You are right on top of something, Sean. We have, both at the strategic level and at the international level and the domestic individual level, pushed toward preventive war, which is quite new. When you look at warfare traditionally, it’s a response to an act of aggression, at least in our recent history. Instead, what we have seen is an articulation of policy positions that say the United States will take preemptive action, preemptive military action, in order to thwart potential terrorist threats and indeed will engage in preventive military operations.
On the domestic side, the fears created by terrorism have made in the eyes of policymakers and the public a traditional reactive criminal investigative response unsatisfactory. Instead, it has pushed the authorities upstream to take action and to prevent these attacks before they occur. That has meant changing the law. It has expanded the area to which people can be prosecuted on the basis of intentions alone. It is moving us also into a dangerous place, I think. [...]
There will be other attacks. My point is that an attack would not have to achieve the scale of the 9/11 to provoke an extraordinary reaction. A terrorist attack does not have to kill thousands. If we experienced in an American city what Paris experienced last fall, that might suffice to propel us into an extraordinary response abroad and in this county. It doesn't have to hit the 9/11 record to provoke the overreaction.
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