In 2001 the world was taken by surprise, not so much by the large number of victims, but by the horrendous spectacularity of the attacks and then the live televised collapse of the Twin Towers. The USA, discovering itself vulnerable, reacted with strength and excellent reasons in Afghanistan and with even greater strength, but infinitely less reasons, in Iraq.
In these ten years Islamic terrorists have tried in vain to replicate their "success". They committed a terrible massacre in Spain and carried out another spectacular attack in London, but they fell well short of the 2001 threshold, and in any case they no longer managed to directly and significantly hit American soil. More traditionally, they have mostly massacred their own fellow citizens and co-religionists.
Objectively, Islamic terrorists have suffered severe defeats, losing a significant chunk of their leaders, having their plans exposed and blocked, being forced to flee their bases of operation and look for new ones and, as far as al-Qaeda is concerned, being forced to a growing fragmentation of their logistical and command structure. Terrorists continue to operate, but are more vulnerable and less threatening. Recent events in the Arab world have also shown that their political and ideological influence in those countries is very minority and negligible.
The problem is that the rhetoric of the "war on terror" has convinced the majority of American public opinion and a large part of European opinion that the goal should be much more ambitious, namely the elimination and not just the reduction of the terrorist threat. This "perfect" goal is not humanly achievable, but precisely this increases the sense of danger, the terror of the population, even in the event of success. It is paradoxical, but the news of a failed attack or of a terrorist discovered instead of increasing confidence feeds the sense of alarm, because it confirms the continuing existence of the "enemy".
We need to get out of this perverse spiral and begin to accept the fact that terrorism (Islamic and otherwise) is just one of the many threats present in our societies and that as such it can be circumscribed and reduced, but not completely eliminated. We would then discover that, on the statistical scale of mortal threats weighing on us, it is certainly spectacular, but also one of the least important!
