During the Cold War, it seems clearly correct to have judged the situation with regard to the USSR to be clearly the overriding priority.  yglesias

Actually, the "overriding priority" during the Cold War was the political condition of peasant societies stemming from an anxiety that they would go communist.  The Soviet "threat" was highlighted because wars against peasant societies couldn't support our military industrial complex in the style to which it wished to become accustomed.

I knew right when the administration started talking up their pending invasion of Iraq that they were not serious about terrorism.  Saddam was isolated in a box and being scrutinized by UN weapons inspectors and Al-Qaida was still in operation...but we attacked Iraq instead.  Then came the attacks on Madrid, Istanbul (twice), Bali (twice), London, Egypt (twice), Jordan and Chechnya...

But given that, does it really make sense to elevate terrorism above everything else in a semi-permanent way?

Probably not. But our government has been reacting emotionally and not rationally ever since 9/11. If we were rational people we would do the following:

1. Review all the risks we are faced with--and determine the odds of those risks being realized

2. Measure the cost in lives and property damage of each of those risks being realized

3. Determine the cost and feasibility of reducing each of those risks

4. Prioritize on reducing those risks that have high odds of being realized, are costly if they are realized, and can be reduced effectively at reasonable cost.

The situation is unhealthy, unless you are a Republican pol or a Republican patron.  The "war on terror", which Bush and Rove really should get a trademark on, is an emotional sop for media attention.  Before 9/11, when Bush's poll numbers were tanking, he had to explain himself and the explanations were found wanting.  Now, everything is secondary to the "war on terror".  Spending cuts, well, we're fighting the war on terror; tax cuts, well, we've got to keep the economy going cause we're fighting the war on terror, you know.  Why would they give this up? 

I can't believe that Powell, Ridge, McCain and others don't see this.  I find it unconscionable that they are almost totally silent on the implications.

In some ways, I think the only thing that might turn this around is even more overreaching by Bush--but the damage done...

My cliched image of George Bush since 9/11, starting with the pathetic image in the 4th grade classroom, is of an inexperienced and totally lost recent officer school graduate in Vietnam who comes in all gung ho but loses it the first time his platoon gets in a fire fight. A month later he gets fragged by his men as an act of self-preservation. I have posted this sentiment before but I keep coming back to the idea of our nation being lost in the fog of war without a truely courageous and rational leader. It is a trajedy that we haven't had a great American hero or a Winston Churchill step up to lead us. Maybe that is a comment on the political mess we have created for ourselves since Robert Kennedy was assasinated but it is nearly if not equally as tragic as the losses suffered on 9/11.

No, we have to quit acknowledging their imagery.  Of course we take national security seriously.  It's time to call "bullshit" on their hand. 

Manhattan, Chicago, San Francisco...the only places seriously living under the threat of terrorism voted 80% for Kerry.  We shouldn't just wait to be acknowleged for our concerns about terrorism; we point out what a shitty job they're doing.  While we should be grateful that nothing else has happened on US soil, that doesn't justify their strategic ineptitude or general thuggery. 

Look, these guys aren't really that good.  Rove handed Kerry the election three times (loyalty pledges, WMD joke, Valerie Plame), but as usual Manute Bol failed to come through on offense.   

No one who gives these people credence will get my vote. You hear me Hillary?  Feingold and Obama are to represent the MINIMUM  standard for hostility towards the Bush regime. That means if you voted for the war, and you're yet to hold a tear-filled press conference apologia, you can stop wasting your breath.  

No more "proving" we are serious about national security.  Far as I'm concerned it's intellectual chickenshittery to accept that they  may actually have a point.  They don't; at least not one that they can admit publically. 

The (formally) legitimate gov't of the US has initiated a coup d'etat.  Interesting times... 

"...the Pentagon's budget priorities suggest they're gearing up to fight a war with China."

