One of the great divides in our politics is between those who see Islamic terror as the primary danger to our nation at this moment and those who believe the threat is thoroughly overblown. David Ignatius does a commendable job in delineating the latter argument which attempts to answer the question Is the Terror Threat Overrated? in the affirmative:
Politicians who talk about the terrorism threat -- and it's already clear that this will be a polarizing issue in the 2008 campaign -- should be required to read a new book by a former CIA officer named Marc Sageman. It stands what you think you know about terrorism on its head, and helps you see the topic in a different light.
...
The heart of Sageman's message is that we have been scaring ourselves into overexaggerating the terrorism threat -- and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain's Web site puts it, the United States is facing "a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists" spawned by al-Qaeda.
The numbers say otherwise, Sageman insists.
David Ignatius proceeds to discuss the numbers in an appropriately dispassionate and rational manner. The original al Qaeda has been decimated, with some remnants hiding out in the wilds of Northwest Pakistan; the second wave of terrorists, trained by al Qaeda, have also been devastated and are in hiding. We are now up to the third wave of terrorism:
It's the third wave of terrorism that is growing, but what is it? By Sageman's account, it's a leaderless hodgepodge of thousands of what he calls "terrorist wannabes." Unlike the first two waves, who were well-educated and intensely religious, the new jihadists are a weird species of the Internet culture. Outraged by video images of Americans killing Muslims in Iraq, they gather in password-protected chat rooms and dare each other to take action. Like young people across time and religious boundaries, they are bored and looking for action.
The policy prescriptions that flow from the farming of terrorism as in the third wave, painful but ultimately harmless, are those that a Democratic President are likely to follow:
Sageman's policy advice is to "take the glory and thrill out of terrorism." Jettison the rhetoric about Muslim extremism -- these leaderless jihadists are barely Muslims. Stop holding news conferences to announce the latest triumphs in the "global war on terror," which only glamorize the struggle. And reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq, which now fuels the Muslim world's sense of moral outrage.
The message from the piece is that it is time for us to relax a bit, take stock, and stop doing those things that arouse and outrage Muslims; our provocations only breed more terrorists. This is a comforting message, suggesting nothing so much as that Islamic terrorism is akin to Yellow Jacket stings, painful but ultimately harmless. There are problems with that formulation.
I am not a fan of Yellow Jackets. While their sting is rarely dangerous, when they attack en masse they can, in fact, kill. Worse, for susceptible individuals who have been primed, they can evoke an anaphylactic reaction, a catastrophic allergic response in which the person's own immune system goes into overdrive and ultimately leads to death. This is instructive for Islamic terror.
First, most people will do anything they can to avoid Yellow Jackets. That means that when possible, an area will be ceded to the Yellow Jackets based on the threat of unpleasantness. The relation to speech codes which aim to circumscribe our ability to provoke the anger of the super-sensitive Islamists should be obvious.
Second, no one can know if he is susceptible to anaphylaxis until it happens. The analogy to Islamic terror is clear. Until a nuclear weapon explodes in an American city we will not be able to tell whether or not we are susceptible to a catastrophic attack. There is literally no way to compute the odds. We do know that our enemies, which include Iranian supported terrorists (mostly Shia), as well as the al Qaeda Sunni terrorists, are constrained only by their lack of capability rather than their lack of intent. Additionally, there are credible reports that the Sunni leadership of al Qaeda has been reconstituted and rebuilt in their current safe havens, a development that would bring Sageman's conclusions into question.
Third, just as a swarm of Yellow Jackets can kill innocents (children are most susceptible to Yellow Jacket venom), allowing Islamic terrorists a respite in which they can add and train new recruits, replenish their supplies, develop new plans and instruments, and spread their message, is a dangerous plan. Our adversaries are intelligent and deadly, constantly evolving in response to our efforts and constantly looking for new ways to kill innocents. Allowing them to plan in peace and relative comfort risks additional Beslans as well as additional 9/11s, not to mention London underground and Madrid train attacks.
There is one more element akin to anaphylaxis that is germane. While it may be true that minor terrorist attacks, with a small number of casualties (the beltway snipers, for example) are not likely to trigger an inappropriate reaction from the body politic, there is an unknown and unknowable threshold above which the public reaction may dwarf the actual insult. Americans have become used to living near risk-free lives. We take great efforts, under pain of lawsuit, to protect our children from bumps and bruises on the playground. We loudly accuse the government of dereliction of duty when they fail to protect us from the vicissitudes of life. We demand perfection from the Medical and Pharmaceutical industries, have not built a new gasoline refinery or nuclear power plant in 30 years because of the often near infinitesimal risk of disaster and our refusal to tolerate risk. Many are willing to cripple our economy in order to stave off the highly speculative threat of Anthropomorphic Global Warming (despite last year being so cold that it undid all the warming of the last 100 years!) In short we are not a society that responds well to risk or disaster. It has always seemed likely to me that another 9/11, and even perhaps an atrocity on a much smaller scale than 9/11, would lead to significant erosions in our civil liberties that would dwarf our current concerns over FISA and the idiocy we endure at the airports whenever we fly. In such a case it would truly be our own overreaction that would constitute the disaster, societal anaphylaxis.
In a risk averse society, counseling that we are over-estimating the threat of terror thus seems like wishful thinking more than rational insight. Such calculations as Sageman and Ignatius suggest are highly rational, and as such, they neglect to include in their calculations the potential emotional response to terror. Such neglect is ultimately irrational.
Recent Comments