Terrorism is not a leading cause of death. As Tierney notes in his column today (subscription required):

Outside of Afghanistan and Iraq,” [John Mueller, author of Overblown] says, “the number of people killed around the world since Sept. 11 by groups in sympathy with Al Qaeda is not that high. These are horrible and disgusting deaths, but they’re not a sign of a diabolically effective organization. The total is less than the number of Americans who drowned in bathtubs during this period.”

As it is, he figures, the odds of an American being killed by international terrorism are about one in 80,000. And even if there were attacks on the scale of Sept. 11 every three months for the next five years, the odds for any individual dying would be one in 5,000.

Get over the fear and refuse to be terrified and the terrorists have lost. For more comps, read on.

In 2001, terrorism in America killed about as many people as category E66 "Obesity" according to US mortality tables and thousands of people fewer each year since. Half as many as F10 "Mental and behavioral disorders due to use of alcohol (F10)". Seems like our dependence on foreign alcohol and chocolate is causing death. Jerry's kids with MS warrant one weekend a year and they die 3,000/year.

So now that it's been 5 years, terrorism has still only killed 3,000 in the US and we are down to 600/year over the past 5 years. Like Thrombosis (I74) which suggests letting people get out of their seats on airplanes. Terrorism kills about as many as "Exposure to excessive natural cold (X31)". How about a war on stranglers (X91) which kills 690 per year.

3,000/year out of 2,400,000 is one in 800/year. 600/year is one in 4,000/year.

A 3,000 person attack every three months forever would be 12,000 dead/year out of approximately 2.5 million dead per year or a one in 200 lifetime chance of dying from terrorism.

The assumption being that the number of deaths from terrorism doesn't correlate to the amount and effectiveness of the fight against those who use it.

What were those odds on 10 Sept 2001 vs. a recalcuation on 12 Sept 2001? What will they be after a successful nuke use? The fallacy of the whole argument is that the "odds" are fixed and a knowable quantity independent of what actually does or doesn't happen, and independent of any effort made to change them.

I think stories like this miss the point. We did not go to war with Germany, Britain, the Soviet Union, etc. because they were significant causes of American fatalities. We did it because we wanted freedom, for ourselves and others. I really don't see Americans as afraid of terrorists - more disgusted.

This is not a war about not dying - this is a war about living the way we want to. We found another group of people willing to kill to make us live their way - so we must kill them first. It really is that simple...

The comparison of mortality figures from different causes also misses the other effects of terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 -- namely, the massive destruction of property, the economic effects of disruptions in important services (including markets and transportation), and intangible effects on consumer confidence and the like.

Raoul: We are being quite effective in keeping terrorism deaths to a minimum. Perhaps we could also do so by spending less. Your argument begs the question about how much is too much in addition to how much is too little.

David: I agree that war in Iraq is about choosing freedom. What it is not about is stopping a significant cause of death at home. If so, the hundreds of billions spent on the war could more easily improve health and welfare directly.

T.L.: Part of the disruption was the (mis)perception of terrorism. If people refuse to be terrified, the economic impacts will be less.

Sam,
I accept your argument about mortality rates and not being terrified when it comes to our (read TSA's) reaction to terrorism. As David notes, we got to war for freedom, but we certainly are hypocritical when we take away drinking water from airline passengers. I know few people who find the terrorist alert level useful. From time to time, I'll accept some limitations during periods of potential eminent attacks. Otherwise, if those limitations become longterm, then we need to comfront terrorism directly.

"We did not go to war with Germany, Britain, the Soviet Union, etc. because they were significant causes of American fatalities. We did it because we wanted freedom, for ourselves and others."

I believe that the IRA had something like 200 terrorist operatives at any one time during the troubles in Northern Ireland, yet they tied down enormous resources of the British government and helped to transform Britain into a "surveillence state" who placed those citizens suspected of being terrorist operatives in concentration camps without full benefit of the law. Today, it's difficult to travel about the country without, at some point, being photographed by some government security camera. The harsh confiscatory anti-gun laws in effect there began with the excuse of "keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists". The question now is how will the remaining British freedoms survive should the large Islamic population begin producing terrorist operatives on an even larger scale than the IRA?

Britain lost hundreds of thousands of lives, and a huge portion of her national treasure, including major areas of entire cities, "protecting their freedoms". Yet they continue to throw those freedoms away with both hands because a few dozen people might die each year from terrorists. Why?

I leave this as a problem for the reader.

Hint: See media/terrorist/politician symbiosis.

"Get over the fear and refuse to be terrified and the terrorists have lost."

With me, they lost from the get-go, back in the 1970's. (Yes, boys and girls, this shit started in the 1970's.)

They never terrorized me, even when the newly-branded "Palestinians" hijacked that first plane out of the Frankfurt airport and blew it up in the desert, or when the Baader-Meinhoff terrorists blew V Corps and Heidelberg headquarters in Germany.

