely burned, if not killed, and nobody else with you. Mission failed. Apparently you COULD mix this part ahead of time, but then there’s the matter of keeping it cool, and keeping it in a container that it won’t react with…which is pretty much only glass. And you’ll need a stopper that won’t get eaten as well…again…glass. And glass doesn’t seel all that well with glass.

It’s interesting to note here that this solution is called a pirahna bath, and is used by chemists when you need to get glass REALLY clean. And http://www.mne.umd.edu/LAMP/Sop/Piranha_SOP.htm”>this is a typical warning that accompanies this stuff. Not pleasant, certainly not safe. Transporting it, especially in glass, would be extremely difficult. Particularly hidden in your bag in a busy airport. It’s certainly going to stick out.

Then you still have to mix it with Acetone. You’re on the plane, and it’s time to do the deed. Just pick up your bottles of acetone and the oxidizer and your dry ice (or large amounts of regular ice), ice packs, and whatever else you thought to bring to keep it cool, plus your beakers, glass mixing rods, dropper, addition funnel, etc and head to the bathroom. Yes, you need all that stuff. Remember the oxidizer will react to and eat pretty much everything but glass. You can’t just mix this stuff in the toilet, as it’ll explode alright, but it’ll be a small controlled explosion in which you will die horribly, but nobody else.

So you manage to get into the plane, and the bathroom with all of this stuff, and now you have to mix it. Slowly and carefully. You have to keep it cool, say about -78C, while adding the reactant drop by drop. By the time you’ve almost reached the US from britian you might have a few grams…which ought to be enough to say…blow yourself up in the lavatory, but not enough to bring down the plane. Lets say you get really unbelievably lucky, and not only survive this part, and manage not to be overcome by the fumes, and keep everyone else from noticing the fumes, but make that first few grams in half the time and start on the second batch. This stuff is highly unstable and is likely to go off on its own long before you ever get the second batch done. The early reports were talking about using flash bulbs as detenators. Well, like most substances of this nature, you don’t NEED a detanator. If you look at it wrong this stuff will go off. Even if you could keep it stable, the reality is you would need a LOT, and it would need to be well made. Otherwise, at best you’re going to do minor damage to the plain. Panic, sure, and some people, particularly those not strapped in, might get sucked out in decompression, but the plane will likely still hold together and land with little loss of life. (See Flight 243 for example.)

In other words, this is simply not a threat, like most of the things they care us with. The reality is, there is no way to stop terrorism in this manner. There is always a way. Ban liquids…and people can make explosives that look like books. Ban books, and people can make clothes out of explosive materials…or at least close enough to pass inspection. Ban clothes, and people can smuggle them in body cavities. Add mandatory body cavity searches…and we can have explosives surgically implanted. It will never stop. Stopping terrorism is simply not the goal here, rather the goal is to create fear.

Consider for a moment. What, practically, was the difference between what happened when those terrorists were caught, and what would have happened if all the laws of the universe changed long enough for them to succeed in this asinine plan? Bruce Schneier proposes this list, which I think is fairly accurate:

• Planes Explode, People die


• Flights are canceled


• Chaos in the airports


• Bans on carry-on luggage


• Calls for tougher security measures


• Political Posturing


• False Alarms


• Widespread fear

So…what is the difference? The difference between that, and what actually happened is that nobody actually died. So, now the terrorists don’t even have to come up with a workable plan. It doesn’t matter how far-fetched or stupid it is, as long as they leak it to us, we’ll react as if it had actually suceeeded. They don’t have to invest money in plane tickets or passports, they don’t have to buy materials (or at least very few), and they don’t need to risk their lives. Just have a plan, and we’ll throw our country into a tizzy.

Look, it’s just silly for our governments to hold up every silly plot they uncover and tell us how scared we should be. For the media to trumpet all the potential hazards over and over again to us. Just deal with it. I don’t need to know every time someone’s home gets robbed, every time someone gets mugged, or every time a terrorist plot is foiled. I know these things happen, it’s a reality of living in a fallen world. Handle it, report it sure, and be done with it.

This war is not going to be won in the middle east. It isn’t going to be won by political grandstanding. It’s going to be won when people wake up to the fact that terrorism, like crime, is a reality. We take steps to be alert but we recognize that there are many things outside our control. And then we accept the risk that is inherent to life and get on with living it.

Look, the reality is that we can’t even protect every citizen from average, ordinary, everyday crime. We can’t keep banks from being robbed, and our citizens from being mugged, or murdered. We can’t keep drugs from crossing our border. We’ve been trying to do that for decades. Why in the world do we think we can “end” terrorism? Tell you what, when you have found a way to end crime, then you come tell me your plan to end terrorism.

It’s really deep in here. My goodness, I certainly hope he checked for polyps while he was up there or that was a wasted opportunity. For that matter, he probably could’ve checked his lymph nodes. Honestly, did Bush descend on a cloud to give this speech?

A couple of specific notes…

But up close, he is a great communicator, in a way that, in my opinion, Ronald Reagan was not.

Uh…right. When reading this…in case you’re just shrugging like my wife did…remember who his audience is here. It isn’t people with a sense of perspective. He’s writing to conservatives in a spiritual frenzy that makes Brownsville look orthodox. Come on, really, did he actually just elevate Bush over Reagan? Reagan wasn’t perfect, but they’re so far apart that any sort of attempt at comparison is absurd.

Above all, he was impassioned. I have never seen a politician speak so evidently from the heart, about big issues—freedom, most of all.

