Real enough

I keep hearing pundits dismiss radical Islam by arguing that, well, it is nothing compared to the threat of global nuclear war. The latest pundit, however, is none other than Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, who transmits the meme thusly: “I don't mean to understate the threat, which is real enough. But it's not on the order of the Cold War, you know, and we won that one.”

Stephen Green disagrees: “It’s not often I disagree with Glenn Reynolds on an issue of substance, but in this case, the Instapundit couldn’t be more wrong.” You can read his argument here.

I’d like to disagree with Reynolds on a different point, without getting into the relative costs to society (however expressed) of high-probability, low-consequence events versus low-probability, high-consequence events (e.g., smallpox attacks, sea level rise).

Simply put, as long as terrorists keep feeling for the threshold at which one or a series of low-consequence level events can go all-consequential for a civilization with a high division of labor (long supply chains, everything JIT, critical interdependencies all over), we have no more business dismissing “low-consequence” threats from radical Islam than a man six stories up a ladder has laughing at a one-legged terrorist on the ground trying to kick the ladder out from under him.