God help us if we find ourselves in wars with both China and radical Islam. Given the unhappy results in Iraq with 160,000 troups, we can all say goodbye to our sons & daughters.

Three random thoughts triggered by what others have said:

1. Daniel Greenbaum is right to bring up the distinction between "terrorism" in general and the threat from radical Islamists. I'd say that we should have a general strategy for defending our country against any terrorist attacks from any source (i.e., by protecting transportation systems, food and water supplies, chemical plants, etc., having well-considered disaster response plans, and improving intelligence gathering capabilities while respecting civil liberties). We should also have a strategy for dealing with those specific groups from whom a terrorist attack is most likely now (radical Islamists being first and foremost, though I wouldn't want us to be closeminded to other threats). Personally, I think the most effective strategy for dealing with Islamic radicalism is criminal investigation and prosecution (in cooperation with our global allies) of those involved in acts of terrorism. War is a legitimate response where we have real targets such as training camps in Afghanistan--but is probably ineffective compared with criminal prosecution in most other situations. Trying to build democracy in the middle east by overthrowing regimes seems rather inefficient, risky, and costly. Using soft power to encourage the growth of civil liberties and democracy is probably more effective.

2. I'm still curious about whether 9/11 signaled an increase in the risk of major terrorist attacks or whether 9/11 was more of a fluke--like a 10,000 year flood (i.e., something always in the realm of possibility but with a very low probability of occuring in any given year or decade or century). If it's the latter, the risk from terrorism is probably quite small, since most other terrorist attacks, while frightening, actually cause relatively little death and damage compared to things like transportation accidents, heart disease, and natural disasters. I think the emotional aspects of 9/11 may cause us to exaggerate the overall risk to our well-being from terrorism. I think it's significant that, despite what we say about the significance of the threat, very few of us have changed our lifestyles much at all to cope with it. If terrorism were as serious a threat as we often say it is, I would expect more people to actively try to avoid terrorism by (say) avoiding appearing in public places. This "threat" does not seem to produce much behavior change--and therefore is probably more imagined than real. Also, deaths from terrorism are minute compared with deaths from automobile accidents, various diseases, gun accidents, etc. We don't have wars against cars and guns, though, do we? We take diseases more seriously, but that's because they are very much more dangerous, less in our control, and don't provide any benefits to counteract their danger.

3. I find it disturbing that Americans seem so willing to sacrifice liberties for security. I thought we were made of more.

Yes, and let's not be afraid to throw the word "fearmonger" around.

If the Democrats want to remain the minority party for another generation, by all means we should tell Americans that an attack by a foreign power that killed thousands of Americans on our own soil has been "overhyped."  If we want to actually get back into power (which would, BTW, ensure that issues other than the rise of China actually get time and attention) we need to present ourselves as the party that takes terorrism seriously because we take homeland security seriously. 

 This smells like DLC Dog Food.  The Democratic Party gave Bush the power to conduct extra-legal governance. Few Democrats in power have ever said anything like terrorism is overhyped. Rather, they actually believed and promoted the hype, right up to Hillary talking out of every available orifice about her stance(s) and vote on the War, not to mention cowering Dem insiders who didn't have the guts to take a stand against it or the Patriot Act.
Sorry, but repackaging the post-9/11 debacle is last year's game.  Some Dems spoke reasonably about gaping holes in American security and valid scenarios, but to this very day, nothing has been done about any of that. The only credibility to be had now is derived from that minority of Dem office holders who begged for Reason rather than promote the products of fear.  Gutting the Patriot Act is a start. The next step is to offer the possibilty of confidence and strength, instead of the  expoitative cowardice underlying current anti-terrorism policy.  Oh, and the truth would be a fine place to start.

The Afghan war response to 9/11 was entirely appropriate. Bin Laden posed a threat to the US, and with the assets of a state at his disposal, even a poor, failed state, he represented a particularly dangerous threat. Depriving him of the resources of a state dramatically reduces the threat he represents.

