\n\n\n" }The attention paid to terrorism in the U.S. is considerably out of proportion to the relative threat it presents.\u00c2\u00a0That\u00e2\u0080\u0099s especially true when it comes to Islamic-extremist terror.\u00c2\u00a0Of the 150,000 murders in the U.S. between 9/11 and the end of 2010, Islamic extremism accounted for fewer than three dozen.\u00c2\u00a0Since 2000, the chance that a resident of the U.S. would die in a terrorist attack was one in 3.5 million, according to John Mueller and Mark Stewart of Ohio State and the University of Newcastle, respectively.\u00c2\u00a0In fact, extremist Islamic terrorism resulted in just 200 to 400 deaths worldwide outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq--the same number, Mueller noted in a 2011 report (PDF), as die in bathtubs in the U.S. alone each year.
\n\u00e2\u0080\u00a6According to one estimate of direct and indirect costs borne by the U.S. as a result of 9/11, the New York Times suggested the attacks themselves caused $55 billion in \u00e2\u0080\u009ctoll and physical damage,\u00e2\u0080\u009d while the economic impact was $123 billion. But costs related to increased homeland security and counterterrorism spending, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, totaled $3,105 billion.
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\nSomething that I would love to see the Transportation Security Administration, the FBI, the CIA, and whoever else do is pull together an estimate of how many airplanes they think would have been blown up by terrorists if there was no passenger or baggage screening whatsoever. One way of thinking about it is this. If commercial airplanes were no more secure than your average city bus, planes would be blown up as frequently as city buses--which is to say never. I\u00e2\u0080\u0099ve heard some people postulate that terrorists have a special affection for blowing up planes, but I\u00e2\u0080\u0099m not sure that\u00e2\u0080\u0099s right. In the not-too-distant past, Israel had a substantial terrorists-blowing-up-buses problem and had to take countervailing security measures. But unlike Israel, we\u00e2\u0080\u0099re not doing anything to secure our buses. It\u00e2\u0080\u0099s at least possible that nobody blows up American buses because nobody is trying to blow anything up.
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