Barack Obama has strong overall approval, and even strong approval on the subject of terrorism. But a result from the latest AP/GfK poll--one understandably drowned out by the poll's questions about Sonia Sotomayor--that really struck me was that from three consecutive questions (TER1, TER2, TER3 on pp. 5 & 6) about how Americans perceive the threat of another terrorist attack and Obama's ability to handle terrorism.
Two back-to-back questions, TER1 and TER2, asked respondents, first, if they are worried about "becoming a victim of terrorism," and second, if they are concerned that they or their family "might be a victim of a terrorist attack." The questions are so similar, in fact, they elicited virtually identical results: 35 percent combined responded either "frequently" or "occasionally" to the first one, and "great deal" or "somewhat" to the second; a combined 65 percent responded "rarely" or "never" to the first and either "not too much" or "not at all" to the second. Given the similarity of the questions, I'll go out on a limb here and assume it's the same 35/65 groups in both cases. (Two emails and two phone calls to AP/GfK to request crosstabs were not returned.)
And then there is Question TER3:
And when it comes to terrorism, how confident are you that President Barack Obama will be able to handle this issue effectively? Very confident, somewhat confident, not too confident, or not at all confident?On this question, 70 percent of people responded either "very" or "somewhat" with 29 percent (allow me to round to 30%, to keep the numbers simple) responding "not too" or "not at all." Notice how close the split is to the split in the previous two questions; that is, about two-thirds of the country isn't much worried about themselves or their family being attacked by terrorists, and an almost identical share (a wee bit higher) are confident about Obama's ability to handle terrorism.
Again, without the crosstabs, I can't know for sure how strongly that 65% and that 70% overlap, but let's consider the situation in the two limits:
Case 1:
Case 2:
In the first table, above, I presume that all of those 65% respondents who aren't much worried about an attack are also confident in Obama's abilities on the issue of terrorism. That means that, at minimum, the difference, just 5%--one in 1 in 20 Americans--and a mere one in every 14 Americans who are confident in Obama's ability, are confident in his terrorism abilities despite having serious worries about a forthcoming attack.
At the other extreme -- which I suspect is the far, far less likely actual crosstabulated case -- I presume that the share of those confident in Obama's ability includes all of the 35% worried about a pending attack. Yet that would still mean that, at the very most, only 35% of Americans are both confident in Obama's ability and truly worried about a pending attack, and that only half (35% of 70%) of those confident in him are really worried that there will be an attack anyway.
Put simply, and presuming that my assumptions about the crosstabs are right, those who are confident in Obama aren't much worried about an attack anyway, somewhat mooting their support, while those who worried about an attack are also doubtful that Obama would be up to the task.
Now, there's (at least) two ways to look at this, and in some ways they ratify the polarities in post-9/11 conceptions about terror. As we hear repeatedly from conservatives, liberals are soft on security, underestimate the global threat of Islamic fundamentalists, etc. Yet it's also hard not to conclude from these poll results on questions TER1 and TER2 that the rest of the country, which presumably includes most liberals and moderates, have come to the conclusion that September 11 may have been a one-time situation where the terrorists caught us off-guard and disorganized, but that their abilities to do so again are limited.
And that raises the question of whether that two-thirds is confident in Obama's ability per se, or just confident because they are not much worried his abilities will be tested in the first place.
The reason I raise this question is simple: If, today, you were forced to describe one, event-based scenario that would put Obama in serious jeopardy for 2012 re-election, it would be a terrorist attack that either (a) he should have been able to anticipate and prevent; (b) he couldn't have anticipated, but to which he responded poorly or too slowly; or, worse (c) both of the above. That said, the third of the country that seems both worried about another attack and, depending on the likely overlap, shows little faith in Obama's ability to respond to such an attack is going to be remembered as either (1) a really, really paranoid group that's basically dubious about any liberal's/Democrat's ability to handle national security issues anyway, or (2) a group clucking loudly if an attack occurs on Obama's watch, and certainly if Obama bungles the response.
#TER3, unfortunately, only asks about Obama's handling of terrorism as an issue, not of his potential response to an actual attack, which are not the same thing. It would be nice if AP/GfK followed this survey next time with a more specific question about the response to an actual attack. I should also note that whether a person believes he/she or his/her family will specifically be attacked is not the same as believing there will be an attack somewhere on Americans. But then again, given the share of the population that was actually, directly hit by the 9/11 attacks, even 35% would be absurdly high: even if we take the upper limits of deaths and casualties and those hit collaterally, the share of Americans literally and directly "attacked" on 9/11 is a fraction of one percent.
65 comments
I have no idea whats goin on
Dangerous conclusions, Mr. Schaller. Dangerous conclusions, which are personified by this statement:
Yet it's also hard not to conclude from these poll results on questions TER1 and TER2 that the rest of the country, which presumably includes most liberals and moderates, have come to the conclusion that September 11 may have been a one-time situation where the terrorists caught us off-guard and disorganized, but that their abilities to do so again are limited.
You're playing games and making very dubious assumptions while people's lives are at stake for personal gain and political reasons.
You are as treasonous a man as has ever lived in this country and called himself an American. You deserve an ironic fate commensurate to your erroneous conclusions about how the American public feels about terror. May you be the next one on a plane flown straight into a skyscraper and annihilated on impact.
Is it not possible that you have the causation wrong? That people feel safe from terrorism BECAUSE they trust the administration to protect them from it?
