12
Sep
With New York and Washington on alert this past weekend following “credible but unconfirmed” reports of a possible terrorist attack to coincide with the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the question arises of just how much of a threat terrorism poses to the West. If one were to rely on this chart, produced by the Center for Systemic Peace, the answer is surprising: not that much more than before the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The graph measures the number of casualties per year in a “high casualty terrorist bombing,” which includes any incident with fifteen or more casualties. While the rate of terrorist bombings since September 2001 has clearly increased somewhat, the chart shows that the number of casualties since is not all that different from what it was before the attacks that supposedly changed everything.
The chart provides an interesting look back on the 9/11 decade and says more about American foreign policy in that decade than about terrorist attacks themselves.
Statistically the terrorist threat against the West, it appears, never really turned out to be more harmful than it was before September 11. However, it was our overreaction and mistaken foreign policy choices that led to violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan that created the real terrorist threat of the past ten years.
With the exception of a few isolated security scares, thankfully the events of September 11 were commemorated without incident, but doesn’t this chart make one rethink those foreign policy priorities just a little bit more?
Courtesy of the Atlantic’s Chart of the Day
