A Specter Haunts America...

...the specter of terrorism.

The list of potential catastrophes is endless—a dirty radioactive cloud over Manhattan, hoof and mouth disease wiping out American cattle herds, bombs against a few tunnels or bridges that bring our transport system to a halt, smallpox unleashed on an airplane and spread almost immediately and unnoticeably throughout the country.

As imagined disasters multiply, the scale of perceived danger inevitably outruns confidence in our defenses.

The government's loudly trumpeted "War on Terror" is not the solution to the problem. It has become the problem. The War on Terror does not reduce public anxieties by thwarting terrorists poised to strike.

Rather, in myriad ways, conducting the antiterror effort as a "war" fuels those anxieties. By stoking these public fears, and attracting vast political and economic resources in response to them, the War on Terror encourages, indeed virtually compels, every interest group in the country to advance its agenda as crucial for winning the war. As a result, widening circles of Americans are drawn into a spiraling maelstrom of fear, waste, exaggeration, and opportunity for profit... 

The War on Terror record of failure, along with inevitable and spectacular instances of venality and waste, will humiliate thousands of public servants and elected officials, demoralize citizens, and enrage taxpayers.

The effort to master the unlimited catastrophes we can imagine by mobilizing the very scarce resources we actually have, will drain our economy, divert and distort military, intelligence, and law enforcement resources, undermine faith in our institutions, and fundamentally disturb our way of life.

In this way the terrorists who struck us so hard on September 11, 2001, can use our own defensive efforts to do us much greater harm than they could ever do themselves.

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