Raising fears of terrorism to fight terrorism?

Radley Balko gets to the heart of the matter:

By definition, the aim of "terrorism" is not to topple the U.S. government, or even to rack up a massive body count (though that seems to be a perk for them). The aim of terrorism is to cause terror. It's to scare us. Frighten us. Alter our way of life, and get our government to change its policies.

In this sense, the very people who are supposed to be protecting us from terrorists are playing right into the terrorists' hands. Despite the absence of any specific information, and despite the fact that his saying as much would do little if anything to actually thwart a pending attack, Chertoff still feels he has to go public with his "gut feeling" that something awful might happen this summer. And so the newspapers and Drudge and the blogs run with it. And now we get to go about our summer business with the foreboding cloud of a possible terror attack looming on the horizon.

To some degree, you can sympathize with the bureaucrats in the anti-terror organizations . . . they need to be seen to be doing something, even if that something isn't particularly relevant to their primary job. By going through the motions of raising the warning level — whether justified or not — they are seen to be doing something. If an attack happens, they're in the clear, "We warned you". If no attack occurs, they're still good, "We prevented an attack by raising the warning level".

About the only thing preventing them from doing this more often is the tolerance of both the media and the public for false alarms.