Act As If Mueller Is Right

Responses to "Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?"

Round 1 (posted September 7, 2006)

by James Fallows

James Fallows is National Correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. His most recent book is Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq.

The most important quality of John Mueller's article is its bravery. It takes little courage to warn that bad things might happen (as all the people Mueller cites at the start of his article have done). If you're wrong, everyone is happy. Moreover, since you can always say that the crisis hasn't happened yet, it's very hard for a gloomy prediction to be proved incorrect. But to claim that a certain fear or threat is exaggerated is to subject oneself to disproof -- it's a "falsifiable hypothesis," in scientific terms -- and, worse, to blame and ridicule if the nightmare you said probably wouldn't happen does.

But beyond Mueller's personal daring in sticking out his neck this way, the piece is important for bravery of a different sort. I see it (and the larger argument in Mueller's new book, plus complementary work by Ian Lustick and Benjamin Friedman) as arguing that the United States should grow up in its approach to the terrorist threat. I am affected by my own experience this spring and summer interviewing a variety of terrorism experts for an article in the September issue of the Atlantic Monthly. 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.

Great nations face great risks. That's life. Through its history, the United States endured early decades in which its very survival was in question, and then a horrific war over the preservation of the Union. What it suffered five years ago on 9/11 was terrible and unprecedented and paradigm-changing. But it does not mean, as current political discourse seems to assume, that we need to live in fear and assume the worst forever.

Although Mueller does not stress this point, I have been convinced by my own reporting that political violence inside the United States initiated by Muslims is more or less inevitable, someday. It should be expected because it has happened elsewhere in the world and because America has endured political violence throughout its history: think lynchings and riots throughout Reconstruction, or the Oklahoma City bombing.

Obviously, as much as possible should be done to deter, contain, and reduce this source of violence, as with other foreseeable dangers. The sensible steps toward this end have been spelled out many times, including by some of my fellow panelists. They include intensified efforts to harass and capture leaders of al Qaeda; intensified efforts to split Islamic extremists from the majority of the world's Muslims (rather than unifying them, through "with us or against us" rhetoric); targeted police and surveillance work, such as the efforts that allowed British police to penetrate the latest airline-bombing conspiracy; and the continuation of America's basically good record of assimilating Arab and Muslim immigrants.

Indeed, the only point on which I really disagree with Mueller is his claim that the Muslim communities in the United States and Britain are equally well assimilated. I have not reported on this subject in the United Kingdom myself, but everything I have heard suggests that many native-born British Muslims feel more estranged from their society than is typical for counterparts in the United States.

The list of sensible steps never included invading Iraq.

But Americans do not need to behave as if this is the worst threat the country has ever faced, because it is not. Nor does it have to be approached through an open-ended state of "war." I propose a version of Pascal's wager: Should the United States act as if Mueller were right and then, despite its best efforts, be attacked, that would be terrible and tragic -- just as it is tragic every day in America 100 people die in car crashes and 50 are murdered. But acting as if he were wrong and continuing to distort the country's domestic politics and international relations out of excessive fear would be even worse.