The Lockdown and Letting the Terrorists Win

My professor just quoted some public commentator who cancelled a debate with him that had been scheduled for today as having questioned the lockdown of Boston last week. Why, if the point of terrorism is to create terror, did we let them win? Why did we fold to our terror, and shut down a whole city? Well, here's the answer: how many people got killed during the lockdown? As best I understand, not a one. That, to me, is a win. I'll take "letting the terrorists win" in the sense of acting scared for a day or two any day, if it means no one gets killed. Or, to put it another way, you wouldn't have had to tell me to "shelter-in-place" last Friday, I'd've done it of my own initiative. You could scarcely have paid me enough to step out the front door. Good god, I would've been terrified. For my life. And rationally so: there was a real danger. Terrorists try to create fear. This is within their power. Violence creates danger creates fear. We can't fight them on this: if they get to cause violence, they get to cause fear. We can try to prevent them causing violence. You know what did a great job of that? The lockdown and manhunt.

This is not to say that we should always do anything possible to avoid exposing anyone to any possible violence. Shutting down all airplanes forever, for instance, would have massive adverse consequences. Telling everyone to stay inside for a day, however, is not in that category: it was a sensible precaution against a specific, imminent threat, and it successfully prevented any further casualties from the manhunt.