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John E. Mueller

Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them Paperback – March 25, 2009

by John Mueller (Author)

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Why have there been no terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11? It is ridiculously easy for a single person with a bomb-filled backpack, or a single explosives-laden automobile, to launch an attack. So why hasn't it happened? The answer is surely not the Department of Homeland Security, which cannot stop terrorists from entering the country, legally or otherwise. It is surely not the Iraq war, which has stoked the hatred of Muslim extremists around the world and wasted many thousands of lives. Terrorist attacks have been regular events for many years -- usually killing handfuls of people, occasionally more than that.

Is it possible that there is a simple explanation for the peaceful American homefront? Is it possible that there are no al-Qaeda terrorists here? Is it possible that the war on terror has been a radical overreaction to a rare event? Consider: 80,000 Arab and Muslim immigrants have been subjected to fingerprinting and registration, and more than 5,000 foreign nationals have been imprisoned -- yet there has not been a single conviction for a terrorist crime in America. A handful of plots -- some deadly, some intercepted -- have plagued Europe and elsewhere, and even so, the death toll has been modest.

We have gone to war in two countries and killed tens of thousands of people. We have launched a massive domestic wiretapping program and created vast databases of information once considered private. Politicians and pundits have berated us about national security and patriotic duty, while encroaching our freedoms and sending thousands of young men off to die.

It is time to consider the hypothesis that dare not speak its name: we have wildly overreacted. Terrorism has been used by murderous groups for many decades, yet even including 9/11, the odds of an American being killed by international terrorism are microscopic. In general, international terrorism doesn't do much damage when considered in almost any reasonable context.

The capacity of al-Qaeda or of any similar group to do damage in the United States pales in comparison to the capacity other dedicated enemies, particularly international Communism, have possessed in the past. Lashing out at the terrorist threat is frequently an exercise in self-flagellation because it is usually more expensive than the terrorist attack itself and because it gives the terrorists exactly what they are looking for. Much, probably most, of the money and effort expended on counterterrorism since 2001 (and before, for that matter) has been wasted.

The terrorism industry and its allies in the White House and Congress have preyed on our fears and caused enormous damage. It is time to rethink the entire enterprise and spend much smaller amounts on only those things that do matter: intelligence, law enforcement, and disruption of radical groups overseas. Above all, it is time to stop playing into the terrorists' hands, by fear-mongering and helping spread terror itself.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Free Press
Publication date

March 25, 2009
Dimensions

6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1416541721
ISBN-13

978-1416541721
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Mueller holds the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and is professor of Political Science at Ohio State University, where he teaches courses in international relations.

He is the author of several classic works of political science and many editorial page columns and articles in The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Reason, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Mueller is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also received several teaching prizes.

Product details

Publisher : Free Press (March 25, 2009)
Language : English
Paperback : 272 pages
ISBN-10 : 1416541721
ISBN-13 : 978-1416541721
Item Weight : 14.3 ounces
Dimensions : 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,894,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,614 in Law Enforcement Politics
- #2,679 in Law Enforcement (Books)
- #3,029 in Terrorism (Books)

Customer Reviews:
27 ratings

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Andrew Stigler

John Mueller has been getting the issue of threat exaggeration ...

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2017

Verified Purchase

John Mueller has been getting the issue of threat exaggeration right for a number of years now. Less than a year after 9/11, he wrote "Harbinger or Aberration?" in the National Interest (Fall 2002), and predicted that the three of international terrorism was "manageable." He was right - and the American national security establishment was wrong.

This book encapsulates many of his arguments on why we're psychologically predisposed to exaggerate threats such as terrorism. Read it and learn.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Penny J. Barwick

Thanks Goodness the Truth!

