[DerpObvious]

> it's not because Americans are irrational

> One thing our society values highly is justice, and that often requires a disproportionately expensive response to an unjust act, and not solely to buy deterrence.

A disproportionate response of the kind seen on 9/11 is mind-blowingly irrational, even if you call it pursuing "justice".

If you are so in the pursuit of "justice" you inflict a worse injury to yourself than you originally suffered, I'm not sure I can call it "rational" behavior anymore.

Especially if you're not doing it for deterrent effect.

[twoodfin]

That's not my point. I'm not interested in arguing how far the response to 9/11 was from some policy ideal. I'm trying to dispel the notion that as long as "only" a few thousand people are dying annually, then the rational response is to treat terrorism with no more seriousness than anything else that kills a few thousand people each year, such as ladders. That's an argument that people actually make here with some frequency.

[DerpObvious]

> I'm not interested in arguing how far the response to 9/11 was from some policy ideal. I'm trying to dispel the notion that as long as "only" a few thousand people are dying annually, then the rational response is to treat terrorism with no more seriousness than anything else that kills a few thousand people each year, such as ladders.

My point is that treating it as any other spree or serial killing is rational - we already have mechanisms to deal with these kinds of events, including laws about the use of "weapons of mass destruction", etc.

The whole point of terrorism is to provoke a reaction outside of that normal process and get people to react to the terror... causing an allergy-style overreaction from the populace, much like we saw from 9/11 in the US.

So the rational response IS to simply go "ho-hum" and treat it as just another criminal act. Taking the cowardly path of "something scared me, spite it with full power phasers!" is what the terrorists wants, and is ultimately self-defeating.

Comparing it to more dangerous things - things that are statistically more likely to kill you - is a way to fight against our animalistic panic to smash! kill! destroy! the thing causing fear, and demonstrate that it is just fear we're responding to, rather than a rational danger.

tl;dr: Spending the privacy and civil rights we have on stopping the fear caused by terrorism is the height of cowardice and irrationality.