It's like saying Fort Knox has never been broken into, so let's stop wasting money protecting it
I disagree. It's not a black and white "protect Fort Knox" or "Don't protect Fort Knox". It's more like saying Fort Knox has never been broken into, so let's evaluate whether we need 240,000 employees to protect it (number of employees in Department of Homeland Security). Let's evaluate whether we need to pat down everyone at an airport to see if they have plans to rob Fort Knox. Let's evaluate whether we need to eavesdrop on everyone on the Internet and record information about their phone calls to see if they're planning on robbing Fort Knox. Let's evaluate whether we need to invade two countries because people from one of those countries actually were able to steal a tiny fraction of a fraction of the gold in Fort Knox.
Our response to terrorism is unique and we treat no other problem like it, going even further than the "war on drugs".
I just remembered reading an article [1] mentioning indirect impact of combination of fear of flying caused by 9/11 and annoyance caused by TSA (which one has bigger impact?) that pushed more people to travel by cars. That is less secure than flying and number of fatalities on roads increased by hundreds a month because of that.
The way I see it this is one example of how war on terrorism can kill more people than terrorism itself. I am beginning to believe that the best strategy to win the war on terror would be to basically just ignore terrorism and do only the most basic and least intrusive things to avoid terrorist attacks.
And I think it's not only about whether the cost of protecting Fort Knox is not bigger than the value that can be potentially stolen from Fort Knox. The so called war on terror is not without consequences - it alienates people all over the world and sometimes it even creates hate against the US.
I am not only talking about drone attacks which I believe might create more new terrorists than it kills. All that spying is going to cost you many friends in Europe and the rest of the previously US-friendly world and alienating all your friends is not the best strategy when you want to be safe.
I don't have any hard data on this (how could we measure that?) but I personally believe that those claiming to protect US from terrorism do more harm than any terrorist could ever achieve.
It's like saying Fort Knox has never been broken into, so let's stop wasting money protecting it.
By the way, this example is only meant to highlight the fallacy, nothing more.