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2008

Verified Purchase

Finally there is truth in publishing when it comes to terrorism. We all have been so programmed to put plastic on our windows duct them the windows and doorways and then hide our heads in the sand while we shake like a washing machine that is off center when we hear there is a red alert. This book tells the entire truth and shows how politicians, the media and people out to make fast and easy money use those fears against us. It also shows how politicians use the threat for their own gains and political advantages. This book covers everything and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject; even if you're not it will help you get a better understanding of how our fear of what happened on 9/11 is being used against us. The truth finally came out.

6 people found this helpful

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Shopbills

Excellent book!

Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2013

Verified Purchase

This author is great in his field. His research is thorough and credible. I am getting my master's in Homeland security and have used this author as resources several times.

2 people found this helpful

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Karen Cummins

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2015

Verified Purchase

My husband loves the book

One person found this helpful

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2bluesky2

How serious is the terrorist threat to the USA?

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2010

Has the "war on terror" been worth the cost? The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 triggered massive spending and curtailment of liberties in the US - intended to prevent any repeat event.

Mueller points out that the September 11 attack was the most successful terrorist attack in history. Nothing anywhere before or since comes close to matching its toll of 3000+ dead and property damage in the $50+ billion range. Other major terrorist attacks have occasionally resulted in death tolls in the 200+ range, with property damage at only a tiny fraction of the September 11 total. Annual death tolls worldwide from terrorist attacks amount to an average of about several hundred. Rarely are Americans affected.

Mueller points out that numerous other types of common calamities cause far more preventable deaths and destruction on an annual basis than terrorists, yet do not generate a fraction of the attention that the "war on terror" gets. Mueller says there is a "terrorism industry" that profits from hyping fears of terrorism. This industry consists of politicians, bureaucrats, experts, and the media. The public seems swayed by the fear mongering from the "terrorism industry" in spite of the comparative insignificance of terrorist attacks.

The "terrorism industry" in the USA is constantly embarrassed by the nearly total absence of foreign terrorist activity in the USA before or since the September 11 attack. Is this absence caused by the effectiveness of the US Department of Homeland Security? Mueller posits that the more likely explanation is that there simply are no domestic terrorist organizations or plots to be countered. The number of people arrested and jailed in the USA for terrorism is practically nil. Enormous sums of money have been spent trying to find the terrorists among us, but there is nothing significant to show for all of that expense.

Mueller recognizes that terrorists exist and need to be dealt with, but they are not a threat to our survival. The history and experience of terrorism in this country tells us the problem is one appropriately assigned to local police, and not the US military. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have already cost us far more in lives and treasure than was lost in the September 11 attack. And the death and destruction we have inflicted on those countries far, far exceeds any loss we suffered. Our destructive reaction has considerably exceeded the provocation.

Citing numerous historical examples from the past 100 years in the USA, Mueller explains that overreaction to terrorism has always been far more costly than anything the terrorists have done or could ever likely do to us. He notes that it would be far less costly for the government to reimburse people who suffer monetary losses from terrorism than to maintain the "war on terror." In the war on terror, we become our own worst enemies. Terrorism is a tactic intended to provoke fear.

Franklin Roosevelt once said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Mueller doesn't go quite that far. He supports preventative action against terrorists commensurate with the threat they pose. But, as he points out throughout his book, the threat has been greatly overblown.

*****

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

historic novel fan

EVERYONE needs to read this book! Read it with ...

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2015

EVERYONE needs to read this book! Read it with plugs in your ears, to drown out all the calls for war, and all the calls for trillions more in foreign expenditures that accomplish precisely nothing, and all the calls for curtailment of our freedoms, that are infesting the American scene nowadays. You are more likely to be hit by lightning or to win the lottery than you are to be harmed by terrorists. Please wake up America! You are being used by people who want to profit from a drummed-up hysteria.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Olly Buxton

Required Reading for Chicken Licken

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 21, 2007

Verified Purchase

This is an interesting, valuable and important book, and I'm fairly sure almost no-one has or, for that matter will, read it. I will do what I can to change that.

