How Much Risk Will We Take?

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Yet clear-eyed equanimity about how to best manage risk is exactly what gets lost every time a new, harrowing plot is uncovered. The U.S.'s response to the London arrests is already drifting toward overkill, as men with badges ask moms to taste the baby formula and women hide lipstick tubes in their bras. Two days after the arrests, British authorities, who have decades of experience dealing with terrorist bombings, were complaining to DHS about an excess of caution. More than one plane from London was turned back, and at least seven British Airways flights had to be canceled because U.S. officials took so long conducting background checks of passengers. "We understand the need for new security measures," says a British government representative. "But we are keen for the actions to impact as little as possible on passengers."

In a world where every successful antiterrorism operation serves only to highlight another vulnerability, trying to stop the next attack can seem like an exercise in futility. But that's exactly the point. Terrorists can't be deterred forever. Dealing effectively with the threat posed by al-Qaeda requires a more sober and rational approach than we have pursued over the past five years, one that involves figuring out how much we are truly willing to change our way of life to reduce the risk of another 9/11. Until that calculation is made, terrorists will continue to succeed even when they fail. "The secondary concern of all terror plots has always been the secondary impact of attacks--getting democracies and free societies so frenzied to prevent new attacks that we start eroding and violating the very freedoms and liberties that the authors of terrorism themselves want to destroy," says French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard. "There will always be holes. One-hundred-percent security doesn't exist. We can do everything possible or viable to increase our security, but cutting off your arm because your hand risks gangrene is going too far." The question is, How do you know when you have gone far enough?

What's lost in the hand wringing about the vulnerabilities and security holes exposed by the London plot is how much the counterterrorism community got right. Over a year ago, Britain's MI5 launched an investigation that spanned at least three continents. Pakistani officials helped track the British suspects, and U.S. intelligence provided intercepts of the group's communications. "It was really a joint effort, the kind of cooperation you probably wouldn't have had before Sept. 11," says a U.S. official who is regularly briefed on terrorist threats.

On Thursday, after the suspects had been arrested, the FBI and DHS sent an internal memo to state and local law-enforcement agencies warning that peroxide-based explosives could be used in an attack. But the memo could offer only so much guidance. No one could tell airport searchers exactly what to look for. Even if they knew, they wouldn't have the tools to find it. So post-9/11 airport supplications reached a new low, as throngs of passengers handed over their deodorant, hair gel and bottled water. The airline industry, which had just reported its best quarterly profits in six years, faces a possible new cataclysm. London Heathrow Airport came to a standstill, and one of aviation's most lucrative routes, between New York City and London, suddenly seems fraught with risk.