Iowahawk found an early copy of David Bell's essay, before the spoilsport editors got hold of it.

So why has there been such an overreaction? Unfortunately, the commentators who detect one have generally explained it in a tired, predictably ideological way: calling the United States a uniquely paranoid aggressor that always overreacts to provocation.

In a recent book, for instance, political scientist John Mueller evaluated the threat that terrorists pose to the United States and convincingly concluded that it has been, to quote his title, "Overblown." But then he screws up his whole awesome argument by adding that the United States has overreacted to every threat in its recent history, including even Pearl Harbor. Rather than trying to defeat Japan, he argued – get this -- we should have tried containment! Can you believe that guy?? For crying out loud, almost 3000 people died in those attacks! Any country would have naturally retaliated, with all guns blazing, and…

Um, okay, bad example. But Mueller forgets the three critical differences between the experiences of Pearl Harbor and 9-11: (a) we limited our retaliation to the actual Japanese, Germans, and Italians who performed the attack; (b) we had permission from France; and (c) in Pearl Harbor, we were probably the good guys.

As Belushi asks in ANIMAL HOUSE: "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

I happen to know Mueller, having studied under him. Without having read his new book, I can tell you how he thinks. He's not a pacifist. Rather, he's a rationalist who has long sought to apply logic to the emotion-laden subject of war. One of the questions he used to challenge his students to answer was why people were actually willing to go to war. After all, it seems like an incredibly stupid thing to do because, well, you could get killed. So why are people willing to pick up a gun and go into battle when basic human nature should lead everybody to run in the opposite direction? The answer, of course, is complex, including the fact that, as Mueller demonstrates, "war is fun." War is not rational, it is frequently emotional. He tries to rationalize behavior and remove the emotions from it. That's undoubtedly the context of his new book.

I'll give you one example that will tell you a lot about him: In the early 1990s Mueller was riding his bike over a bridge from his campus when he got mugged. Some guy ran up to him and knocked him off his bike. Mueller sprained his wrist falling off the bike and got scuffed up. The guy then grabbed the bike and tried to ride away on it, but he had knocked the chain off and he could not ride it. So Mueller made him an offer--he said to the guy that since the bike was essentially useless, he would give the guy $20 _NOT_ to take it. The guy took the $20 and left the bike. Mueller's reasoning was that the bike was worth a lot more than $20.

So, instead of asserting his right to both his bike AND his money, defending himself, calling 9-1-1, and/or beating the hapless, clueless mugger senseless, Mueller gave the mugger 20 bucks for his trouble?

Where is Mueller living now? I could definitely use a little "walkin' 'round scratch"...

So, instead of asserting his right to both his bike AND his money, defending himself, calling 9-1-1, and/or beating the hapless, clueless mugger senseless, Mueller gave the mugger 20 bucks for his trouble?

Yes, it's called "appeasement." It's a new concept that's all the academic rage now. Kind of like in 1938.

"So, instead of asserting his right to both his bike AND his money, defending himself, calling 9-1-1, and/or beating the hapless, clueless mugger senseless,"

Yeah, because men in their sixties are usually so good at taking on muggers in their teens...

"Yeah, because men in their sixties are usually so good at taking on muggers in their teens..."

God made men free and Samuel Colt made them equal.

Yeah, because men in their sixties are usually so good at taking on muggers in their teens...

Actually, Mueller was born in '37, so in the early 90's, he would have been 55 or thereabouts. He actually looks pretty spry for a 70 year-old in his current faculty profile picture at tOSU.

I know a number of 55 year-olds that I wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of. Then again, I don't go around pushing them down, either.

Not trying to start a flame war in Rand's comment box, I'm just sayin'...

I'm guessing the ancestors of beef cattle reasoned like Mueller.

That was a great article.

I think we have over-reacted to 9/11, and reacted at the wrong country, for can anyone doubt that we would not have planned to invade Iraq if not for 9/11? And in any case Bush would never have been given the authority to attack Iraq had not 9/11 happened.

