11 September 2016
We still live in unreasonable fear of terrorism
We’re safer from terrorism today than we were 15 years ago. That’s the considered judgement of terrorism expert Daniel Byman, writing at Vox two days ago. I agree. In fact, I’ve always thought we were safer on 12 September 2001 than we were the day before: 19 terrorists were dead, and thus permanently out of the hijacking business; and starting with Flight 93, passengers swarmed hijackers instead of meekly submitting to the thugs.
But safer though we are, we seem more frightened than ever. Instead of adopting a defiant attitude, instead of deciding that while we may live in danger, we should not live in fear (see Fallows), we’ve decided, almost by default, that we should live in fear regardless of the actual level of danger. That may be due partly to humankind’s survival instincts — but I think it’s also due to unscrupulous politicians exploiting fear in the pursuit of votes.
One of those unscrupulous politicians was President George W. Bush, whose speech to the nation on the evening of 11 September did not impress me at the time. Indeed, one of my first posts at Flathead Memo unfavorably compared Bush’s Nine-Eleven speech with Franklin Roosevelt’s A date which will live in infamy speech following the attack on Pearl Harbor. I even wrote the speech I thought Bush should have given (PDF).
Rereading Bush’s speech today, I find it better than I did 15 years ago. But I still believe he failed to recognize the ultimate objective of the terrorists. That’s why in the speech I believe he should have given, I wrote:
What I cannot and will not promise is that terrorism will never again visit our nation. Dangerous currents of zealotry and malice flow throughout the world, currents that will, on occasion, send waves of violence against our shores. But terrorist attacks are rare events. It is an objective fact that Americans are much more likely to be injured or killed by automobile accidents than by terrorist attacks.
Therefore, as we begin our response to today’s attacks, let us remember a great truth about America: we can be defeated only if we defeat ourselves.
The terrorists intended to spill American blood, and they succeeded. But their ultimate goal was to frighten us into surrendering our freedoms in exchange for the illusion of greater safety. Their definition of victory is an America that reacts to today’s attacks not by remaining true to its principles, but by abandoning its freedoms for the false security of a police state. They hope to panic us into committing national suicide.
They did panic us into passing the Patriot Act.