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Terrorism, Freedom, and Security: Winning Without War

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Harvard Law School professor Philip Heymann is a former deputy attorney general of the United States. In this book, he expands upon his earlier work, Terrorism and America, to look at the stark policy choices facing the United States in its efforts to reduce the harm from terrorist activities in the post-September 11, 2001 world.

I decided to read this book after hearing Professor Heymann explain his analysis today. I found the book greatly expanded my understanding of the policy choices facing the United States in its long-term efforts to counter terrorism. I was also shocked to realize that despite spending vast sums in this are the United States has failed to act effectively to counter the most serious threats to our people.

Professor Heymann is a very experienced thinker in the field of terrorism, having taught courses in this area and having worked with terrorism experts from other countries. His approach relies on advanced decision theory tools to spell out the choices and set a framework for a debate on which choices to pursue. As he rightly points out, this debate has yet to begin in the United States even though three years have passed since the infamous terrorist attacks. If we had been this ineffective after Pearl Harbor, civilization as we know it would be vastly different than today.

A number of the perspectives are powerful and revealing. For instance, calling counter terrorism a "war" creates many misconceptions that reduce our options for being effective -- such as assuming the military will play the lead role. It also suggests that we abandon our civil liberties to pursue the temporary emergency -- but this isn't temporary.

I especially liked the diagram that show how actions should be considered in terms of their effectiveness against terrorism, their attractiveness for improving morale, and their cost in terms of personal liberty. From that diagram, it becomes apparent that eliminating civil liberties without considering the benefit is a foolish exercise that only leads to presidential excesses.

There are also a number of intriguing matrices that look at actions and their consequences. From these, you get a sense that it probably makes a great deal of sense to maximize protection of nuclear and biological materials that could be used by terrorists (which is not being done) while it may be counter-productive to try to stop minor terrorist attacks by isolated individuals.

The book also makes the argument that some steps to stop terrorism may simply create more terrorists (such as the alleged abuses of Iraqi prisoners after last year's toppling of Saddam Hussein).

There is also a clear sense that having all governments counter terrorism through mutual cooperation works much better than if the United States decides to do the job unilaterally for itself.

The book's main weakness is that it assumes that terrorists are as rational as decision theory suggests. However, terrorists are often driven by emotion and earlier traumas . . . compounded by misunderstandings. I hope that Professor Heymann will extend his thoughts here to the question of how nations should counter those who are virtually deranged by anger and sadness into bitter, unremitting hatred.

If you want to move beyond being afraid to terrorism to doing something about it, read this book and demand that your representatives in Congress begin dealing with this threat in relevant, practical ways that can be maintained forever into the future.

Otherwise, the victims of terrorism will have died in vain because we continue to fail to learn from our past mistakes.

May God bless and comfort all those who lost loved ones and friends on September 11, 2001!