Critics of President Bush’s conduct in the War on Terror get
testy when they are accused of not taking the threat of terrorism
seriously, but with increasing prominence, they are making their
true feelings known.
Quite simply, they don’t think terrorism is a big deal.
In a recent American Prospect
column, Matthew Yglesias wrote that the Bush administration has
been “fostering a climate of panic and paranoia” and “blowing the
risks of conventional terrorism all out of proportion…”
John Mueller, who has lately been making a career out of
downplaying terrorism, has an article in the current issue of
Foreign Affairs entitled,
“Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?” In it, he writes: “The
massive and expensive homeland security apparatus erected since
9/11 may be persecuting some, spying on many, inconveniencing most,
and taxing all to defend the United States against an enemy that
scarcely exists.”
Reason’s Ronald Bailey pointed out that
people are more likely to die in a car accident, drowning, fire or
by murder than in a terrorist attack. This lead him to conclude
that “with risks this low there is no reason for us not to continue
to live our lives as though terrorism doesn’t matter — because it
doesn’t really matter.”
Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State University,
made a similar argument in a 2004 article
for Regulation, in which he wrote that since the late
1960s, the number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks is
“about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same
period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic
reactions to peanuts.” The statistic is slightly misleading because
starting in the 1960s allowed Mueller to include many years of data
during which time terrorism was not as widespread as it has been
since the
1990s. So, for instance, between 1990 and 2003, 756 people were
killed by lightning, according to the National
Lightning Safety Institute. That’s about one-fourth the number
of people who died on Sept. 11.
But there’s no reason to squabble over such details. The
overarching point is true enough. There are a lot of potential
causes of premature death, many of which have proved far more
deadly to Americans than terrorism. However, it’s also true that
Americans have taken precautions against those other dangers —
precautions that may have at one time seemed drastic. When I was in
elementary school, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were my
lunchtime staple. For my niece, they are contraband, because like
many other schools today, hers is peanut-free. Traffic accidents
are still a major cause of death in America, but the death rate has
declined considerably over the past several decades as a result of
seat belts, air bags and drunk-driving laws. More recently, states
have passed laws restricting cell phone use.
Even this analysis, however, gives too much credit to
comparisons between terrorism and other causes of death. Murders
and car accidents may kill more Americans than terrorism does, but
those deaths occur across fifty states, for a litany of different
reasons. Terrorism is primarily caused by Islamic fundamentalists
from the Middle East who have declared war on modernity and are
often financed or hosted by countries that are our avowed enemies.
If an overwhelming majority of homicides in the U.S. were caused by
a loose collection of gangs from California who shared similar
ideological motives for killing Americans, the war on crime would
be fought a lot differently. Traffic laws might change drastically
if, say, 99 percent of accidents were caused by German automobiles
with stick shifts.
Furthermore, terrorism is a different type of threat because in
addition to the human carnage it leaves behind, it targets symbols
of American power and prosperity (such as the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon). Were we to have a nonchalant attitude toward
terrorism because it mathematically presents a lower fatality risk
relative to other dangers, it would not only put us at risk for
attacks worse than Sept. 11, but it would demonstrate weakness to
current and potential adversaries. As the 9/11 Commission
reported, Osama Bin Laden was inspired by the U.S. withdrawal
from Somalia in 1993. How would our enemies and allies view America
today were we to brush aside dastardly attacks on prominent symbols
of our financial and military might?
Some may say that I am attacking a straw man by accusing others
of wanting to brush aside terrorist attacks, but that is precisely
what Mueller suggested in his Regulation article when he
wrote, “a sensible policy approach to the problem might be to
stress that any damage terrorists are able to accomplish likely can
be absorbed, however grimly.” In other words, when people are
killed in a terrorist attack, just move on, because just as many
people might drown in their bathtubs.
As scary as that attitude might sound today, that’s precisely
how we did treat terrorism prior to Sept. 11. In 1993, when 6
people were killed and 1,000 injured in the first World Trade
Center attack, President Clinton warned Americans not to
“overreact.” His administration treated the attack as a simple
criminal matter, ignoring crucial evidence that revealed grander
ambitions among Islamists to attack America. Americans did have
Bailey’s terrorism “doesn’t really matter” attitude throughout the
1990s, and as a result we ignored the threat of al Qaeda as it
carried out attacks against American targets with increasing
frequency, boldness and sophistication: Khobar Towers in 1996, U.S.
Embassies in 1998, and the USS Cole in 2000.
Those who argue that the terrorist threat is being overblown
also make the mistake of thinking that just because something
hasn’t happened in the past, it won’t happen in the future. In his
piece, Yglesias mocks the reaction to the recent British terror
arrests, noting that “Precisely zero people have been killed in
liquid explosive attacks.” Well, through Sept. 10, 2001, precisely
zero Americans were killed by hijacked airliners being flown into
skyscrapers, but that provided little comfort to those whose lives
were cut short the next morning.
The further we get from Sept. 11th, the more temptation there
will be to become complacent in the face of the terrorist threat.
In fact, this is precisely why terrorism presents such a unique
danger and why it is much more effective at dividing our country
than more conventional threats we have faced.
Since Sept. 11th, we have seen attacks at a Bali nightclub, on
Egyptian resorts, on trains in Madrid and Mumbai, on London’s
public transportation systems as well as continued attacks on
Israel. Even if you buy into the view that Iraq has nothing to do
with terrorism, there is clearly a global war taking place.
Fortunately, terrorists have been unable to mount a successful
attack on U.S. soil in almost five years, but that is more a
testament to our increased awareness of the threat than a reason to
return to the carefree attitude of the past.
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American
Spectator.
