What's Really Preventing Another 9/11

“We are successfully preventing terrorist attacks like 9/11 because another one hasn’t happened.”

It should go without saying that the fact that something hasn’t happened doesn’t prove that the championed cause is the reason it hasn’t. The claims about the success of the surge illustrate this perfectly. Any reductions in violence attributed to the surge are as plausibly accounted for by sustained ethnic cleansing: Kill or remove the potential victims of violence and violence must go down.

Of the above claim about preventing terrorist attacks, suffice it to say it is as well justified today as a similar claim would have been on Sept 10 2001: “The fact that there has been no terrorist attack since the Trade Center bombing in 1993 proves that we are successfully preventing such attacks.”

The fact that another 9/11 hasn’t happened is far more plausibly explained by pointing out that no objective of Bin Laden and Co. would be met by one. Americans are being killed and maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan in numbers that exceed the toll of 9/11. The US military is being systematically weakened fighting two wars with inadequate manpower. The economy is unable to sustain the 2 billion dollar a week drain of two wars, and has become beholden to foreign lenders to a greater extent than at any time in American history. Basic American principles are being eroded and personal liberties lost, something no foreign enemy of America could achieve with an attack on our soil. When not attacking us is bringing this kind of undreamed of success for our enemies, there is simply no reason for another 9/11.