Anyway, it's obviously silly that such a huge percentage of the country thinks it's likely to suffer from a terrorist attack, as even the largest imaginable attack would actually affect a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the country's population. But there you have it.
My take away from the numbers is that only the republicans of this country are bat shit crazy paranoids that won't be happy until every single non-american is dead. Like "Casual Observer" for example. :)
Mr. Schaller,
That's the most convoluted thinking and invalid logic process I may ever have seen on this blog. Laughable if wasn't that it actually appeared here!
Anyway, it's obviously silly that such a huge percentage of the country thinks it's likely to suffer from a terrorist attack, as even the largest imaginable attack would actually affect a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the country's population. But there you have it.
You are technically correct that the largest imaginable attack would affect only a tiny fraction of the total population in the country, but it is a logical fallacy to suggest that it's silly for a large percentage to be afraid of a terrorist attack for that reason alone.
Let's say you and your four closest family members and friends are selected as part of a random, 1,000-person sample from the population. Of those 1,000 people that you are a part of, one (1) person will be randomly selected and executed then and there, on the spot, for no particular reason.
Yes, the odds that you or one of your close family members or friends will be selected are slim - 0.5% as a group and just 0.1% for you individually. But how comfortable do you think you'd be to be included in that group knowing what the end result would be? And having loved ones in that group as well who also have a chance of being selected?
That's the problem with something like this - terror, that is. I think it's one of the few things that as long as you're within spitting distance of any decent-sized city - i.e. you're not in the northwest corner of South Dakota or somewhere else simimilar - that you don't necessarily have that innate sense that terrorism will happen to "somebody else." A lot of people believe it could very likely happen to them and for good reason.
My take away from the numbers is that only the republicans of this country are bat shit crazy paranoids that won't be happy until every single non-american is dead. Like "Casual Observer" for example. :)
WTF? I point out the logical fallacy of this argument and how dangerous it is to make such assumptions, yet I'm bat shit crazy and won't be happy until every single non-American is dead? No, but I am saying that if Mr. Schaller is that aloof to the concerns over safety from terrorism and is trying to make dubious partisan conclusions for political and personal gain - i.e. to paint all liberals and moderates as sane and rational of this likely "one-time" problem we had on 9/11 while all Republicans and conservatives are paranoid fear-mongering freaks - then, by all means, it would be my preference that he be the first one targeted - if anyone be targeted - rather than someone caring and innocent and not making light of such topics to make themselves look good.
I think you might be glossing over a major point in the poll. Questions TER1 and TER2 both ask whether a person thinks he will become a victim of terrorism. In my mind that question is probably highly correlated with whether a person lives in an urban or a rural area. Specifically, that urban dwellers are more likely to expect to become victims of terrorism.
If we also assume that urban dwellers are more likely to be democrats and subsequently more confident in Obama on most issues (including terrorism) then the major conclusion to take away from this survey might be: Those people who actually expect to be victims of terrorism are more confident in Obama than those who aren't.
However, without the crosstabs, we don't know. You made an assumption about which people were worried and created an argument that supported your assumption. Is the end, you're guessing.
I expect better from 538. You're normally very good.
@Tom: the overall percentages in the first two questions seem to be in line with other surveys, e.g., those reported by the Pew Center over the years.
Most Americans aren't terribly concerned about becoming victims of terrorist attacks, and this has been the case for the last 6 years or so.
That said, I think the pollster screwed up those first two questions. Typically one question addresses whether the individual thinks that he or his family might become a victim, and the other question addresses whether the individual is concerned about another terrorist attack on the country.
When questions like that are both asked, then usually a larger percent of respondents say that they are concerned about an attack on the country than are concerned about an attack on themselves or their family.
Another element of this is that some people are just worried about lots of things (the economy, earthquakes, etc.) and people who are "worriers" will also worry about terrorism. So when they are answering questions like this they may be responding to a general concern about events over which they have little control -- not about terrorism as such.
But that's all the subject of a deeper analysis.
Terrorists goal is to instill fear into people.
Conservatives are terrified of having terrorists on U.S. soil to go through our justice system.
Conservatives are emboldening terrorists by caving into the terrorists goal.
Terrorists goal is to instill fear into people.
No, no, no! This is what you dipshit libs can't understand. Their number one priority is to kill as many people as they can. Mostly Americans and Jews, but it is to KILL, not instill fear.
@Tom: Another potential problem with the survey is question order effects. It would make sense to do a split half -- ask TER3 after TER1 and TER2 for a random half of the respondents, and ask TER3 before TER1 and TER2 for the other random half.
Then it would be possible to say more about whether people were anticipating a question about -- or even thinking about -- how Obama would handle things if there were another attack.
BTW/ there was a time during early summer of 2004 (in an article headlined in the WaPo) when a majorty of Americans thought John Kerry and the Democrats would be better able to prevent another attack than would George W. Bush and the Republicans. This was after a long period of hearings (the 9/11 commission) had sensitized the public to the issue of lack of preparedness by Bush and cronies.
But by the end of the summer, the GOP and Bush carried the day and swift-boated Kerry's candidacy.
@Casual Observer: That's a difficult supposition to prove. Excepting some forms of psychosis, people don't kill other people just because. There are, however, plenty of people who will kill for some larger cause. I'm sure there are a few violent sociopaths among terrorist orginizations, but most of them have a more specific goal in mind.
I'm sure there are a few violent sociopaths among terrorist orginizations, but most of them have a more specific goal in mind.