John Mueller is from a venerable but sadly rare tradition of Academic commentators: the skeptics. It's that perspective he lends to our "troubled times" and over this course of this tidily executed, thoroughly sourced and entertaining book, Mueller systematically demolishes much of the public hype which holds us up in airport terminals, eats up our tax dollars and does its level best to prevent us sleeping soundly in our beds.

He makes, and repeats, a point which many otherwise perfectly sensible and well-informed commentators can't fathom: The biggest source of terror in our lives is not terrorists in Afghan caves, but our own politicians and media pundits constantly blathering about them. The terrorists themselves cause sporadic but, in fact, very limited mayhem.

The thousands of hungry mouths who comprise the "terrorism industry" on the other hand - the politicians, civil servants, defence contractors, security analysts and media commentators - each of whom is primarily interested in justifying his own existence or convincing us to open our wallets - each has a vested interest in persuading us we should be soiling rather than sleeping in our beds. Their statements, therefore, we should take with a pinch of salt.

But even though we all know we ought to, we don't. We acquiesce: we put up with speculative, unsourced, unattributed, and frequently credulous nonsense - we tolerate queues and being unneccesarily fondled at airports, hikes in tax rates and restrictions on our civil liberties. John Mueller's book sets out to provide us a reality check and ask, pointedly, why we are so easily prepared to do that.

By way of preface Mueller lists a series of items which ought to be - but aren't - conventional wisdom. They're all very big points, among them:

* Terrorism just doesn't do much damage considered in any reasonable context (nine times as many Americans are struck by lightning in the average year as are killed by terrorists)

* Even where Terrorism has horrendous results, it tends to be one-off events (despite six years of anxiety, there has not been another terrorist attack in the U.S. *at all*, let alone one on the scale of 9/11)

* Catastrophic events are by their nature are hard to repeat (never again will a plane full of unsuspecting passengers sit and allow unarmed men to fly them to their deaths without intervening, since the assumption "we'll be used as hostages so we're safe for now" no longer holds)

* Terrorist actions tend to be counterproductive on almost every level any way: far from throwing New York into chaos, panic and Hobbesian brutality, the direct and immediate result of 9/11 was the sudden blossoming of compassion, cooperation and cohesion in the city on a completely unprecedented scale - a place not usually known for its neighborliness or Samaritan spirit

* The cost (both human and economic terms) of the "War on Terror" has been far greater than the cost of Terrorist actions themselves (even taking into account the financial losses sustained in the capital markets)

* The "War on Terror", being as it is a war on an idea, is utterly unwinnable. There is no practical way of eradicating the possibility of individuals, for whatever reason, engaging in entirely destructive acts of violence. Like road fatalities (of which there are tens of thousands each year in the US) the risk of terrorist attacks are a fact of life in built up areas which we should take reasonable, dispassionate, measures to minimise bearing in mind the opportunity costs of doing so.

Mueller doesn't take an (overtly) political position - his arguments are not based on views about foreign policy nor the moral rights and wrongs of the situation, but an statistical analysis of the costs and risks of the terrorist threat, and acknowledgment of the personal agendas which inevitably inform those who shout loudest. "If it bleeds it leads" - people don't buy newspapers to read good news, so in a competitive market it is no surprise if newspapers tend to dwell on worst case scenarios. Yes, terrorism is dreadful, Mueller says, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep it in perspective.

In short, this book is a long overdue and much needed dose of common sense.

Olly Buxton

7 people found this helpful

Dr. Gavin Hall

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2013

Verified Purchase

Highly informative argument that goes to the core of the problem with how the West view terrorism through their own domestic policy agendas

dove

Good arguments

Reviewed in Canada on January 26, 2019

Verified Purchase

You can see that he has facts and you can not hide from it. Very reasonable. He explains it in plain terms and totally tramples on over- hyped media.

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on February 2, 2018

Verified Purchase

Great product, easy transaction, highly recommend.

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