In response to the foiled attack today, the U.K. government has banned all hand luggage from airplanes. No laptops. No books. No MP3 players. Nothing but limited toiletries, keys, baby food, and medically necessary items.

The point of terrorism is to make us afraid. The UK response to a foiled plot is to create an unspecified period during which fliers are arbitrarily deprived of iPods, novels and dignity.

If this is a good idea now, then why won’t it still be a good idea in a year? A decade? After all, terrorist plots will always exist in potentia (can you prove that no terrorist plots are hatching at this moment?) Until they handcuff us all nude to our seats and dart us with tranquilizers, there will always be the possibility that a passenger will do something naughty on a plane (even then, who knows how much semtex and roofing nails a bad guy could hide in his colon?).

Terrorism isn’t about killing people. You’re still more likely to die in a traffic accident than as a result of a terrorist bomb in Israel; in the U.S., lightning poses a greater risk than terror attack. Terrorists know this. Their point is to disrupt our way of life, to make us afraid, and to make us overreact. And on that front, they’re winning, and have been doing so since 9/12/01.