Their specific goal is to kill everyone who is not a radical Muslim like themselves. Ask yourself the following two questions:
1. Am I a Muslim?
2. Would I be willing to kill people who do not share my religious beliefs?
If the answer to either of the above is 'no,' they WANT TO KILL YOU.
I honestly can't answer the question of whether we are safer in the hands of Obama or Bush. So far, I can see absolutely no difference between the two in terms of terrorism policy, except that Obama refuses to use the word "terrorism."
If you visit a synagogue, a woman's clinic, the Holocaust museum, a police station, or happen to be a neighbor of a gun enthusiast ready to take some people with him.. you would be quite correctly worried about terrorism.
It would just happen to be of the right-wing domestic sort, instead of the more-commonly-discussed foreign type.
This reasoning seems very off. Presumably, the people most worried about becoming a victim of terrorism would be those who live near actual terror targets (people who work in the Sears Tower, live on Capitol Hill, etc.) People who live near major terror targets voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Thus, it would appear to stand to reason that the 30%ers are not the same folks.
Schaller here, responding:
Look, I think the first two questions are very much redundant, although somebody who lives in a non-urban area might think their cousin who lives in NYC is more likely to be attacked even if the respondent thinks s/he is safe. I'd much rather the third question have been about obama's potential response to an attack or, as one commenter suggested, whether they think obama's election is the reason they feel safe to begin with.
ah, but given that obama's only been in office a few months, and given that, as another commenter pointed out, the % of folks who worry about being victim an attack on them or their family has been constant for the past six years (i'll assume that assertion to be true), that would have to mean that a whole bunch of americans (maybe not the same two-thirds, but with significant overlap) felt bush made them safe, too. but that seems unlikely, no? (but maybe not, given how obama has relented to some bush policies on this score.) that said, we should just take the response at face value, even if the question is imperfect and not further probed: 2/3 of americans aren't worried or not worried that much about being terrorist victims.
as for the *innate* or perceived sense of terror relative to some objective and *actual* risks, of course some people are unable to calculate rationally the odds on such things, just as they often don't know that the prob of the lotto numbers coming up 51,52,53,54,55, and 56 is the same any given week as coming up identical to their six kids' birthdays. there's not much i can do about that.
what i really wanted to know--and tried to get from AP--was the crosstabs, because then we could know if people in fact, as some here suppose, feel safe BECAUSE obama is in there, or they just don't think there's much of a threat of attack, which would make obama's ability to respond in some ways moot. but given how similar the results are, and again, even after doing potential crosstabs in the limits, my suspicion is that there is high overlap between the 65% and 70%. (natch, if AP calls/replies to my email, i'll write a follow-up. i'd really like to know.)
in the meantime, please save the invective. Casual Observer, it's not *treason* to draw the conclusion from a poll in which 2/3 of americans say, when asked, that they hardly or don't worry about being attacked by terrorists that, well, they are not that worried about being attacked by terrorists. a final, related point: though it's quite possible (and frankly, more logical) that a significant share of americans could think the *country* is likely to be attacked but not that they, personally would, if that were the case, then why, when asked basically back-to-back identical questions about this probability, questions clearly not worded to elicit their sense of any attack happening anywhere, is the response rate so high? maybe people simply define "family" so broad as to include 1,000s of people, when my reflex is to think in the dozens.
"No, no, no! This is what you dipshit libs can't understand. Their number one priority is to kill as many people as they can. Mostly Americans and Jews, but it is to KILL, not instill fear."
:rolleyes: If their purpose was to kill, not instill fear in the living, why would it matter who they killed? They want to kill as many Americans and Jews as possible so that it will scare the rest. This is like saying "America's number one priority was killing people in WW2! Sure, mostly Germans and Japanese, but it was to KILL."
"Yes, the odds that you or one of your close family members or friends will be selected are slim - 0.5% as a group and just 0.1% for you individually. But how comfortable do you think you'd be to be included in that group knowing what the end result would be? And having loved ones in that group as well who also have a chance of being selected?"
I would be perfectly comfortable, as would the rest of the United States. That's about the likelihood that you'll die in a car accident. I'm assuming you don't drive cars?
Your entire argument is simply that because YOU feel scared of terrorists, that everyone ELSE does. The fact is that you are simply more timorous than most other people. My family actually has been the target of a terrorist plot - my mother worked in the federal building in Austin, Timothy McVeigh's original target before he switched to OKC.
Did my mother freak out or quit her job? No, she kept on doing what she was doing, because she wasn't going to let one crazy person spoil her whole life. That's the true spirit of America, and people like you, who try to whip up cowardice and fear to get people to make poor decisions, are the very antithesis of it. Man up, for God's sake.
Blogger Casual Observer said...
Terrorists goal is to instill fear into people.
No, no, no! This is what you dipshit libs can't understand. Their number one priority is to kill as many people as they can. Mostly Americans and Jews, but it is to KILL, not instill fear.
--------
If what you claim is true then they are murderers, not terrorists.
Please, go read the definition of the term.
Terrorist - one who instills fear into an opponent in order to achieve a goal.
The goal of killing Americans is only a method of achieving their stated goal of changing our policy of interfering, or influencing, the Arabic regions. The terrorist groups know that they will never kill enough people to change the policies of the western world. The only way that they can win is if the western world cowers in fear. Thus, the goal is NOT the murdering people, it's to make people afraid.
If you can't understand this much then you shouldn't be talking about terrorists and terrorism.
You just reinforced my belief that us "dip shit libs" understand the world scene far far better than a war mongering conservative ever could.
