Editor's letter: Terrorism and the zero standard

last updated 8 January 2015

How much terrorism can we tolerate? It’s a question that’s not often asked in such frank terms, though the answer has profound consequences. Since 9/11, the presumption has been that Americans will tolerate no successful acts of terrorism, and no deaths. The zero standard was understandable when terrorism took the form of hijacked airplanes, bombings, and other attacks designed to cause mass casualties. But the pursuit of zero had a steep cost: two, decade-long foreign wars in which more than 100,000 people died; the official use of torture for the first time in U.S. history; and our collective acceptance of airport crotch probing and heightened surveillance in everyday life. But after 12 years of war, al Qaida is a fragmented bunch of amateurs serving mostly as a tool of inspiration rather than grand plots, and terrorism has taken the form of crazed individuals wielding pressure cookers and meat cleavers (see Best columns: Europe). So how do we get back to zero?

Last year, more than 30,000 Americans died in car crashes, and roughly another 30,000 were killed with firearms. That’s the equivalent of twenty 9/11s every year. As grim as all that carnage may be, our society tolerates a fair amount of death as the price of freedom. We may seek ways to reduce the death totals, but no one presumes any law can bring them to zero. “You people will never be safe,” self-proclaimed terrorist Michael Adebolajo said last week, after hacking to death a British soldier on a London street. If the standard is zero, the barbarian is right—no matter how much power terrorized people grant their governments. The sooner we accept our ultimate vulnerability, the more realistic—and less terrorized—we’ll be.