Matt's closing line, that we are not being permitted to engage in a policy debate is a central problem, not only on the issue of national security, but in every area of public policy.  It is, in my view, certain that make public policy from only one point of view, regardless of its ideology, is certain to fail repeatedly. As it has.

However, the administration is not wrong to focus its attention on rogue states. There is a couple of order of magnitudes more danger from a state than from a collection of stateless individuals.  The disconnect here is that they talk about battling terrorism, while trying to present a muscular front to states that aren't particularly involved in terrorist activity directed at the US. (Israel, otoh....)

Detecting, preventing, deterring terrorist attack is not nearly as resource-intensive as deterring military attacks on, say, the troops in South Korea.  But it requires an intelligent, thoughtful approach--encouraging speculative ideas, chasing after low-probability leads.  This is not expensive, but it's hard.  You need smart, paranoid guys like Richard Clark working the problem, and a National Security Council who can performed reasoned assessments of the threats. 

The trouble now is that we don't seem to have either--neither smart, paranoid guys doing threat assessments on staff, nor a thoughtful NSC evaluating their recommendations.  But the terrorist threat is definitely smaller than the threat from states--if only because of the available resources.

I think this sort of debate tends to further obscure a topic that's only slightly starting to emerge from the post-9/11 taboo on thinking about American priorities -- should counterterrorism really be the organizing principle of American foreign policy?

Just starting Matt?  Really?  My impression is that this debate has now been taking place in a fairly serious way for well over a year now.  But maybe the perspective is different in Washington.

A signal event, as I recall, was Peter Beinart's New Republic article from last year, in which he described the War on Terrorism - or the War on Islamofascism, or the War on Militant Radical Islam, or whatever the favored term of art was at the time -  as the great moral and political challenge of our generation.  He essentially called for a new Cold War and a purge of the Democratic Party that would isolate those who lacked sufficient zeal for the great cause.

Now it seems to me that after some of the initial vivid and smelly gas clouds surrounding the article were vented in the media, Beinart's philosophical crepitations have dissipated greatly, his call to arms has been a rhetorical dud, and the ideological forces he represents - neoconservatives and some crusading liberal fellow-travelers - have been on the run politically and rhetorically.  Beinartism already has the cold feel of a gravely endangered ideological stance.

I do think that it is a profound contemporary mistake to choose the War on Islamo-Whateverism as the fundamental organizing principle of our foreign policy.  And I agree that the Bush administration is addicted to this organizing principle, because it has been the secret of their once estimable political power.  And some of his more fanatical followers are addicted to the doctrine because it brings meaning to their otherwise boring lives.  But perhaps a more general and pervasive contemporary problem is the enduring sense that our foreign policy needs to be based on some fundamental ideological cause or polarity - so that if it is not the War against Radical Islam it has to be something else (like the War Against Oriental Despotism - Chinese Style).  But why?  In my opinion, this tendency toward clear-cut ideological fixations is one of the many lingering, harmful consequences of the Cold War.

rAmerica has friends of many different kinds, and enemies of many different kinds, and there are many others who are ambivalent toward us and are just trying to make their way in the world.  Foreign policy should be a balancing act, not a holy war. A states has a large number of sometimes competing interests; and the people who live in that state have their own individual interests which are themselves sometimes in conflict. Our leaders' job should be to pursue policies that help us prosper, and and at the same time protect us from external dangers.  There are lots of opportunities and lots of dangers.  We need experienced grownups with balanced judgment; not zealots acting out the narrative of a quest romance.

We need experienced grownups with balanced judgment; not zealots acting out the narrative of a quest romance.

Very well said! I wish that whole comment would fit on a tee shirt!

On August 8, 2001, the CIA told President Bush the following:

1) Bin Laden is determined to strike in the USA

2) Al Qaeda's people are here

3) observations conclude that these Al Quada people may be preparing for hijacking.

What do we need to know? This is 9-11 writ large.. President Bush was warned and he did not tell the CSG, he did not tell the AG.

