Texas software engineer Joseph Stack did not fit any terrorist profile, but on a sunny day he flew his plane into the tax administration building in Texas. Apart from the fact that we share Stack’s distaste for the IRS, his terrorist act is a watershed event: there is no security in this world. You can profile Arabs, but the shoe-bomber, the rich kid from Nigeria, and the tax terrorist could not have been intercepted by any feasible means. Private planes are too many, airports are too close to cities, and there is no way to prevent disgruntled individuals from crashing into buildings.
Nation states were built on the promise of wide-scale security for their citizens, but it is clear now that the world has returned to the historical norm—every man must watch his own back.