Oh yes, this little gem of yours is why I posted about bat shit crazy republicans...
"You are as treasonous a man as has ever lived in this country and called himself an American. You deserve an ironic fate commensurate to your erroneous conclusions about how the American public feels about terror. May you be the next one on a plane flown straight into a skyscraper and annihilated on impact."
The ONLY people that I have seen swinging around the term "traitor" is bat shit crazy republicans. Fear! Fear! Fear! Us or them! Not us? Traitor! Anyways, you earned the bat-shit-crazy moniker the second you blabbed that.
I just hope that one day the majority of the conservatives and republicans the world (american as well as islamic) will grow out of hyper-aggressive adolescence and join us "libs" in the mature societies of the world.
Mr. Schaller, I agree with most of your conclusions. I would like to see a poll that asked whether people feel Obama has made them feel more or less safe than Bush did. I predict this would fall roughly on party lines.
One similar poll was done by Rasmussen:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/trust_on_issues/trust_on_issues
In it, 51% of people surveyed trusted Republicans on national security, versus 36% for the Democrats. While this is a lot more vague and this IS Rasmussen, I would not be shocked to find that more people trusted Bush and the Republicans to keep them safe and that has never changed; they just don't vote that way because there are more pressing issues at hand.
I would like to take a moment to say how impressed I am that you came into the comments section to defend your post. Most writers here don't do that. I enjoy having a good intellectual dialogue with the people here.
Details in the questions. The questions only asks about concern about personal victimization in an attack. That 35% of the country still worries that they or their family will be personally victimized seems absurd.
A question about whether people are concerned about a successful large scale terrorist attack in the US would probably be a more reasonable question to draw your conclusions from. It could just be that 65% of the population is being perfectly reasonable, and expecting that even if there is another large attack, the odds that they will be personally affected are pretty low.
Mr Schaller - As to your methodology, I'm inclined towards the skeptical view, such as expressed above in this thread by Linus otherwise.
But I also question whether there's any value at all in your exercise, given how counter its conclusions run to experience with expressions of broad public consensus.
For example, there's the matter of what might be made of the polling about President Bush the Younger, within a fairly short period after 9/11 and for some time into 2003, up to the point where it became painfully clear to all but his true believers that there were no WMDs in Iraq, not even behind the door, under the couch or on the other side of the curtains.
All that positive polling was based first on nothing more than his assertion of intent to avenge the outrages of that day. No great numbers took sides against each other in the US, or in any of its allied nations, and not even much opposition was articulated in 'competitor' nations and their allied states, during the steps taken preparatory to US troops entering Afghanistan in large numbers and the first months of televised and reported action. Why is that? Because there was a consensus that that action made some sort of sense.
Now, that consensus, as with most 'pure' invasions, was somewhat fragile, given its vulnerability to unproductive, counterproductive, idiotic and clearly indefensible policies pursued to advance the mission's 'goal', especially over time; but one mark of its resilience is that, even with the intervening fiasco in Iraq and the massive amount of information that's been made public as to the wrong-headedness, war-mongering propaganda, appalling number of dead, outrages of human rights, fraud etc involved in that fiasco, there's still be no serious sign of opposition to the next president, 6 years later, re-starting the Afghani mission, and indeed using it as premise to expand the parameters of the mission into a neighboring state with far more sophistication, organization, people and moreover lots and lots of nuclear weapons -- most remarkably, apparently at the tacit invitation of that state!
What I think all that might tell us is that when a POTUS reacts in crisis in a manner that makes sense to a broad consensus of the citizenry, and moreover the kind of sense that can be sustained for a period of time and through various related crises, the effect on public polling as to support for that president can be expected to be generally or highly positive.
History suggests many other examples, including from US history: FDR and his New Deal through a decade of deflation, depression and sustained recession, into the 'sneak' attack on Pearl Harbor and the serious early setbacks in the Pacific theater - all overcome by his demeanor and aggressive pursuit of entering the European theater as well; Lincoln and the Civil War.
My feeling is you've got one sliver of this right: were President Obama to be perceived to have failed to pay sensible heed to the sort of signal of a threat we all now would regard as 'real' - like "Bin Laden Determined to Strike US - Again", followed by the commandeering of a public or common asset as the weapon of choice - we are surely a lot less inclined to be foregiving having regard to President Bush's failure to heed the first such signal. [Conventional wisdom relies heavily on hindsight, as we expect Speaker Pelosi knows now too well.].
But my thinking is that it would have to be pretty much THAT CLOSE to attract that sort of reaction, and that any incident less obvious, at least within a very high tolerance of devastation, would far more likely engender an INCREASE in expressions of support in this POTUS, rather than a rejection.
@Scott: Your statement precludes non-Muslim terrorists. The IRA is a terrorist group looking to end British rule in England, rooted in conflicts related to Cathlics vs Protestents. Where do Muslims enter into this? Or, for that matter, Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, or the guy who just shot up the Holocost museum?
Even as far as Al-Qaeda goes, their ultimate goal is to end foreign influance in the Arab world and the restoration of the Caliphate. Being that Al-Qaeda is comes from the Sunni Islam tradition, they're just as hateful of Shia Islamists as they are of foreigners, no matter how "radical" those Shia might be.
in response to Scott, let me just say a few quick things as a matter of protocol and explanation:
1. Since 2004 I have blogged for Daily Kos, Gadflyer (now defunct site I co-founded), American Prospect online, Salon and now 538, and have always published every post under my own name. there's some i wish i never had written, but at least i stand (virtually) by every one of them. this is not to say i fail to understand why many bloggers, who don't have the job security tenure provides me, choose to write under psuedonyms; it's just my personal policy...and, incidentally, one i used before getting tenure, FWIW.
