Today on my show, I talked to John Mueller about his book “Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them.”
Mueller says even the FBI admits there are no Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the US, and that the fact that we haven’t had another attack as big as 9/11 is not proof that the Bush administration is doing a great job of protecting us. He contends that the number of people killed by terrorism is relatively small, but the anxiety level has been kept high by politicians, the media, and others, because fear is a simple emotion to exploit. The cost of that fear has been millions of dollars wasted on counterterrorism and an higher risk level assigned by the Department of Homeland Security than is necessary.
This is an important perspective that is all too rarely heard amid the clamor of voices promoting the way the war on terror is being fought.
Listen to our conversation here.