Interesting data regarding Justice Department Terrorist Arrests

First, how's that for a boring header? Two, having been married for more than a decade I've learned that when I'm not sure if something is good or bad from the wifes perspective, to lable it "interesting." So this bit of news is "interesting"

It seem's that the Justice Department is prosecuting terrorists at about the same level as pre-9/11. I think this is good news and it makes sense. There are several possible reasons mentioned, but I'll add some more (hey that's what you don't pay me for). One, it may indicate that the knee-jerk "we're afraid, arrest everyone!" mentality may be waning, which is great news for a nation that hopefully has found it's spine. Two, it may also show that real police work is being done. One would expect that as law enforcement agents do better detective work, arrests go down (you get less false positives with better research), more potential good news.
Finally, maybe the Justice Department has decided to spend it's time investigating crimes that have a higher chance of affecting the lives of Americans than a terrorist attack. Nation-wide the total number of people who have died in a terrorist attack over the last 20 years is less than those that die from many more mundane reasons each year (yes-this is totally unsubstaciated, but here's how I arrive at my guess. About 3,000 people died on 9/11, add to that the couple of hundred at OK and the several at the first WTC attack. Estimate a total of 4000. There were 17,000 drunk driving fatalities in 2005 Madd. And there were 18,000 people murdered in 1997. I could take this out farther (further?), but I think I've illustrated my point).

But I think the thing that best describes the decline is this. I'm just not convinced that there was this massive, conserted, constant terrorist plot against the US. The reaction to 9/11 always , understandibly, seemed more emotional that factual. Yes, there are those who wish either to do harm to, or that harm would come to, the US, but how many really have both the will and the capability to do something? Here are the attacks I remember. Oklahoma 1995 (domestic not-al Quaeda affiliated-remember those simpler times) the first attempt on the World Trade Center 1993, 9/11 2001 (I left out the Cole attack 2000. I'm not sure how to categorize it. It was an attack on a military vessel and usually terrorism is reserved for non-military targets - I leave it to you to decide). Sooooo, the fact that the Justice Department isn't arresting a lot of terrorists with designs on the US, is that there just may not be a lot of terrorsts with designs on the US.

Finally, take the last sentence,

"An empirical study like TRAC's cuts through the rhetoric, lets us see just how many terrorists are being brought to justice," Aftergood said. "The data suggest that some of the official rhetoric is misleading."

Ironically, that statement is misleading. It makes it sound like maybe not much is being done to arrest terrorist afterall. What it doesn't say is that no one knows how many terrorist exist to arrest. Maybe lots is being done, and the Justice Department is doing a great job because they've arrested 90% of the possible terrorist pool. Or maybe they're doing a terrible job because they've only arrested 5% of the pool. No one knows. So TRAC's empical study doesn't cut through the rhetoric, and Aftergood is only adding to the rhetoric. This report has lots of numbers, but it doesn't really tell the reader anything. The reader can speculate, as I've done through this entire post, the report can give the reader ideas, maybe spark some new thoughts, but it's hardly a report card as it does not give you the whole picture (nor could it). But as it stands, its like me telling Stalin that MFJ took a test and got five right. Stalin has no idea if that's good or bad, five out of five is great, five out of 100 is terrible. Don't get fooled by numbers alone, get fooled by me. It's better for both of us.