Why did President Bush not think that a hijacking of a domestic jet by Al Qadea might be a problem?

But he will tap our phone if you call  a friend in England.

Do we really need this idiocy? Isn't the 4th ammendment clear enough?

God help my Republic. 

That the Bush administration seems not to take terrorism seriously, and uses the 'war on terror' more for political gain than advancing National safety & preparedness, is hardly an argument that Democrats should not take terrorism seriously.

The single rebuttal to liberals, now more comfortably settling into their routine of mocking what they see as over strident and semi-paranoid security measures and armchair intellectual snark about the 'culture of fear' is that only 4 years ago, 12 guys after years of training and planning, hijacked 3 airplanes, brought down two world trade centers & bombarded the pentagon.

That's not an argument in favor of GOP manipulating terror for political gain or excusing authoritarian measures in the name of combating terrorism; but it is an argument in favor of taking terrorism, and the new and frightening role international terrorist cells are playing in foreign affairs and to take that role seriously.

In a presidential debate last year, Bush ridiculed Kerry's proposal to improve security of chemical plants and border facilities.

Hurricane Katrina proved the Bush Administration incapable of responding to a terrorist attack.

The Bush Administration (and the mainstream media) have shown itself unwilling to pay attention to rightwing domestic terrorism.

The anthrax attacks are still unsolved, and the FBI has displayed minimal interest in investigating them, at least since they were shown to have had a US source.  (The anthrax sent to Senator Leahy shows that the attacks were against Democrats in the Senate, not the Senate itself.)

Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are blamed in public for 9/11, perhaps wrongfully. Yet Osama bin Laden still hasn't been caught.

The Bush Administration destroyed the effort to get the terrorists by turning its focus to invading Iraq.

The Bush Administration staunchly opposed investigating 9/11.  Cheney even threated those who called for an investigation with treason accusations.  The intelligence committee investigation was repeatedly stonewalled.  The 9/11 Commission wasn't formed until fourteen months after 9/11, and was initially allocated three million dollars, instead of (say) a billion dollars.  (They eventually got fourteen million.  Compare these amounts with the amounts allocated for each space-shuttle disaster investigation, as well as for the Starr witchhunt investigation of Clinton.)

Etc. Etc.

Can there be any doubt that the Bush Administration simply uses 9/11 to gain power and attack our freedoms? Ultimately to have the power to kidnap, imprison, and torture anyone they want?

Given the facts regarding 9/11, can there be any doubt that that was the reason behind 9/11? 

... only 4 years ago, 12 guys after years of training and planning, hijacked 3 airplanes, brought down two world trade centers & bombarded the pentagon.

How many guys?  The official number was 19. But how many of those were found alive and well after the attacks?

The Pentagon could have been attacked much more severely than it was -- simply have the plane dive into the Pentagon, instead of taking a steep circular dive, pulling out just above the ground, clipping the streetlights, hitting the Pentagon horizontally right where it would do the least damage. (The Pentagon was under construction at the impact point, and strong shielding had been built in there.)

Did it really take years of training and planning?  It would require competent piloting, that's for sure.  (The pilots were evaluated as lousy by their instructors in the American schools.)  It would require more than training on simulators and small private planes. 

But of course, the humungous project was to get our air security to take a dive.

They also had to get our "investigative" organization so play Calvin and Hobbes -- being out in outer space while someone desperately tries to inform one of something critically important.  Or even going so far as to spike investigation of potential terrorist attacks. Over a dozen warnings were issued the summer before 9/11.

Recall the story of John O'Neill, the FBI's resident expert on Terrorism and Osama bin Laden.  Several months before 9/11, things started happening to him. A briefcase of his disappeared and then reappeared, and he was reprimanded. He was marginalized in the FBI, and then driven out.  He took a new job as director of security of the World Trade Center only a few weeks before 9/11, and he died in 9/11.