For terror, what does winning look like?

Anti-Muslim protests over the weekend in France

Anti-Muslim protests over the weekend in France

In November 2001, the Los Angeles Times ran a short piece compiling uses of the phrase “…then the terrorists have won.” Hawkeye football earned a dubious mention after a letter to the Iowa City Press-Citizen claimed that long security lines at Kinnick Stadium were “letting the terrorists win.” The New York Times opined that the terrorists win if we “don’t send the marching band from Frank Scott Bunnell High School in Stratford, Conn., to the 2002 Rose Parade.” Disrupting Big Ten football was probably not the impetus behind the September 11 attacks, or behind the series of massacres and bombings in Paris Friday. So why kill all those people? Now that we have been at war with terror for 14 years, we should probably be able to say what the other side’s objectives are. “They hate our freedom” is not a goal we can stop terrorists from achieving. For the Islamists who keep killing civilians around the globe, what does winning look like?

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Since 9/11, domestic terrorists have killed more Americans than jihadis

Dylann Roof, probable terrorist and worst thing that happened to Gold's Gym

Dylann Roof, probable terrorist and worst thing that happened to Gold’s Gym

As you probably forgot, jihadis affiliated with Al-Qaeda killed more than 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. Since then, thwarting terrorism has been a top priority of American policy and discourse, and the country has agreed, kind of, that even longstanding interpretations of the Bill of Rights are less important than the threat posed by radical Islam. Also since then, self-proclaimed jihadis have killed 26 Americans, while domestic right-wing and anti-government terrorists have killed 48. Those numbers come from the Washington research group New America, as summarized by this article in the New York Times. Ask most candidates for public office, and Muslim terrorists are an existential threat to the United States. Ask law enforcement, and the bigger problem is right-wing extremists.

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