2. I have put my personal email on the site already, but just in case some have missed it, it is: schaller67@gmail.com, which also appears at the bottom of all my columns for the Baltimore Sun. so long as people are polite and respectful, feel free to write me directly. i've corrected errors pointed out to me by readers already.
3. i'm human. i make mistakes. and i've made more than usual in my early posts because learning a new system (blogger) adds its own stresses, especially formatting graphs and such. i probably spend a third of my time formatting and tweaking and adjusting the margins and fonts, and so on. these posts take a long time to write, longer than you might suspect.
4. before launching invective, i just ask you to pause one second to imagine what it would be like if any random person could cruise by your desk or job site at work and lean over your shoulder and say, "gee, you got that form wrong, or calculated those billable hours wrong, or forget to return that client's phone call, or missed your boss' deadline for that project, or forget to attch your TPS report..." i'll stop: you get the point. working in public is part of the job, i understand. i'm not whining about it or pointing fingers back at anyone. i'm just sayin' this is not like most jobs.
5. i'll try to come into the comment sections periodically, but mostly will do so if i've been unclear or to explain what i did or why i did it that way.
cheers, tom
The question is worded badly. I'm not particularly worried about myself or my family being the victims of a terrorist attack. The chances are pretty slim. But I am worried that there will be another terrorist attack. In fact I'm fairly certain there will be.
The conclusions the author came to have only a limited foundation in the data present
It does seem rather odd about the timing of this particular article. After all, this was posted just a hour after a successful terrorist attack in Washington by a religious extremist and just a week after a successful terrorist attack in a Wichita church by a person with similar religious ideology.
The danger of religiously-motivated terrorism has always been present but it is long past time that we focus on the activities of all religiously-motivated terrorist organizations, particularly those of a majoritarian faith. By concentrating our efforts against a largely foreign-based minority faith, we have consistently ignored threats and actions by domestic groups in the majority and recent events (as well as many past events) have proven that they can be just as dangerous and just as deadly.
Yes, go after al-Qaeda. But don't let that distract you from other anti-American terrorist organizations like Operation Rescue or the National Reform Association.
Well said Mr. Schaller.
You are as treasonous a man as has ever lived in this country and called himself an American. You deserve an ironic fate commensurate to your erroneous conclusions about how the American public feels about terror. May you be the next one on a plane flown straight into a skyscraper and annihilated on impact.
Casual Observer: You clue us in that you are bat-shit crazy with your first comment. Don't worry, socialized medicine is coming soon so you'll be able to get back on the meds.
Now suppose someone had asked Americans in June 2001 how much confidence they had in Bush's ability to respond to terrorism . . .
@ "casual observer"
"This is what you dipshit libs can't understand. Their number one priority is to kill as many people as they can. Mostly Americans and Jews, but it is to KILL, not instill fear."
You need to buy a dictionary and read it. The goals of terrorism are to disrupt the normal functions of the victim, mainly by causing fear, either rational or (mostly) irrational.
Arguments from risk statistics badly miss the point, at least when we're talking about American public perceptions. The risk of you, or anyone you know, dying in a terrorist attack in the next year is literally infinitesimal. Even including all the victims of 9/11, terrorism ranks down there with bee stings.
But we have acted, for the past eight years, as if our existence as a nation is at stake.
Well, now it is, due to vastly increased police powers, government secrecy, and eroded civil liberties.
The essential fallacy at the heart of the Bush/Cheney antiterrorism policy is that attacks cannot be prevented in a free society. Not one with a working economy, against people who are willing to die. Go read Bruce Schneier's security blog and search for "movie-plot threats". We cannot close every loophole, anticipate every tactic, kill every potential terrorist, intimidate the entire world. Sorry. Not going to happen. Even China, the most sophisticated and technologically-advanced police state in the world, still has the odd terrorist.
And the hatred we have engendered, whether it's because of our freedoms (right wing view) or our imperialism (left wing view) is real, and even if we removed the causes today it would still fester for decades. Likewise poverty will still create desperate angry people susceptible to radical ideology for the conceivable future.
So another terrorist attack on U.S. soil is a given. We can certainly hope they waste their time and effort trying for the home run -- (nuke, massive bio or chem attack) so long as they keep failing -- instead of settling for gunning a shopping mall. But low-tech attacks are just going to happen.
So Obama isn't going to keep us safe from that. No one can. It's a sad commentary on us that he'll be judged on something as out of his control as the lack of an attack during the remainder of Bush's terms.
One thing many commenters have assumed is that the percentage of people who "worry" that they (or their relations) may suffer a terrorist attack should correlate to the risk of being in such attack. I don't see why there should be any particular relationship between the two.
Yes, the risk of any specific person being in a terrorist attack is very, very small. People worry about this small risk disproportionately, mostly because terrorist design their killings to be disproportionately dreadful. In this technical sense, terrorism works. The poll reflects this information about terrorism, but that's not exactly news.
I don't personally worry about terrorism. Under present circumstances, that lack of worry is "rational." But it's not clear to me that my lack of worry has a rational basis. At one point in my life, I worked in a building where the bomb-sniffing dogs did actually find bombs now and again. Even in the face of that credible terrorist threat, I didn't particularly worry about terrorism. Under those circumstances, not worrying about terrorism was in some sense irrational.
