[ I wrote this post for the Massachusetts political blog Blue Mass Group. ]
Boston and Massachusetts officials, and some people here at Blue Mass Group, have tried to justify Boston's overreaction to some hanging lights last week by saying, "what if they hadn't done what they did, and a real bomb went off?" This makes as much sense to me as trying to justify the Iraq war by asking, "what if we had not invaded Iraq, and there were another terrorist attack in the US?"
Or, they say, "people were just doing their job!" Why, they ask, are we second-guessing the actions of the bomb squad, who were responding to a call? Keeping with the Iraq analogy, this is the "support the troops" tack: It equates criticizing bad policy with attacking the police officers (soldiers) who carry it out.
Boston is not under a serious threat of bombs, but it does have a process of random panic that is supposed to protect us from that threat and is actually the problem, itself. Follow my reasoning, below the fold.
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