Now, had we invaded Saudi Arabia THAT would have made sense. After all 15 of 19 of the hijackers came from THERE. Not Iraq and certainly not Iran.
After all Iran has a democracy and women can vote, wear a dress and drive a car, and the young fellas there seem to hate NoHolocauster Ahmedanijad. In addition to which the Saudis are the ones educating the next generation of terrorist Wahhabi Wannabis. And they have more oil.

So, now we might be fighting for the Saudis in a war against Iran next. Bad Idea. Time to stop overreacting; put the Carriers in there with Nukes and pull out. Let the tribes duke it out and figure out which one is the Mahdi.

Didn't we just wipe out a whole bunch of guys who hate the Iranians - the Shiite anti-Sistani Cult? Maybe we were set up to do just that!! Think about it, really, who benefited mightily from that air assault? All it took was a lot of explosions and a call for air support to our forces. We were set up to wipe out Iran's enemies. This is getting surreal, we can't understand these guys and the translators are working for THEM whoever they are and we don't even quite know, except they are laughing their heads off at our gullibility.

he's a rationalist who has long sought to apply logic to the emotion-laden subject of war

How illogical. I don't see how he can qualify as a rationalist.

I think we have over-reacted to 9/11, and reacted at the wrong country

You do? Toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan -- that government who harbored and assisted al Qaeda, the organization that planned the 9/11 attack -- was an overreaction?

I see you have forgotten that the invasion of Afghanistan was the reaction to 9/11. The invasion of Iraq occured for other reasons, and two years later, although the urgency of the reasons for invasion was undoubtably heightened by the new awareness of danger provoked by 9/11.

Carl, TNT may have had a drink too many prior to his post but setting that aside, the argument that Iraq is part of the reaction to 9/11 does not appear illogical. That part of our reaction can be considered an over-reaction in its highly tangential nature, its lack of specificity of purpose, and its contextually irrational goals.

Carl, TNT may have had a drink too many prior to his post but setting that aside, the argument that Iraq is part of the reaction to 9/11 does not appear illogical. That part of our reaction can be considered an over-reaction in its highly tangential nature, its lack of specificity of purpose, and its contextually irrational goals.

If Rand had been around in 1941, he would
have argued that the the US Should attack china.

America must fight asian aggression, and that
an aggressive china what with their history of
attacks on western powers and their high use of drugs
poses an imminent threat to safety.

Since Pearl Harbor Asia's threat must be contained.

I thought the editorial was a breath of fresh air. I have come to wonder about the expense and the efficacy of the war on the Jihadists, at least as the current administration is prosecuting it. Is there really a substantial, material threat to the United States and to Western Democracy from the Jihadists? I don't think so.

The Hawks on the page like to claim we're in a millenial struggle with the Jihadists but it's nothing new; it's the same struggle we have been waging since the twelfth century. I would add that they are an impotent enemy in any meaningful, tactical, or strategic sense. They don't have any weapons or means at their disposal to cause any damage to the United States. In any statistical sense, Jihadist terrorism is a non-event as a threat to life or limb in the United States. Check this document:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_19.pdf

Driving to work in the morning is, at least a thousand times more of a threat to your life than global jihadisim. You are more likely to be killed by lightning over the course of your lifetime than killed by a terrorist.

How many Americans were killed by terrorism last year? Zero. How many have been killed in the last 100 years by terrorism? How many Americans were killed fighting terrorism? How much good did the loss of their lives do? Did their loss make us any safer? How many innocent non-combatants were killed fighting terrorism last year?

The battle against the Jihadists, as it is currently constructed, makes no sense. The means and resources we are employing is way out of proportion to the size of the threat. We aren't even employing the resources properly. Surveillance, interdiction and targeted assasination would be way cheaper and far more effective than what we are doing now. We are using a bulldozer where we should be using a flyswatter.

