Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I agree that over-regulation is a danger and that shoe removal for those boarding airplanes is absurd and indeed merely ratchets up the sense of fear and foreboding that we should keep to a minimum. Fear, whether deliberately promoted by some governments around election time or through regulations that play to yesterday’s threats, has the potential to undermine democracy itself. I have often thought that September 11-style attacks are now almost certainly impossible less because the cabin door is sealed (a regulation) than because the passengers would turn on the terrorists with a vengeance regardless of the risks to their lives knowing what may well be their fate. Some regulations and avoidances are easy and should be used, others make no sense. Public transit is an easy target and there are real limits to what can be done to protect it, not that we shouldn’t try some relatively non-intrusive things. Public transit will only become more important to the functioning of society in the future regardless of the risk of terrorism and courage is indeed the best counsel. (On a personal note I am far better at courage in these matters personally than I am with regard to my (adult) children whose relaxed attitude to the possible threat to Toronto transit worried me greatly though I did manage to avoid giving excessive advice that would be ignored in any case.) I also have no problem with quasi-militarized policing and agree that the line is not easily drawn. I guess that my quarrel is primarily with the war in Iraq which was said by many before the fact to be almost certain to be counterproductive with regard to terrorism. Given how easy it is to engage in terrorism and how hard it is to stop all of the time, any action that inevitably aids terrorist recruitment without dramatically diminishing terrorist safe space and support is certain to be a net loss in the ‘global war on terrorism’. Even a military action that does provide some real gains of the sort mentioned is likely to be overwhelmed by the negative unintended consequences of military action (increased spontaneous recruitment of those that identify with the nations under attack in the name of counterterrorism). I think in the end the courage to not change our societies in dramatic ways is very important and our best hope to minimize terrorist successes (killings) is to keep most within their wider communities on the side of peace and to outthink them more often than they outthink us. Part of that for me is almost never engaging in conventional warfare other than defensively and with the sanction of international organizations.