The Failure of the War on Terror Policymaking in America’s Post-9/11 information Environment
Thomas T. Barry ’15 In the decade since 9/11, the United States has shaped its foreign policy in an States has strengthened regional terrorism effort to disrupt and defeat global terrorism.1 in the Middle East and Central Asia and That said, most Americans identify terrorism thus inadvertently undermined its own as the top national security priority for the national security. Terrorism, therefore, wrong reasons. Since the end of the Cold should represent the United States’ top War and the United States’ emergence as security concern not because of the mortal the world’s first unipolar power, the United danger it supposedly poses to U.S. citizens, States has exhibited a systemic inability to but because of the legitimate threat America reduce the threat posed by small, fragmented, poses to itself by maintaining the war on terror in its current terrorist organizations. form. The inherent nature Statistical of politics and media America’s sensationalist analysis clearly in the United States illustrates that information environment has contributed to a terrorism, foreign hyperbolic information has consistently prevented homegrown, fails and to environment that the country from addressconstitute a significant systematically undermines the ing terrorism in a prudent threat2 to American lives. According to the public’s ability to manner RAND Corporation, truly understand “The average American the terrorist threat. has about a one in 9,000 chance of dying in By subverting the informative ability of an automobile accident and about a one in the nation’s public discourse, America’s 18,000 chance of being murdered.” However, sensationalist information environment has consistently prevented the country in the five years following 9/11 Americans from addressing terrorism in a prudent had “only a one in 500,000 chance of being manner. The resulting misperception of killed in a terrorist attack.”3 Nonetheless, the this manageable threat has enabled the inordinate fear of terrorism within the public government to continue to implement sphere of the United States has succeeded in ineffective foreign policy. In fact, through changing foreign policy since 9/11. While the its overextended military operations, most horrifying spectacle of 9/11 understandably John Mueller, “A False Sense of Insecurity,” Regulation 27, no. 3 (Fall 2004): recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United 2page 46, accessed April 8, 2012, http://www.cato.org. 1 Encyclopædia Britannica Profiles The American Presidency, s.v. “George W.
Bush: declaration of war on terrorism,” accessed April 8, 2012, last modified 2012, http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9398253.
3 Gideon Rachman, “Declare Victory and End the ‘Global War on Terror’,”
Financial Times (London), May 2, 2011, accessed April 8, 2012, http://www. ft.com.
Thomas T. Barry is an International Affairs major with a concentration in Global Public Health. In addition to his role as Content and Formatting Editor for The Globe, he is interning this summer with Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.
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