How Safe Are We?
Eleven nuclear power plants operate near Chicago. Can saboteurs get at them? Probably, according to a Time investigation two months ago. Long, slow freight trains rumble through the city, cargo ships dock in Calumet Harbor, semis course toward the Loop along our expressways. Should we worry? Absolutely, according to Stephen Flynn’s 2004 book America the Vulnerable. Would terrorists have any more difficulty blowing up subway trains in Chicago than they did in London? Trust your gut on that one.
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The media have sporadically offered depressing snapshots of what appears to be the haphazard state of American counter-terrorism. The Tribune complained in a July 23 editorial that “anti-terrorist security at hazardous chemical plants remains dangerously uneven.” In Illinois alone, according to government data cited by the Tribune, there are as many as 13 plants in areas so densely populated that an attack on any one of them could kill a million people.
None of the news is encouraging. The Atlantic’s January/February issue was enough to scare the bejeebers out of anyone. Richard Clarke imagined a dystopian future of terrorist and counterterrorist thrusts, a future largely predicated on what he considers the blunders and missed opportunities of the Bush administration. In the same issue James Fallows called homeland security “largely a waste of money,” the war of ideas one “we have not seriously begun to fight,” and our measures for corralling “loose nukes” profoundly inadequate. But if the Atlantic intended to be provocative, it failed. No one’s in the streets demanding higher taxes to buy up loose nukes. Counterterrorism hasn’t become a political issue. And journalism hasn’t taken the obvious next step.
Journalists don’t either. They appreciate a few clear facts as much as their audience. An excursion into the uncomfortable truths and ambiguities of counterterrorism takes everyone to a place no one wants to go. Fallows wrote in the Atlantic, “We cannot waste any more time on make-believe.” But others see make-believe as a sign of robust national character. To quote a great newspaper, it’s splendid of Chicago to show we’re not “caving in to the shallow threat of terrorism by building, and thinking, safer and smaller.”
For Michael Wilmington, the Tribune’s main film critic for the past 12 years, the advantages of this rearrangement of chairs aren’t so clear. But he’ll be able to take time off. On July 21 he asked entertainment editor Scott Powers for a couple weeks of vacation–the longest stretch of days off he says he’s ever requested at the Tribune–and said he needed to skip the Toronto film festival in mid-September. The reason is that his elderly mother, who lives with him, is very ill and he has to take care of her.
“No,” said Powers.