If he was passionate about it, it must’ve been about restricting it.

I’ve sometimes worried about how President Bush can withstand the Washington snake pit and deal with a daily barrage of hate from the ignorant left that, in my opinion, dwarfs in both volume and injustice the abuse directed against any prior President. (No one accused Lincoln of planning the attack on Fort Sumter.)

Uh…actually… Yes, they did. Most people writing at the time did. Historians with the courage to ignore the effect of an assassin’s bullet do. And, least of all, I do.

But don’t miss the point. Once again, he’s writing to rabid Republicans who don’t have enough historical perspective to realize the parties crossed paths after the war and thus Lincoln was really a Democrat. His ideals were antithetical to the Republican platform…or at least to its stated platform. They’re promoting him as a better president than they think Lincoln was!

You have to wonder what the Republicans are high on, and why it isn’t being investigated by the DEA.

Yesterday on the Dividing Line Dr. White answered a question on whether or not wine, as referenced in Scripture, was actually wine, or if it was some watered down concoction.

I, of course, maintain that the distinction is really irrelevant. Scriptures prohibition is against drunkeness, not consumption, whether it takes five drinks or five hundred. However, that’s not my primary reason for writing today. Rather, as a preface to his answer, and in this blog entry Dr White indicates his complete lack of interest in debating this issue.

Now, I don’t mean or intend to question Dr White’s right to limit his scope. He is dealing with a lot of fronts right now, and compared to the issues that he is actively involved in defending at the moment, this one least needs his attention. It’s a very simple and basic issue that any biblically informed Christian ought to be able to handle. Far better that his considerable talents were applied to the weightier issues of the defense of the Gospel.

Yet his comments went a bit further and bordered on questioning the validity of the argument, and I think that’s a very good question. Specifically, Is it a worthwhile use of our time to defend the consumption of alcohol? Would it not be the better part to simply give it up, (esp since so many who defend it don’t even consume it, or if they do it’s such a small and meaningless part of their lives)? Would it not create an easy peace?

My answer to that question has to be no. Believe me, I recognize that this is a horrible place to have to defend the doctrine of Christian Liberty. Alcoholism is all too common, and drunk driving deaths are at an all time high right? Well…actually no. The number has dropped more than 40% since 1982. But what about the ridiculously high ‘alcohol-related deaths’ numbers? Right…well, like the absurd gun-related deaths numbers, these are artificially inflated by using loose definitions in what you include. If a sober person runs a red-light and T-bones someone who had a beer before they got behind the wheel that counts as an “Alcohol related death”. Same for so-called “binge-drinking” where if you read the definition in those reports, bing-drinking is defined as having 5 or more drinks on one occaision without regard to time, or physical statistics of the drinker. So if a large man eats well, and consumes 5 beers in the course of say, a 5 hour football party that’s binge drinking. All to support the neo-prohibitionist movement. But I digress.

The reality is we don’t get to pick the battles we fight. I don’t particularly enjoy being put in the position of defending drug users, sex offenders, and “drunk drivers”, but that’s what is required to oppose the oppression represented in the drug laws and enforcement, sex offender registries, and DUI laws that are really incremental pushes for prohibition.

H.L. Mencken said:The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

I have to agree. They are a favorite target, because the average citizen finds it unsavory to come to their defense. It’s certainly unpopular. In this manner they establish a foothold and a precedent from which to launch further attacks. We see this already with smoking. It was unsavory to defend smokers, they were demonized by the elite and the media until nobody wanted to side with them. Incrementally the government has encroached on their freedom to enjoy a smoke, until now there are finally people pushing to ban smoking in their own homes or cars, especially if there are kids. To charge them with child abuse if they do, in some cases even if they only smoke outside. Indeed, many areas are now banning smoking out-of-doors as well.

Guess what, we’re already seeing the next wave in terms of junk food. The ‘nanny-statists’ already have their sights set, and have been demonizing the fast food chains, junk food companies and people who market them, and setting up obese folks as vicitims. More than that, they’ve taken a page from the neo-prohibitionist playbook and re-defined what it means to be obese to get greater numbers of victims to bolster their cause.

What we’re seeing now in the church is no different. Because of the negative view drunkeness has in the world, the SBC and prohibitionists within the church are trying to use that to strongarm people into compliance. They try to equate social drinking with drunken behavior. They twist Scripture until it nearly falls apart to try to support their cause, and because defending it isn’t all that pleasant at times, they’re succeeding. In particular since many people (rightly) don’t want to be associated with the folks within the liberty camp who take their liberty to extremes as a license, and who wield it like a club to look down their noses at others. It doesn’t help that the prohibitionists paint us all with the same brush.

Well, unfortunately, we don’t get to pick where we’re going to fight our battles. I’m sure we’d all rather fight our battles over something much more acceptable to a larger group of people…like eating unclean animals but that’s not the point being attacked.

So we come back to the original question…is it worth it? I say it is. Absolutely it is. I think the LBCF Chapter 21 makes it clear that it must be important:

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his word, or not contained in it. So that to believe such doctrines, or obey such commands out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also.

For us to simply accept this is to put the church above Scripture. Which is fine, if you’re a papist, that’s part and parcel of your religion. But for a protestant it’s reprehensible. To go further than God’s word, and to attempt to bind the conscience of men where God has left it free is to put yourself above God. A dangerous place for our leaders, and a dangerous place for us if we submit to it.