I see my viewpoint as, if not rational, at least productive, since personally worrying about terrorism doesn't usually lead to any actions that reduce risk. But my point is, at any achievable level of terrorist activity, there are going to be people, perhaps a large number of people, who still just refuse to worry about terrorism.
I'd wish he'd do more with respect to domestic terrorism. Especially since we've been hit twice in the last two weeks by fundie ass-hats.
Could it simply be that for the first time in 8 years we have an administration who is not constantly hitting the American public over the head with "Be Afraid, Be VERY Afraid."
I had a personal friend who died at the Pentagon. I had met one of the "Let's Roll" guys who fought back over Pennsylvannia. The attacks that day were a horrible tragedy beyond words to do justice. But that day and those three numbers have been shamelessly used as propaganda and as a weapon by Bush, Cheney and the Republican party. I think sometime after 2004 America started to realize that they were being played like chumps and that their emotions were being manipulated by a pimp and his masters. Thus Americans have put the threat of terrorism in its proper place, like most people think of crime - something that could happen but probably won't when I run to the store to get a loaf of bread. Of course it is ironic that I'm writing this on the day when DC had another act of terrorism by another right-wing nut who killed the Holocaust Museum Security Guard. My sympathies go out to the Johns Family - He was a true Hero!
To all the people who questioned the "logic" or "methodology" (not the conclusions) -
Schaller's logic is obviously, almost tautologically correct. It's literally just the simplest possible application of set theory.
A certain percentage of people have confidence in Obama's ability to deal with terrorism.
A certain slightly smaller percentage of people are not worried about terrorism.
The two percentages add up to more than 100, so there has to be some overlap between the two groups.
Now, either all of the people who are not worried about terrorism are confident in Obama (which is theoretically possible), or some of the people who are not worried about terrorism are confident in Obama (at least some of them have to be, because the two numbers add up to more than 100%, so the groups can't be mutually exclusive).
All Schaller has done here is point out what the most extreme possible cases of overlap or non-overlap between the groups are, mathematically.
If you find that hard to understand, you need to read things more carefully.
I can't read the minds of terrorists. Different terrorists may have different goals. I assume that most terrorists want to both kill people and frighten people. Terrorists are jerks.
It certainly isn't true that all terrorists concentrate on Americans and Jews. Basque terrorists want to kill and terrorize non-Basque Spaniards. Balian terrorists seem to have it in for Australian tourists. The IRA, which has, of course, renounced violence, concentrated on British targets. And so on.
However, terrorists haven't killed me, and I'm not very afraid of them.
Even if I was afraid of them, I still wouldn't think that the Republican party was good at protecting me from them.
Even if I was afraid of them, and thought that the Republican party was good at protecting me from them, I still wouldn't vote Republican, because I don't support Republican policies.
A much simpler explanation: the roughly 1/4 of Americans who both think they are likely to be the victims of terrorism and don't trust Obama on national security are the same people who supported Bush/Cheney et al. through thick and thin and would not acknowledge Obama's accomplishments, even were he to wipe every last Al Qaeda member off the face of the Earth.
Agreeing with comments above:
1) The chance that I or my family will be harmed is very small, but the chance of another attack is high. If you actually worry about being physically harmed by a terrorist then you don't understand the size of the world (except soldiers!). More likely, you don't actually worry, but you fear monger for political reasons.
2) It seriously weakens Dr. Schaller's analysis that point number one was not considered. I would answer those questions with the majority in each case, but am far from dismissive of the threat. Thus, the title of this piece is an insult.
"The risk of you, or anyone you know, dying in a terrorist attack in the next year is literally infinitesimal."
No, it isn't. It's very small, on the order of one in ten million or one in a hundred million (about 1/10,000 Americans died on 9/11, 1/100,000 at Oklahoma City, and about 1/50,000,000 from terrorist attacks over the last couple of months)--but it's finite, not "literally" infinitesimal.
@mistahtom:
I'd wish he'd do more with respect to domestic terrorism. Especially since we've been hit twice in the last two weeks by fundie ass-hats.
I don't get the impression that today's terrorist attack was by a "fundie." He's a white supremacist; that's a different variety of azz-hat.
More to the point: I believe that the Justice Department has been paying attention to rightwing domestic terrorism. It's very difficult, in a country of 300 million people, to anticipate and prevent every act of terrorism. The Justice Dept. engendered much criticism from the Right when it issued its report, warning about right-wing terrorism. It's clear that its concern was realistic--and, unfortunately, there's evidence that the threat of right-wing terrorism is growing, as they feel further politically marginalized. This will make the Justice Dept.'s job more difficult...but I'm betting they will assign it a very high priority.
As scary as terror attacks might seem, the fact is that the odds that any individual person - or any of their loved ones - might be directly involved in or injured by one are vanishingly small. Even if events like 9/11 were more frequent, one's direct, individual risk is relatively negligible.
The fear factor has been oversold by the previous administration. The risk exists for us as a nation, but is not very significant for us as ordinary people. There is little reason to be unduly nervous for most ordinary people in America at large. It's much like worrying about being struck by lightning.
Mr. Schaller--
My earlier post was intended as a compliment. Most bloggers I've read, on both ideological sides, don't come into the comments section and have further discussions with the audience. It says a lot about your commitment to us, your readers, and to the issue at hand that you do so. I hope you didn't take my earlier statement as an affront or insult; from your response it seemed like you did.
