What terrorism isn't

From the Times' Op-Ed pages, an article about what terrorism isn't:

“Outside of Afghanistan and Iraq,” Mueller [a political scientist at Ohio State University] says, “the number of people killed around the world since Sept. 11 by groups in sympathy with Al Qaeda is not that high. These are horrible and disgusting deaths, but they’re not a sign of a diabolically effective organization. The total is less than the number of Americans who drowned in bathtubs during this period.”

Now I think Mueller's overarching argument is an interesting one. But before I get into that--I have two problems with what he seems to be saying in the paragraph above. First, why exclude Afghanistan and Iraq? If we're talking casualties from the war on terrorism, that seems like a way to exclude a lot of deaths from the total. Second, why focus on American deaths? Are things simply peachy as long as Afghans and Iraqis are dying instead?

If we get back to the big picture, though, I think Mueller's new book Overblown is asking us to step back and asks a question we don't often think about: Is terrorism really as big a problem as we're making it out to be? That's an important query, and it's about time we started hearing another perspective: the threat terrorism poses is much smaller than our war-mongering government and lapdog media (Mueller dubs them the Terrorism Industry) are making it out to be. I'm not saying he's necessarily right, but I seem some truth in the suggestion that perhaps we've all bought into the "terrorism threatens our way of life" storyline a bit too much to allow us--as individuals and as a country--to make sound decisions.