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"Are We Safe Yet?"
A Foreign Affairs Roundtable
In this special web-only feature, James Fallows, Fawaz Gerges, Paul
R. Pillar, and Jessica Stern respond to John Mueller's article "Is There Still
a Terrorist Threat?" from the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs
and assess the state of the "war on terror" five years after 9/11.
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Responses and Discussion
Round 2: September 11, 2006
John Mueller
 The number of deaths inflicted since 9/11 by al Qaeda and al Qaeda types
across the globe outside of war zones has been around 800 or 900. Those deaths
are tragic, but do not suggest that the United States is up against a
diabolically capable enemy or that the threat it confronts is existential or
apocalyptic . . .
James Fallows
 Over the last five years, it has been far more effective for politicians to
appeal to sky-is-falling fears than to try to calm them. The Republicans have
been the greater offenders. But Democrats have often tried to counter by being
even more alarmist . . .
Jessica Stern
 The one area where all the Roundtable participants seem to agree is that
terrorists aim to make us react in ways that threaten our security, in essence
doing their work for them . . .
Fawaz Gerges
 Many leading jihadists have concluded that the war is lost and that bin
Laden and his hawkish aides promised heaven and delivered dust. In short, for the
bin Laden network the war within has been more lethal than the war waged
against it by the United States . . .
Paul R. Pillar
 Much of what the United States has done during the last five years under the
label of counterterrorism has been worthwhile. But unfortunately it has
negated those accomplishments with policies in other areas. And as a result,
Americans are probably more endangered today than they were on 9/12 . . .
Responses and Discussion
Round 1: September 7, 2006
James Fallows
I'm agnostic on the specific claim Mueller makes in this piece about the absence of terrorists in America. But I contend that the United States would be better off acting as if he were right, and running the risk that he turns out to be wrong, than the reverse -- which is what it is doing now. . . .
Jessica Stern
We need to be concerned about terrorist strikes around the globe, not just in the United States -- and the picture there is not reassuring. The most accurate and up-to-date figures for international terrorist incidents make it clear that such attacks have risen every year since 2001, and have increased sharply in the three years since the United States invaded
Iraq. . . .
Fawaz Gerges
Jihadists are now engaged in a bitter quarrel. Instead of closing ranks against "the enemies of Islam," as bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had hoped, 9/11 destroyed the possibility of local and international jihadists working effectively together -- with the global wing of the movement being the real loser, for it desperately needs loyal allies and revolutionary legitimacy. . . .
Paul R. Pillar
Just as paranoids can have real enemies, so too can a hyped threat be real -- as this particular threat is. There are sound explanations for the absence of major terrorist attacks in the United States over the past five years that are quite consistent with there being a serious threat that could manifest itself in such an attack tomorrow. Mueller attempts to dismiss several of those explanations by arguing that each one, by itself, is incapable of accounting for the absence of follow-on attacks. But each explanation may provide part of the reason for that absence, and considering several such explanations together should leave us unsurprised that the United States has not suffered a new attack even in the presence of a continued threat . . .
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