Good and Bad Arguments

In a recent, tightly-argued piece in Foreign Affairs, John Mueller argues that the main reason there hasn't been another major terrorist attack in the US since 9/11 is because "almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad." The best piece of evidence in favor of this argument is precisely how easy it is to pull off a terrorist attack. If, as the Homeland Security Department says, "terrorists can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon," and we haven't developed a security apparatus able to cover all targets, then the best explanation for the absence of attacks is the near total absence of the threat itself. Stated intentions alone do not a terrorist threat make. As Mueller continues to point out:

"[I]t is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by al Qaeda or al Qaeda-like operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 -- about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteor. Even if there were a 9/11-scale attack every three months for the next five years, the likelihood that an individual American would number among the dead would be two hundredths of a percent (or one in 5,000)."


This is an argument that we have made before, but it is significant that major public figures are making it (Mueller suggests "it remains heretical to say...that fears of the omnipotent terrorist...[are] greatly exaggerated," but his thoughts being published in Foreign Affairs belie that claim). Mueller's argument tells us two things. First, though his critique is directed at the administration, it is equally damning for the left-liberal argument that Bush's policies have made us less safe. The point is that the determining factor in the prevalence of terrorist threats lies mostly outside the government's actions. Bush has neither made us dramatically safer, nor made us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The Democrats, in claiming the latter, are just as much fearmongers as Bush is.

Second, it is true that the terrorist threat is very exaggerated, and that many are willing to entertain this possibility. But it is also clear that the factual argument, alone, is inadequate to bring an end to the war on terror. For us, this is the most crucial point. The war on terror is more than an empirical claim about the likelihood of a terrorist threat, which can be disproved by logic such as Mueller's. The war on terror is also a political argument about political priorities and acceptable political reasoning. It is one that subscribes to the 'precautionary principle' of 'better safe than sorry', where even if no risk can be proved, it is better to prevent the risk from ever emerging. Mueller's point is a necessary but insufficient part of the critical argument. The harder part of the argument is to say that security should not be the number one priority of society, and security is here meant in the broadest sense. That is to say, not just in relation to terrorism, but in relation to a broader culture of fear and sense of vulnerability. For even if many do not believe there is a specific terrorist threat, there is a much wider acceptance of the idea that it is legitimate for the governmnet to act to allay public fears, even when those fears have a thin, insubstantial basis.