The empirics haven’t justified the efforts – counterterrorism is near useless because the threat of terrorism largely does not exist.

It is possible to argue that the damage inflicted by terrorists since 9/11 outside of war zones is low because “defensive measures are working,” as the journalist Peter Bergen has suggested.27 At the extreme are the repeated assertions of former Vice President Dick Cheney that security measures put into place after 9/11 have saved thousands of lives, a figure he had escalated by 2009 to “perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.”28 In this argument, the bathtub comparison fails: the terrorism death toll, to which it is compared, is low only because terrorism has very effectively been reduced by countermeasures designed to do exactly that. There have been few efforts to refute or even examine such extravagant and evidence-free claims—for the most part, they are simply allowed to lay there.29 But even applying a high estimate for the value of human life and a low one for US counterterrorism expenditures, the expenditures would have had to save 11,797 lives per year to begin to be justified.30 Or they would have had to avert more than one 9/11 attack every other year.31 Disclosed Plots To begin to assess, and parse, this argument, one can look at the 124 plots by Islamist extremists, many of them inspired by al-Qaeda or ISIS, seeking to commit terrorism in the United States since 9/11 through 2017. 32 Of these, 27 have been carried out in some form or other. Terrorists managed to kill people in ten of these, resulting in the average of six deaths per year as noted above.33 The remaining 97 plots were rolled up by authorities. For the most part, the capacities of the people involved in these plots are singularly unimpressive, however. When those cases are examined, the vast majority of the offenders (though perhaps not quite all) turn out to have been naive, amateurish, and gullible. Their schemes, especially when unaided by facilitating FBI infiltrators, have been incoherent and inept, their capacity to accumulate weaponry rudimentary, and their organizational skills close to non-existent. Left on their own, it is certainly possible that a few of the plotters in the 97 foiled plots would have been able to get their act together and actually do something. But it seems unlikely that the total damage would increase by anywhere near enough to suggest that terrorism presents a substantial threat, much less the one imagined by Cheney: the yearly death toll might be pushed up to 12 or perhaps even 18 Undisclosed plots It is frequently argued by officials that many terrorist plots have been thwarted in addition to the ones that have entered the public record but that information about these cases cannot be disclosed for various reasons. In working on an extensive report about how US intelligence efforts (and budgets) were massively increased after 9/11, the Washington Post’s Dana Priest says that she frequently heard this claim. In response, she says she “asked them to share with us anything they could, plots that were foiled that we could put in the paper because we didn’t have many examples. We said, give us things, just in generalities.” But “we didn’t receive anything back.”34 Terrorism specialist Marc Sageman has had the relevant background (and clearances) to comment authoritatively on the matter: “As a member of the Intelligence Community, who kept abreast of all the plots in the US,” he says, “I have not seen any significant terrorist plots that have been disrupted and not disclosed. On the contrary, the government goes out of its way to take credit for non-plots, such as their sting operations.”35 Glenn Carle, who was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats at the CIA for several years before his retirement in 2008 after 23 years of service, is more terse. He characterizes the claim that there are a great many thwarted terrorist plots that have gone undisclosed in three (or six) words: “Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.”36 Disclosed minor plots In addition to those prosecuted on terrorism charges, authorities have apprehended a considerable number, perhaps hundreds, of loud-mouthed aspirational terrorists within the United States, and, lacking enough evidence to convict them on terrorism charges, the authorities have levied lesser ones to jail or to deport them. For the most part, these plots or aspirations are even less likely to lead to notable violence than the ones that have resulted in terrorism trials. Further, the bulk of people who are jailed on terrorism-associated prosecutions serve short terms and, accordingly, are soon set free to commit terrorism if they want to do so. Yet, none have attempted to do so. Deterrence Nor is it likely that much terrorism has been deterred by security measures. Extensive and costly security measures have undoubtedly taken some targets off the list for just about all terrorists. In particular, since most of them have been impelled toward terrorism by hostility to American military policy in the Middle East, many of them have sought out military targets.37 Although some have contemplated attacking individual soldiers in the street or military recruitment centers in shopping malls—or have actually done so—few have considered attacking military bases themselves. That is, they have likely been deterred from attacking their preferred target. The same can be said for another target: aviation.38 However, while deterred from attacking some targets, no dedicated would-be terrorist should have much difficulty finding other ones if the goal is to kill people or destroy property to make a statement—the world is filled with such targets. Shooting up a mall, or derailing a train, or setting a building or forest on fire, or detonating a homemade bomb in a crowd can garner great attention and can have substantial consequence—as has been seen with the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013, with the shootings in Paris in 2015, or with the destruction in Manchester, England, in 2017. Thus, the fact that there has been so little Islamist terrorism in the United States and the West can’t be because would-be terrorists have been deterred by security measures. And much the same can be said for the related argument maintaining that we have much to fear because we only catch the dummies, while all the smart ones get away to wait for the right opportunity to commit terrorist mayhem. But then, why don’t they eventually actually do something? If they are so smart, they surely know that the longer they wait, the more likely they are to be detected. The impact of no-entry measures and comparisons with Europe Since 9/11, there have been something like two billion legal entries into the United States by foreigners. It is impressive that virtually no al-Qaeda or other Islamist extremist operatives appear to have been in this number. The costly maintenance of a no-fly list and similar measures has doubtless been helpful in this; indeed, getting operatives into the country was already a primary problem for the 9/11 plotters. 39 However, the complete failure of overseas terrorists to insert any operatives at all since 2001 suggests either considerable incompetence or a lack of trying very hard. The Western European experience is relevant to this issue.40 Estimating European counterterrorism expenditures is difficult, but, although they are likely lower than the United States, Europeans have not experienced more terrorism. The cost figures for the United Kingdom are more available, and they suggest that the country spends about half as much as the United States on counterterrorism, yet has suffered about six deaths per year since 2001, the same as for the United States. This, even though Europe’s Muslim population is large and even though entry and exit are much easier—it does not have the Atlantic Ocean as a moat. The grand deterrent The fact that terrorism is such a rare phenomenon in the developed world, likely derives from what might be called the grand or ultimate deterrent. In the end, terrorism simply doesn’t recommend itself as a course of practical political action because of the futility and fundamental absurdity of the enterprise. In general, in fact, it tends to be counterproductive. 41 That there is so little terrorism, then, is not because of the efficacy of security measures or because it is so difficult to pull off—lucrative targets are ubiquitous and headline-grabbing mayhem is easy to commit. To a considerable degree, terrorism is rare because terrorists, unlike bathtubs, don’t exist. As Bruce Schneier puts it bluntly, “there isn’t much of a threat of terrorism to defend against.”42