[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [WBPF] "Never Have So Few Been Able to Frighten So Many"

[Brussel, Morton K]

FYI.

Begin forwarded message:

From: Caroline Herzenberg <carol at herzenberg.net<mailto:carol at herzenberg.net>>
Date: September 26, 2012 9:07:00 PM CDT

Subject: [WBPF] "Never Have So Few Been Able to Frighten So Many"

Agreed there is more to fear than fear itself, but unfortunately it is
true that we are fearful, and seemingly fearful by design. See below
article by a senior fellow at the Cato Institute accompanied by comments
about it from an acquaintance.

     - Carol

...............................


The author of the article below, John Mueller, is a senior fellow at the
right-wing Cato Institute, and I doubt I would agree with him on much;
but I agree with him that more than 10 years after 9/11, the US remains
in a constant state of fear "even though an American's chance of being
killed by a terrorist is about one in 3.5 million per year."

As a result, Mueller says, it seems likely that people in the US will
"continue uncritically to support extravagant counterterrorism
expenditures, including incessant security checks, civil-liberties
intrusions, expanded police powers, harassment at airports, and
militarized forays overseas if they can convincingly be associated with
the quest to stamp out terrorism."

The polling figures Mueller cites are particularly interesting, I think.



Philadelphia Inquirer

September 9, 2012

Never Have So Few Been Able to Frighten So Many

By John Mueller

[John Mueller is a political scientist at Ohio State University and a
senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and coauthor, with Mark Stewart, of
*Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs
of Homeland Security*.]

As we enter the second year of 9/11's second decade, anxieties about
terrorism in the United States haven't declined -- even though no
Islamist terrorist has been able to detonate even the simplest of bombs
in the United States, even though there has been no sizable attack in
the country, even though Osama bin Laden has been expunged, and even
though an American's chance of being killed by a terrorist is about one
in 3.5 million per year.

The war on terror, therefore, is likely to be with us for a very long
time. Not only is there as yet no light at the end of the tunnel, but it
might have no end at all.

Since the public remains terrorized, it seems likely to continue
uncritically to support extravagant counterterrorism expenditures,
including incessant security checks, civil-liberties intrusions,
expanded police powers, harassment at airports, and militarized forays
overseas if they can convincingly be associated with the quest to stamp
out terrorism.

The war in Iraq and economic woes pushed terrorism down on the list of
immediate concerns, and some of the most intense anxieties did decline
in the few weeks after the 9/11 attacks. However, people clearly
continue to deem it an ominous threat, and the absence of further
substantial decline in subsequent years, and now decades, is striking.

In November 2001, about 35 percent of the public were very or somewhat
worried that they or a family member would become a victim of terrorism.
A decade later, 34 percent profess the same fear. And 75 percent
consider another major attack in the near future to be very or somewhat
likely, about the same as in early 2002.

The percentage holding that the terrorists are as capable as ever of
launching another major attack is the same now as it was in 2002. Nor
has there been much change since that time in the number who are willing
to trade civil liberties for security or have confidence in the
government's ability to prevent or to protect them from further
terrorism.

These results suggest that the impact of 9/11 has been internalized. But
people are not simply giving unthinking, routinized responses -- ones
they deem to be socially required. Over time, the numbers on many
questions have fluctuated in reaction to events such as the capture of
Saddam Hussein and the terrorist bombings in London in 2005. The
percentage who think the United States is winning the war on terrorism
has bounced around quite a bit, but it currently stands at almost
exactly the same level as in October 2001 -- even though people
obviously want to believe we are doing progressively better.

Nor are poll respondents simply responding to alarmist hype coming out
of Washington.

There was a great deal of that during the George W. Bush administration
-- particularly around the time of the 2004 election, when Attorney
General John Ashcroft, with the FBI director standing beside him,
proclaimed that al-Qaeda was "almost ready" to attack the country in the
"next few months." Such posturing declined in later years and has been
heard very little under the Obama administration, yet anxieties have not
waned.

The continued persistence of terrorism anxiety is not easy to explain.
It is possible that the initial trauma of 9/11 was importantly
reinforced by the (unrelated) anthrax attacks that followed shortly
after -- fears about being harmed by terrorists began to decline in the
days after 9/11 and then were pushed to their highest levels ever when
the anthrax story came out. There is also special anxiety in the fact
that the 9/11 terrorists were out specifically to kill civilians and to
do so more or less at random.

The seemingly constant stream of small-time terrorism cases since 9/11
may have kept the pot boiling even without much lasting media interest.
The stress on what these failed (and mostly boneheaded) plotters hoped
to do, not on what they were likely to be able to do, may also have
contributed. So may the popular, if rather bizarre, extrapolation that,
because the 9/11 terrorists were successful with box-cutters, they might
soon be able to use weapons of mass destruction.

Anthropologist Scott Atran has observed of 9/11 that "perhaps never in
the history of human conflict have so few people with so few actual
means and capabilities frightened so many." Much of that fright, it
appears, has proven to be perpetual.

E-mail John Mueller at bbbb at osu.edu<mailto:bbbb at osu.edu>.

From
http://articles.philly.com/2012-09-09/news/33714781_1_terrorism-major-attack-poll-respondents



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