(Page 3 of 13) - Reacting to Terrorism: Probabilities, Consequences, and the Persistence of Fear authored by Mueller, John.

Mueller: Reacting to terrorism ISA 2007 February 6, 2007

W. Bush, continually refer to what is going on in Iraq as "terror" or as "terrorism," but that complicated
conflict is more properly, and commonly, labeled an insurgency. Insurgents and guerrilla combatants
usually rely on the hit-and-run tactics employed by the terrorist, and the difference is not in the method,
but in the frequency with which it is employed.

Without this distinction, much civil warfare (certainly including the decade-long conflict in

Algeria in the 1990s in which perhaps 100,000 people perished) would have to be included in the
"terrorist" category. And so would most "primitive warfare," which, like irregular warfare more generally,
relies mostly on raids rather on set-piece battles.

That is, with the revised definition, a huge number of

violent endeavors that have normally been called "wars" would have to be recategorized. Indeed, the
concept of civil war might have to be retired almost entirely. Most of the mayhem in the American Civil
War did take place in setpiece battles between uniformed combatants, but that conflict was extremely
unusual among civil wars in this respect--the rebels in most civil wars substantially rely on tactics that are
indistinguishable from those employed by the terrorist. Moreover, any genocide, massacre, or ethnic
cleansing carried out by insurgents in civil wars would now have to be reclassified as an instance of
terrorism.

When people in the developed world worry about terrorism, however, they are not particularly

concerned that sustained civil warfare or insurgency will break out in their country. They are mainly
fearful of random or sporadic acts of terrorism carried out within their homeland. For this concern, the
original State Department definition, not an expanded one stemming from the sustained violence in Iraq,
seems to be the most appropriate.

Another approach is to focus on the kind of terrorism that really concerns people in the developed

world by restricting the consideration to violence committed by Muslim extremists outside of such war
zones as Iraq, Israel, Chechnya, Sudan, Kashmir, and Afghanistan, whether that violence be perpetrated
by domestic terrorists or by ones with substantial international connections. Included in the count would
be terrorism of the much-publicized sort that occurred in the United States in 2001, in Bali in 2002, in
Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Turkey in 2003, in the Philippines, Madrid, and Egypt in 2004, and in
London and Jordan in 2005.

Two publications from Washington think tanks have independently provided lists of such

incidents--one authored by Anthony Cordesman of CSIS, the other by Brian Jenkins of RAND.

Although

these tallies make for grim reading, the total number of people killed in the five years since 9/11 in such
incidents comes to about 1000--that is, some 200 per year. That, of course, is 1000 too many, but it hardly
constitutes a major threat, much less an existential one, to countries in Europe and North America. For
comparison: over the same period far more people have drown in bathtubs in the United States alone.

Neglecting

probabilities

Thus, unless international terrorists become far more capable, the danger they present,

particularly to people living outside war zones, remains exceedingly small.

See Lawrence H. Keeley, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1996). For more on the distinction between terrorism and civil war, see John Mueller, The Remnants
of War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 18-20.

Anthony H. Cordesman, The Challenge of Biological Weapons (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and

International Studies, 2005), pp. 29-31. Brian Michael Jenkins, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy and
Strengthening Ourselves (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2006), pp. 179-84.