Pissed me off royally, but never terrorized me. F*ck 'em, and the BMW's/leprechauns/camels they rode in on.

well they do terrorize bush

I was in the MC, and I transfered from Cali, to Augusta. If there were terrorists on my flight as I flew from Cali, to georgia, or from LA to Oki?

There wouldn't have been a 911 had there been men who realized that there is no negotiation with people who would brutaly, kill women in a way that is PAINFUL! The terrorists would have died, maybe the passengers would have as well, but noone would have suffered other than the INITIAL victims.

We, in the US have been enslaved to the idea of reciprocal kindness. That is NOT how our enemies think. THEY think we are weak, and will USE our victim culture against us.

If you are mugged? STAB THAT BASTARD WITH YORU KEYES! If you are carjacked? Put your car in drive, and then put it in reverse.

Make the EVIL PRICKS who live off of the BS governmental weakness they enforce on the people, and defy it.

PUNISH the scumbags.

Jay more, "I know I'm the air marshall, cuz I have a pen, and if anyone moves, I will put that pen into anyone who tries to take the plain"

THAT is America.

Fire is a great cleanser.

Most sorts of noisome filth cease to be a problem when subjected to solar-surface temperatures. Including the particular filthy meme that has infected a large part of the Middle East.

The solution is the same as the old solutions to rampant infection; isolation and cautery.

Axe-time, sword time, shields are sundered,
Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls;
The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea,
The hot stars down from heaven are whirled;
Fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame,
Till fire leaps high about heaven itself.

It's coming. Get used to the idea.

>"What were those odds on 10 Sept 2001 vs. a recalcuation on 12 Sept 2001? What will they be after a successful nuke use?"

I don't know about September 11, but the odds of a terrorist organisation obtaining a low yield nuke increased by an order of magnitude the day the US invaded Iraq.

>"This is not a war about not dying - this is a war about living the way we want to. We found another group of people willing to kill to make us live their way - so we must kill them first. It really is that simple..."

I hear that in the US they call these sickening people 'foreigners'. Kill them all I say, terrorist bastards.

>"Yes, boys and girls, this shit started in the 1970's."

Hmmm. I wonder what geopolitically important event happened during the end of that decade.

Hmmm. I wonder what geopolitically important event happened during the end of that decade.

Star Wars came out?

Yes, it's all George Lucas' fault, the terrorists hate us because of JarJar. Throw him in one of the CIA's secret prisons.

Misa poka the eyeballs outta dim bad ole infeedells heads wit da hot pokers foo ah Banta poodu. Pppppwwwaaaz Allwah!

"I hear that in the US they call these sickening people 'foreigners'. Kill them all I say, terrorist bastards."

Chris,

Please get down off your high horse. No other country is more welcoming to foreigners than America. The small but important minority of foreigners who want to kill us, however, must be stopped. And changing US foreign policy to suit their preferences will not stop them. There are bad people in the world whose badness is independent of our foreign policy or who's in the White House.

Stan

Chris, what's your analysis on the low yield nuke becoming more likely?

What were those odds on 10 Sept 2001 vs. a recalcuation on 12 Sept 2001?

Raoul, I am a participant on the Foresight Exchange, a play money betting market which occasionally delves into that sort of question. For example, there was a "claim" on whether a single terrorist attack would kill more than 200 people in the US by the begining of 2010. It was trading at around 40% likelihood true right before September 11 at which point the claim became true.

In comparison, the claim was recreated the day after September 11 (though it takes at least a week for claims to become active after creation). It started trading in the 70-90% range, and with the passage of time has dropped to around 60%. I'm selling BTW, just as I did the original contract. The market doesn't have a variety of contract expirations, so the amount of information you can gather is limited. But I think it's sufficient to indicate that peoples' expectations of another terrorist attack on US soil jumped dramatically. No real surprise though I imagine that people in the pre-September 11 world would be surprised to see that the original contract was trading so high.

My take is that the real problem is that the US is too vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Much of the infrastructure of the US is shoddy, ill-protected, and overly centralized. For example, it's not hard to think of places that are particularly vulnerable to nuclear weapons, eg, large urban areas with a huge concentration of some vital industry or government infrastructure like Manhattan Island in New York City, Washington, DC, Silicon Valley, or Houston, Texas. It's also fairly easy to think of a bunch of urban areas (and a lot of vast rural space) where a nuclear explosion wouldn't be a national disaster, for example, Charleston, South Carolina, New Orleans, Louisiana, Omaha, Nebraska. or Sacramento, California.

My point is that these concentrations while economically efficient, require a level of maintenance and loss of freedom that is incompatible with the rest of the US. We are fortunate in that most of the relatively competent terrorists are in one easy to identify ideology. However, it is foolish to think that successfully dealing with that ideology will in itself solve the terrorism problem. There will always be groups that believe they can get what they want through the harming of innocents.