America without the Shackles of Fear

President Barack Obama has succeeded in at least one area of his presidency: American society is now dealing with the threat of terror in a more rational manner.

It’s not entirely unlikely that the explosive devices discovered aboard cargo planes in Great Britain and Dubai were sent to the United States shortly before the midterm elections as a reminder of something people had nearly forgotten. The threat of terrorism was all but absent from the U.S. political campaign. The public was focused on the economy, high unemployment and the fear of a permanent decline of the United States. People were focused on the role of big government and social change. In short, Americans were self-absorbed and looking inwardly.

That wasn’t the case in decades past. After the 9/11 attacks, the war on terror was a dominant theme from New York to San Francisco. The United States went to war twice for those attacks, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Debate over whether or not those wars were justified, and whether or not Guantanamo and torture were really necessary is still ongoing. They were hot issues two years ago in the presidential campaign at a time when recession and the financial crisis loomed in the background. But Barack Obama’s meteoric rise was explained mainly by his position on the Iraq war, a war he was among the earliest to criticize. Many saw his 2008 triumph as a landmark event, not only because he had broken the color line to become America’s first African-American president, but also because America finally seemed poised to overcome the paralyzing fear that had griped it since 9/11.

Regardless of how one cares to evaluate the 44th U.S. President, that was a success for Obama. Granted, the closure of Guantanamo has been put off indefinitely because the legal wrangling following the years of arbitrary detention won’t be solved as quickly and easily as Obama would like. And, yes, America will continue using aggressive and questionable methods in its fight against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Washington will continue pursuing its enemies with missiles and CIA operations.

But a change has taken place in the American consciousness. The threat of terrorism is now being handled in a more rational way. Today’s security policies are based on real-world protections against real-world threats. The phased withdrawal from Iraq, where al-Qaida has operated only since the U.S. invasion, is controversial. Meanwhile, a majority of Americans are beginning to see, as President Obama did, that Iraq was the wrong war. Even the campaign in Afghanistan is now being openly debated: the role the Hindu Kush play as an actual terrorist haven; whether the dangers from other quarters aren’t in fact greater — such questions are no longer taboo. They are discussed in the White House as well as in various Washington think tanks. America today has come a long way from a time when the idea that the terrorist danger was a threat to the very existence of the nation and was exaggerated and exploited as a political weapon. It’s no longer necessary to rank Osama bin Laden with Hitler and Lenin to get America on a war footing.

Thanks for this is largely due to Obama’s non-hysterical anti-terror policies. The tricky balance between being alert and panicking wasn’t always easy for this president. In the wake of the failed bombing attempt on the Detroit airliner last Christmas, Obama was roundly criticized because he remained silent about it for three days while he vacationed in Hawaii. This time, his first appearance before the cameras was done without resorting to fear mongering.

The White House knows it has been lucky. The Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear failed to explode on Christmas Day, as did the bomb planted in the car parked in New York’s Times Square last May. The parcels addressed to various addresses in the United States this time could well have reached their intended targets had it not been for Saudi Arabian intelligence services. The psychological effects of a successful strike, even one causing minor damage, shouldn’t be glossed over. But if terrorists take aim at targets in the United States — and possibly in Europe — with increasing regularity, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the terrorist danger is growing. It’s possible the occasional jihadist is just yearning for the good old days when he was able to make the whole world tremble in fear and hold its collective breath.