Terrorists May Think: ‘Vegas, Baby!’

Pity poor Bill Young, the sheriff-elect of Glitter Gulch. He has yet to formally take office and he’s already being treated by the locals as if he were the fictional Police Chief Brody of Steven Spielberg’s classic movie “Jaws.”

Just as Roy Scheider’s screen character evoked local disdain for suggesting his island beaches be closed during a profitable holiday weekend because of a hungry man-eating shark, Vegas’ new top lawman drew a chorus of howls when he warned this month that Vegas was a “prime target” for a terrorist attack. And in the event of such an attack, Young said at a local gaming conference, “We are done as the mecca of American tourism.”

Young, of course, ran right into the third rail of the Vegas ethos: Never let uncomfortable realities interfere with the mythologies that lure in a mind-boggling 35 million tourists a year -- visitors who obligingly leave behind more than $20 billion. So paranoid are city fathers about bad publicity that the police department’s commander for anti-terrorism said that even if an actual terrorist act were prevented, “We won’t be able to talk about it because reports in the media will have an [economic] impact themselves.” And yet all these purely commercial fears aside, it’s dead obvious that Las Vegas is -- from a terrorist’s point of view -- exactly what the military likes to call a “target-rich environment.”

Consider the lure: Eighteen of the world’s 21 biggest hotels crowd the Vegas Strip. A half-scale Eiffel Tower beckons. The 39-story, glimmering, gold-faced Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino is but a few hundred yards from the international airport. The 1,149-foot Stratosphere Observation Tower -- the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River -- sprouts like a giant stick-pin on a map. The laser beam atop the Luxor Hotel -- itself a mammoth black glass pyramid -- is so bright, it can be seen by orbiting spacecraft.

Think about the symbolism. Here is an entire city predicated on all that is antithetical and offensive to the fundamentalist mind. Las Vegas is a pagan haven dedicated to satisfying all of the base urges of godless infidels, a swirling neon metropolis of casinos, strip bars and restaurants, with America’s only legal brothels just a short ride away over the county line.

Don’t think I’m giving anything away here to potential terrorists. Remember that shortly before the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, five of the 19 hijackers met in a seedy motel on the Vegas Strip. And as the recent terror attacks in Bali and Kenya made clear, Al Qaeda has pleasure resorts firmly in its sights.

Yet nearly 100,000 visitors keep coming daily by train, plane and automobile into this city that could be considered the next logical terrorist target. This coming New Year, almost 100% of Vegas’ 125,000 hotel rooms along the Strip will be filled, regardless of nightly rates of $300, $400 or more. The Strip will be jammed with throngs gathered to watch half a million dollars worth of fireworks go up in an eight-minute display. Open seats will be scarce at the blackjack tables as the minimum bet gets cranked up to $15 or even $25.

Indeed, the events of 9/11 have barely dinged Las Vegas. Overall, tourism is down 5% or less for the year. Local hotel and casino operators who have been spoiled by two decades of uninterrupted growth have panicked over this minimal fall-off. But what is more amazing is that Vegas has been able to hang on to 95% or more of its customer base. And during half a dozen reporting trips I have made here since Sept. 11, 2001, the only reticence I hear comes from tourists angered by airport security hassles, not concern that they are possibly spending three-day weekends in the sights of Al Qaeda.

Herein reside some clues about how Americans handle risk, especially in the post-9/11 world. Even in less-turbulent times, Europeans have used their leisure to explore more of the world, while our entertainment-based culture has driven millions of Americans to vacation by retreating from the real world. It is no accident that the only U.S. “destination resort” that draws more annual tourists than Vegas is Orlando, Fla. -- home base to Disney World and a jumble of other theme parks.

You could put a charitable spin on it and conclude that, by flocking to Las Vegas in these jittery times, Americans are consciously and bravely defying the terrorist threat. On the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue, in the shadow of the New York New York Hotel and Casino’s replica Statue of Liberty, an homage to the Big Apple’s martyred firefighters has flourished since 9/11. Hundreds of T-shirts from other American fire departments have been hung on the hotel fence and inscribed with messages of compassion.

But this tiny corner of real remembrance on the Strip seems an aberration, a contradiction to everything around it. This small homage to the Fire Department of New York ultimately rings as hollow as the phony half-scale Lady Liberty that watches over it. The ongoing rush to Vegas is much more about forgetting, much more about a collective denial, than it is about defiance and memory. And what better place than Las Vegas to blot out the dreary realities of our times? An ersatz environment with, seemingly, the Seven Wonders of the World reproduced and compressed along the five-mile Strip, Las Vegas exists only in the “eternal now,” as one local academic puts it. No calendars, no clocks, a town with no past and no future, and hardly even a present. It’s more a timeless, context-free adult playground bounded only by your credit card limit or the number of days off your boss will grant you.

In running from the risk of Al Qaeda by jamming the same Strip where its operatives partially met before the 9/11 attack, Americans avoid thinking about any risks, except perhaps losing the mortgage at the roulette table. Few lose that much. But some statistics show that when Americans visit Vegas, they -- on average -- lose more than they pocketed in last year’s Bush tax rebate.

But not to worry. As this troublesome year draws to a close, as the threat of Al Qaeda remains haunting, elusive and undefined, as dark clouds of war with Iraq gather overhead, the revelers along the Vegas Strip will be paying little attention, if any, to the Homeland Security office’s yellow or orange alerts. For here in Las Vegas, on any day or night of the year, there are only two colors that count, and they are red and black.