Toast & Tea

Obviously you have never talked to anyone from Iran. One of my students from UAH was Persian and went home for a visit. In Iran young women are warned about a lot of things. One is that you have to get out of the way of any man on the street. If she did not get out of the way she is liable to be knocked down, beaten, raped, or killed with no recourse by her or her family.

That is enough for starters.

The blindness of some of the posters in this thread is astonishing.

A comment can be made that at the height of WWII there were more people killed in automobile and railroad accidents than on the battlefield. Did that mean that Hitler was not a threat to our national existence?

Trying to use a statistical argument is the height of cluelessness.

You simply fail to recognize that the current fight to THEM is just an extension of a fight that has been going on for hundreds and thousands of years. To fail to understand this is a stunning testament to the failure of our educational system.

Even during Vietnam, Ho Chi Min did not advocate flying the Vietamese flag over Washington. This is a fight of the ages for them and they will continue to wage it until they win or die. I, for one, would prefer them to die.

It's very, very unlikely that, sans 9/11, the US would not have eventually done something drastic to Saddam's government. Remember operation Desert Fox? That was pre-9/11, as was the first gulf war, of course. The situation with respect to Iraq throughout the 90s was completely untenable, I think it's pretty likely that the US would have toppled Saddam's regime eventually, though we wouldn't have had the same level of commitment to the project, such as it is, and Iraq would very likely be in a much worse situation now. Either that or we would have left the region entirely and left Iraq to Saddam's ministrations, which isn't much of an alternative. The cruel but shocking fact is that Iraq today is doing about as well as could possibly be expected given the situation.

This is a fight of the ages for them and they will continue to wage it until they win or die. I, for one, would prefer them to die.

Well, since they're going to do it anyway, I'd prefer we pulled all of our forces out of there and let them put themselves to death on their own coin.

The traffic deaths vs. terrorism deaths comparison is a very good one. The point to be made is that the media and public reaction to "events" is dependent not simply on the probability of such events but also the rate of change of such probabilities. The probability of a death in a traffic accident is much higher here than in an act of terrorism. However since accident probabilities are static, the events blend into background noise. On the other hand rare events with probability changes are big news. So it's not death or injury that we worry about, it's how we die. In that sense a lot of it is in the mind, in our perceptions based on the rate of change of a probability. Improbable events need to be coded with longer sequences in coding theory. Our response to terrorism is similar. There is a good argument to be made that terrorism should be simply treated as a law and order problem and not be elevated to some higher plane.

Keven Sykes said:

> Where is Mueller living now? I could definitely
> use a little "walkin' 'round scratch"...

And the same ideology, if applied to international politics, would have the same result on a global scale.

Actually, Mike, I'm the one that said that. As semi-sarcastic as I meant it to be, I'd at least like to have credit for saying that I'd be happy to oblige anyone who is willing to hand out cash every time they feel threatened.

As far as TnT is concerned, I'm constantly amazed that people take things seriously when they're a) written by IowaHawk, and b) categorized on here as "satire".

Proof again of Rand's assertion that most people don't read the links in his postings before hopping on their soapboxes.

John, Thanks for informing me that the LA Times piece was also satire. I guess, unlike you, Mr. Very Wise Guy, I don't have that clear a view from my soapbox. Did the thought cross your mind that just maybe I read both pieces and was commenting on the second? Just maybe? Or did you want to level the insult first in your own personalized pontificational style and defer thought for later?

I don't think the LA Times piece "was also satire."

While I think the WW2 analogies are being overdone, there may be one in the present situation; working with an odious government (SA) against one or more other equally odious governments (Iran, Syria). Just as long as we don't kid ourselves about having to deal with the Wahhabi eventually ...

Robin is also correct that we would have hit Iraq by now anyway. Bush has merely continued the stated policy of the Clinton Administration -- a policy we came within a few weeks of executing in the spring of '98 -- to effect regime change in Iraq.

It's very, very unlikely that, sans 9/11, the US would not have eventually done something drastic to Saddam's government.

Considering the previous administration had already developed the doctrine of regime change in Iraq; I think you are right.