Even as far as Al-Qaeda goes, their ultimate goal is to end foreign influance in the Arab world and the restoration of the Caliphate. Being that Al-Qaeda is comes from the Sunni Islam tradition, they're just as hateful of Shia Islamists as they are of foreigners, no matter how "radical" those Shia might be.
This is absolutely correct. I didn't mention the Shia Muslims, but obviously Al-Qaeda wants them dead too. The point is that al-Qaeda wants EVERYONE who isn't one of them to be killed. It doesn't make sense, but it's the way they think and it's what we're up against.
Your statement precludes non-Muslim terrorists. The IRA is a terrorist group looking to end British rule in England, rooted in conflicts related to Cathlics vs Protestents. Where do Muslims enter into this? Or, for that matter, Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, or the guy who just shot up the Holocost museum?
Those are obviously threats too, but they are so isolated they would be impossible to prevent without extreme state control and surveillance. Al-Qaeda and similar groups are known quantities that are well-funded and exist solely to commit acts of large-scale violence. As such, they are easier to track and fight. Going after illegal weapon suppliers is another effective means of preventing some terrorism.
I'm interested to know why you didn't include the attack on William Long from a few days ago on your list. He was a private who was standing outside a military recruitment station in Arkansas when the station was shot up by a Muslim terrorist. You are right that there are many other ideologies that support terrorism in their extreme elements, but Muslim terrorism is still a very real threat.
You are wrong for trying to minimize the impact 9-11 had on Americans and for also trying to minimize terror in general.
The percentage of Americans directly impacted by terror is not a fraction of 1% you idiot. All of us were directly impacted by terror and all of us were directly attacked. You are living in a fantasy to think that the only people impacted or "attacked directly" were the people that actually died or the relatives of the people that died.
I am an American and they killed thousands of people in my country in the largest city of my country and in the Capitol of my country. They killed my fellow citizens and they directly attacked me as they directly attacked the center of the free market and the center of my government, which is voted by the people.
Not only that, many people I know are serving in the military overseas due to the terrorist attack. To say less than 1% were directly attacked is moronic.
Who is this guy? You must be a child.
Your effort to trivialize terror, to make it seem like an event on par with a traffic accident, removing the moral implications is precisely why the liberal left in this country needs to be defeated and shown to be the living, ignorant buffoons they are proud to be.
People who minimize terror and 9-11 are like the Holocaust deniers post WWII
a question for "casual observer" from abroad.
You stated that You are worried about terrorist attack on US soil:
I agree,the danger is still real,but:
Have You ever noticed ,Sir,that four time more than "twin Towers" attack,people in US die for "domestic"gunshot ???
And this happens EVERY GIVEN YEAR !!!!
So WHY You don't take issue AGAINST NRA(National-Rifle-Associaton)???
I could buy a rifle inside a WALL-MART mall,it's absolutely crazy,Sir.
The numbers say that for sure for US people NRA is more dangerous than Bin Laden...
bye.
Why question Casual Observer, he is obviously one of the dumbest people on this here interwebs, and that's saying plenty...The more he speaks, the more I hope he gets hit by a bus. Diaper change in aisle 3
@John,
Got your point,but:
Remenber when John F.Kerry didn't care about the lies on his duty in Vietnam ?
Remember how it ended up ?
He was swiftboated...
ciao.
:)
Beanocook (and Casual Observer) -
Sorry, it won't work.
No-one has trivialized or minimized the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001.
Now read this very carefully...
I condemn and despise terrorists, but I do not live in fear of them.
If I did live in fear of them, I still wouldn't think that the Republican party was protecting me from them.
If I did think that the Republican party was protecting me from them, I still wouldn't vote Republican, because the Republican party is unacceptable to me on many levels.
Your "more outraged than thou" act and fear-mongering is a waste of time. It doesn't work any more.
I'm also appalled by your hypocrisy. Clearly, you still endorse the cynical tactic of exploiting tragedy for political gain. Your statements of "outrage" and "concern" are most ironic in this context.
More people die in cars every year than did on 9/11. Should we ban cars?
More people die in boating accidents every year than did on 9/11. Should we ban boats?
More people die in swimming pools every year than did on 9/11. Should we ban swimming pools?
More people die in household accidents every year than did on 9/11. Should we ban households?
You think we should just not try to fight terrorism because a very small percentage of people died on 9/11?
@GROG,
Thought You were smarter than it.
There is nothing you can do to avoid casualties as you mentioned.
...but ther is something,You can do ban bloodbath as "Columbine".
"...You think we should just not try to fight terrorism..."
I didn't say that,the contrary.
Furthermore:
Your post show exactly why people like me,as I told @John in my 8.45 AM post,mast keeep on fighting people like you.
You a sore liar Sir.
Matt said "about 1/10,000 Americans died on 9/11, 1/100,000 at Oklahoma City, and about 1/50,000,000 from terrorist attacks over the last couple of months)--but it's finite, not "literally" infinitesimal."
Well, first of all 3,000 died on 9/11 out of a population of 300,000,000 which is 1:100,000. In Oklahoma City it was more like 1:2,000,000.
Now that we have the math right, let's look for the right word to characterize these risks. When regulatory agencies want to reduce lifetime cancer risk from some exposure to a carcinogen to a level of "insignificance", they usually choose 1:100,000 or 1:1,000,000 - comparable to dying in a major terrorist attack, as it turns out.
