Posted: 2/28/2015
Trigger
Just read “Terrorism Poses No Existential Threat to America. We Must Stop Pretending Otherwise”. A commentary published by a senior fellow John Mueller of the Cato Institute and a professor, Mark G. Stewart.
The two authors never bother to define what an existential threat is, but mock those who claim it is one. I will argue here that taking terrorism too lightly is naive and myopic. To treat it as something as brutal acts committed by some deranged individuals with little resources as the authors suggest is certainly naive and myopic.
What I concede to these authors or others making similar arguments is that too many politicians use terrorism as a pretext for e.g. tighter than necessary domestic security.
Why Terrorism Is An Existential Threat
Perhaps, civilization is only a thin veneer!
First, terrorism in recent times and in our time is often promoted and supported by state sponsors (e.g. Iran, Hussein’s Iraq, former Soviet Union) as well. These are new forms of (asymmetric) warfare and means to gain control and power.
Second, terrorism when combined with an appealing totalitarian ideology could potentially become a spreading world menace. Communism and fascism were also forms of domestic and foreign terrorism in the end.
Third, every organization of humans who use terrorism and barbarism to wantonly kill humans and attempt to destroy civilization should be taken very serious right from the beginning. Open, free, civilized societies like the U.S. cannot live peacefully if such threats exists and proliferate.
Fourth, that terrorists have until now only rarely used ABC weapons is probably more luck than anything else. Why would (perhaps apocalyptic) fanatics hesitate to use ABC weapons after they obtained them?
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