This is not WW III

As we approach the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, there are two things to remember.

First, the threat from terrorists is real and we must do what we must to prevent it and respond to it when it happens. This includes the smart use of military intervention where and when appropriate.

Second, the threat from terrorists must be kept in perspective. As terrible as the September 11th attacks were, the scope of this threat does not come close to what we faced in the Cold War or WW II. We must not allow the fear of terrorism to pervert our democracy or our common sense in foreign relations. Obsessing over terrorism, gives terrorists power over us.

Below is an editorial from the Boston Globe.

Eleven suspects were brought to court in London this week, charged with
involvement in the plot to blow up several airliners over the Atlantic. The
foiling of their alleged conspiracy will inevitably be scrutinized for what it
reveals about the terrorist threat five years after Sept. 11.

It should be reassuring that the plotters were not as well organized or as
successful at keeping their plans secret as the Sept. 11 masterminds and the
terrorists who did their bidding. If British and Pakistani officials are
correct, knowledge of the airline plot was disseminated among scores of people.
The conspirators failed to prevent a mole from infiltrating their network. And
they were careless enough to permit U.S. agencies to intercept their
communications.

If the scheme to use liquid explosives to blow up the airliners was conceived or directed by top Qaeda figures, as Pakistani intelligence has claimed, then it seems obvious that Osama bin Laden's lieutenants are less capable of carrying out a complex terrorist spectacular than they were before they lost their sanctuary and training camps in Afghanistan.

If Al Qaeda was not orchestrating the airline scheme, or if Qaeda figures were involved only tangentially, the thwarting of the plot suggests that local terrorists and jihadists are best fought with sound intelligence and old-fashioned police work. They may be capable of mass killing, as the London train bombings last summer showed, but the threat they represent is very different from that of Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany.

Inflating the danger from jihadi terrorists into an existential threat and invoking a grandiose third world war, as President George W. Bush and his advisers have been doing, only plays into the hands of bin Laden and the other deluded megalomaniacs hiding out with him in the mountains of South
Waziristan.