So it's not so much as the risk of dying in a terrorist attack is infinitesimal as it is insignficant.
I think when trying to evaluate the magnitude of a terrorist threat, we should consider not just the chance that someone you know will be killed or wounded in the attack itself, but also the chance that the attack will somehow disrupt your life in a more indirect way.
With terrorism, of course, since the attacks are few and far between (as compared with "real" war), this indirect harm comes almost entirely from the following two sources:
1. The psychological effect of knowing that your country or community has been attacked;
2. The inconvenient, intrusive, or disturbing nature of security measures.
The vast majority of people will be affected by terrorism in these two ways and no other. The government's domestic response, therefore, should be as follows:
1. "Buck up" the public, encourage them not to feel afraid, and reassure them that right will prevail;
2. Choose security measures that maximize real security but minimize bother to the people.
By these standards, the government's approach since 9/11 has been mixed at best. While they have done some things right (reinforcing cockpit doors, for example), we've seen too many efforts that seem to have only disturbed people while adding very little extra safety (spying on everyone, waterboarding, telling us to buy plastic sheets and duct tape).
Mr Schaller says that the one event that could jeopardize Obama's reelection would be a terrorist attack he could have anticipated and/or to which he bungled the response. I will point out that Bush had exactly such an event in his first term and was reelected anyway.
I, for one, am more scared off police, the FBI, CIA, NSA, the rest of the alphabet soup, and airport security than terrorism. I live 35 miles from NYC (only one of two places that has any reasonably high likelihood of being hit). 9/11 was a one-time wake-up call. Theyve now killed far more in Iraq and are probably done for awhile.
More people die in cars every year than did on 9/11. Should we ban cars?
More people die in boating accidents every year than did on 9/11. Should we ban boats?
More people die in swimming pools every year than did on 9/11. Should we ban swimming pools?
More people die in household accidents every year than did on 9/11. Should we ban households?
You think we should just not try to fight terrorism because a very small percentage of people died on 9/11?
This has got to be the most pathetic strawman ever written. I was not surprised when I looked up at the author and saw one of the members of the dumbass brigade.
Just because you right wing nut bags live in fear and most don't doesn't mean us rational people don't want to limit terrorism as much as possible.
It will never be stopped because cowards like you and AssRider(posting as CO) make it too effective.
The Bush administration reacted in a fearful manner and cause more damage to the US then 9/11 did. That was the goal of the attacks and it was successful because people like you don't have any backbone.
Well, I hear Obama is a voracious reader, so I think the likelihood that he reads national security memos including phrases like "determined to attack" and "imminent threat" in the title is very high. Ergo, I feel pretty safe - much safer than I did the previous 8 years.
Slightly off topic... (but this was the newest thread where national security was a tag)
Can someone do a correlation of war casualties/fatalities by day intersected with the days that Bush was on vacation? Rove is being all whiny on Fox because "MoDo on the NYT" is pointing out that our dual-wartime president was on vacation. A lot. If someone could come up with a number it would certainly make a great blog-post. It will be extra-nerd-licious because Rove had THE math.
It will be interesting if Ahmadinejad loses the upcoming election, after Lebanon just had a good result.
It seems that having a president who speaks rationally and listens to others, and doesn't want to go out and shoot everyone, is actually allowing a more reasonable element to prevail in some of the more dangerous places in the world.
So I feel MUCH much safer now, and this sense is growing as I see wisdom, care, and thought replace machismo as national policy.
May as well stick my neck out. It was those guys who knew better than to get any information or take any advice from the Dems that ignored intelligence that terrorists might fly into American buildings.
If Bush had not been elected, we'll never know, but there's a possibility prevented.
And if they hadn't used their immense goodwill here and around the world to attack Iraq, we might have succeeded in Afghanistan and gotten Bin Laden, along with not making enemies and helping them recruit more terrorists at such a great clip.
dionsess - mashup of Dionysus and cesspool?
Tom, is it possible - farfetched, I know, but is it just barely possible - that some of the poll respondents were a little bit rational and said "no, I am not worried that I personally might become a victim of a terrorist attack, given that there are hundreds of millions of people in this very geographically large country and odds are that whatever happens next will happen someplace I'm not" -- even though some of these same people may have thought that there IS a real possiblility of a terrorist attack somewhere in the US?
In other words, I don't think you can read a "no" response to the first two questions ("no, I'm not worried about personally dying in a terrorist attack") as equivalent to the respondent saying he/she does not consider terrorism to be an important issue.
So basically it looks like you're trying to make guesses about cross-tabs between the third terrorist question and another question that doesn't exist. You can't do that in the real world.
.
We trust that Obama has more motivation to put an end to right-wing American terror than a right-wing Prez would. We'll see.
As to the imported variety, if it actually exists, getting out of the Middle East, and excising the neo-Fascist Israeli tumor from our body politic should help.
.
@Cosa Nostradamus:
I am Jewish, and I have problems with the current Israeli government under Netanyahu, (as do a significant number of Israelis) but "neo-Fascist tumor" is a despicable slur on a democracy. That term more accurately describes Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe under Mugabe, Sudan, Syria or Saudi Arabia.
To Casual Observer re: Terrorism = killing argument--
The IRA used to set bombs in buildings and then warn the police specifically so the police would evacuate the building and no one (or almost no one) would be killed. The building would explode and the message would be sent ("Listen to us because we have the _capacity_ to kill you if you don't") but, by design, there was often no violence. Only orchestrated fear. Were they not terrorists?
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