I’ve said most of what I have to say in immediate response to the terrorist murders in Bali. I haven’t linked to any of the other responses because I wanted to focus on clarifying my own thoughts rather than getting involved in the disputes that can easily arise at a time like this. Most of the Oz blogs linked on the left have something to say, and most of it is thoughtful and valuable.

I will respond to one point raised in the comments thread, and on her blog, by Asparagirl who quoted my observation that

“The same news bulletin that brought the first news of Bali also reported a car crash in New South Wales, with three teenagers dead and three more badly injured. Six kids died in another crash only a few weeks ago.”

and responded:

I don’t think I like your attempts at equivalency here. The latter examples are tragic accidents. The former, Bali, is mass murder. Both events may result in dead people whose families will grieve them, but that’s where the similarities stop..

I had thought about including a disclaimer about moral equivalence, but decided it was unnecessary, given that the point of the post was to say that we should take some time to think about grieving families before rushing on to the issue of how to respond.

To be absolutely clear before going on, there is no moral equivalence between a car crash (usually the result of negligence or recklessness) and a terrorist murder. I fully support our government in its determination to hunt down the killers in Bali and those who armed and financed them.

However, I think Asparagirl is wrong on the facts when she goes on to say:

There will always be tragic accidents; there need not be murderous acts of terrorism. It *can* be stopped

In important respects, fighting terrorism is very like fighting road deaths. With determination and sacrifice we can make progress, but final victory is at best a long-term aspiration.

On the other hand, the fight against the road toll should give us some hope. When we started to take this issue seriously, with the introduction of compulsory seat belt laws around 1970, the general view was that road ‘accidents’ were just part of life, and that nothing could really be done about them. In the following thirty years, we’ve cut road deaths in half and more, despite more people and more cars. We’ve saved thousand of lives, if not tens of thousands.

We’ve also learned to accept a lot of inconveniences in the process, such as random breath testing, and to distinguish between such inconveniences and threats to basic civil liberties. This is something that will be even more important in the fight against terrorism, where drawing this line is going to be more difficult.