Here's a question that's rarely asked in polite company: Did our government over-react to the September 11 attacks? Here's another: Was our reaction exactly what Osama bin Laden hoped for? According to John Mueller, a professor at Ohio State University, the answer to both questions is "yes." He explains why in Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and We Believe Them.

Mueller is no pacifist--one would hardly expect the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies to be one--but rather a hard-nosed pragmatist who adds up the minuses as well as the pluses of going to war. In the case of September 11, he found that our response to the attacks cost us more than the attacks themselves. The costs range from lost productivity due to (probably ineffective) airport security measures to the massively wasteful Department of Homeland Security. Not to mention needless fear; inattention to even worse threats such as global warming; and especially the Iraq war, which was partly the result of post-September 11 rage.

The author makes several politically incorrect points about September 11. To begin with, we lost .004 percent of our population, a number not remotely likely to topple a country. (Iran, whose population is a fraction of ours, recently lost 30,000 of its citizens in an earthquake.) What will bring us down is anti-terrorism measures that unravel our constitutional structure, such as President Bush's assertion of sweeping war powers.

Mueller also contends that the 11 attacks were a one-off; everything fell into place for the terrorists, in part because they ran a low-tech operation. He maintains that a chemical or biological attack is extremely difficult to pull off because of the logistics involved in developing and deploying such weapons. And staging a nuclear attack is tougher still, since it requires a huge cadre of technically trained people--assuming they can get their hands on fissile material in the first place.

Even more provocative is the author's explanation of why the United States hasn't been hit since September 11: there aren't many terrorists inside our borders, and those who are here lack the motivation and talent. Meanwhile, the FBI makes the incredible claim that its failure to find a bona fide cell proves that terrorists are out there.

Mueller goes even further and argues that we've over-reacted to security threats going back to Pearl Harbor. After the Japanese attacked, our government adopted a policy of unconditional surrender, which entailed a long and costly war in the Pacific. The author believes that a policy of containment, plus limited military action at the borders of the Japanese empire, would have thwarted further attacks and perhaps paid dividends in the form of a more stable postwar Asia.

At home, Mueller points out, we also over-reacted to Pearl Harbor by interning tens of thousands of Japanese Americans, even no spies or saboteurs were found among that population. In like manner, authorities rounded up thousands of Arabs and Muslims after September 11 but found few who had even tenuous links to terrorist groups.

Why, then, are America's leaders so quick to use force? It was because the Allies under-reacted to Adolf Hitler, one of the few threats which--as they discovered the hard way--couldn't be contained. Since then, we've gone off in the other direction, elevating tinpot dictators such as Panama's Noriega, Libya's Qadaffi, and of course, Saddam Hussein, to at least junior-varsity Hitler status.

Mueller's approach toward terrorism is sensible. He'd like policymakers to focus their prevention efforts on WMD attacks and to figure out how to recover from lower-intensity attacks, which are not 100-percent preventable. In addition, he'd like both policymakers and the media to put the threat of terrorism in perspective. Even taking September 11 into account, the average American is no more likely to be killed by terrorists than by lightning.

That, of course, is wishful thinking, and Mueller knows it. If terrorists strike here again, public opinion will demand Draconian laws at home and military action overseas. Even without an attack, it will take years for our national temperature to return to normal. Mueller points out that fear of domestic Communism, provoked by the cases of Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, took years to subside--even after the party virtually withered away in this country.

Furthermore, public opinion is inflamed by what Mueller calls the "terrorism industry": opportunistic public officials, led by the president himself; turf-conscious bureaucrats; security profiteers, a class that includes media that thrive on fear-mongering; and assorted other Americans with ideological axes to grind. Also benefitting are the terrorists themselves, who have been elevated to celebrity status thanks to our obsession with them.

It's unlikely that any politician of either party will endorse Mueller's restrained approach toward terrorism. Nevertheless, Overblown is a welcome contribution toward what has been a very one-sided discussion of the issue.