Should We Treat The War On Terror Like A Natural Disaster?

A week ago I posted on an opinion column which put forth the idea that we should "declare victory" in the war on terror. Yesterday political science professor John Mueller posted similar thoughts on the Cato Institute blog Unbound.

Here's an excerpt from his conclusion:

The United States is unlikely to be toppled by dramatic acts of terrorist destruction, even extreme ones. As it happens, officials estimated for a while last year that Hurricane Katrina had inflicted 10,000 deaths–the tolerance level set by General Myers. Although this, of course, was not a terrorist act, there were no indications whatever that, while catastrophic for the hurricane victims themselves, the way of life of the rest of the nation would be notably done away with by such a disaster. It is also easy to imagine scenarios in which 10,000 would have been killed on September 11–if the planes had hit the World Trade Center later in the day when more people were at work for example–and indeed, early estimates at the time were much higher than 3000. Any death is tragic, but it is hardly likely that a substantially higher loss on 9/11 would have necessarily have triggered societal suicide.

We already absorb a great deal of tragedy and unpleasantness and still manage to survive. We live with a considerable quantity of crime, and the United States regularly loses 40,000 lives each year in automobile accidents. Moreover, countries have endured massive, sudden catastrophes without collapsing. In 1990 and then again in 2003, Iran suffered earthquakes that nearly instantly killed some 35,000 in each case. The tsunami that hit Indonesia and elsewhere in 2004 killed several times that many. But the countries have clearly survived these disasters: they constitute major tragedies, of course, but they hardly proved to be "existential" ones.

Thus the country can readily absorb considerable damage if necessary, and it has outlasted far more potent threats in the past. To suggest otherwise is to express contempt for America's capacity to deal with adversity.

I think it's telling that the folks making this argument minimize the impact of terrorism. In the column I posted about previously the argument put forth stated that because we haven't had another terrorist attack like 9/11 since 9/11 the threat of terrorism is being overstated. In order to make this argument the authors had to suggest that the terror attacks in London, Madrid, Bali, Beslan, etc. were all of a smaller scope than 9/11 and thus somehow acceptable. The authors also had to ignore that one of the reasons why we haven't had another 9/11 because we are doing the very things they oppose doing (read: NSA call monitoring, etc.) for the sake of civil liberties absolutism. They've forgotten, apparently, that the war on terror they oppose fighting has thwarted attacks on the Brooklyn Bridge, the Holland Tunnel in New York and most recently the plot to blow up about a dozen British planes with liquid explosives.

Mueller's argument above, however, takes a bit of a different angle. He seems to think that we should deal with terrorism by simply absorbing the damage and destruction they mete out and then move on with our lives. After all, we deal with things like natural disasters and automobile accidents every year, right? If we can tolerate the deaths from those things we can tolerate death from terrorism, right?

Wrong.

First, let me say that terrorism is not equivalent to a hurricane or an earthquake. Aside from emergency preparations and notification systems there's not a lot we can do about natural disasters. We can't stop hurricanes. We can't ease the rumblings of an earthquake. When it comes to terrorism, though, there are things we can do to stop it. Like gather intelligence, disrupt financing and attack the roots of terrorism in the middle east. We know these things stop terrorism as evidenced by the thwarted plots I described above.

So let me put it to you this way: If we can do things to stop terrorism and save lives, don't we have a duty to do so? Isn't it a bit absurd to write terror attacks off as natural disasters we can't do anything about?

As for comparing terror attacks to automobile crashes, let me say that the risk of death in a car crash is a something most Americans accept by choice in exchange for the convenience of the transportation their vehicles provide. If you asked most Americans bluntly I don't think the of possibility dying in a terror attack is a risk they're willing to take without first being assured that we are doing things to lower that risk significantly.

I understand where Mr. Mueller and others like him are coming from when they make these arguments. They're afraid of the government getting too much power. They're afraid that the government is using the fear of terrorism to get the American people to grant them that power. Obviously, a too-powerful government is something we should all be wary of...but while Mueller's fears make sense I'm just not sure they're justified in post-9/11 America.

Consider this from Orin Kerr:

During the week following the September 11 attacks, most major newspapers ran stories on the very plausible prospect that 9/11 could lead to a radical overhaul of civil liberties in the United States. The articles included sober discussions by law professors of whether we would have internment camps for Muslims, citing the camps for Japanese during World War II, or whether there would be a suspension of habeas corpus, citing the precedent of the Civil War. Fortunately for all of us, this didn't happen. While there were some aggressive law enforcement steps taken, particularly with regard to immigration offenses, for the most part the changes in existing statutory and constitutional law have been minor. . . .

Where does that leave us? To me it suggests that the impact of 9/11 on the law is still largely an open question, but that as a general matter the impact has been notably less significant than most of us would have predicted on the afternoon of 9/11. Maybe this will change in the future: Senator Specter's NSA bill is still pending, and a few Supreme Court vacancies might alter the picture. But on the five-year anniversary of 9/11, I'm struck more by how little the law has changed than by how much.

I think that's about right.

Mueller and others claim that people are getting to hysterical about the threat from terrorism and that we are going overboard in fighting it. I disagree, and would say in reply that Mueller et. al. are getting a bit too hysterical about the efforts we are making to fight terrorism. Especially when they stoop to suggesting that terrorism be treated like a natural disaster we can do nothing about.

(via The Agitator)