As far as I can make out, everyone who claims that Islamist terrorism is a genuinely significant threat to the survival of Western Civilisation falls into one or more of these three categories:
1) They are a professional liar (politician, spy).
2) They have a direct personal interest in persuading the public that there exists a terrible threat that only they, with the help of copious amounts of public money, can tackle (politician, spy).
3) They have access to no evidence other than that provided by the politicians and the spies, which they believe (everyone else).
In the absence of any evidence for a serious terror threat other than the word of professional liars who stand to gain from making us believe there’s a serious terror threat, why would anyone join the camp in point 3? Very mysterious…
There’s #4, too: people who are blinded by fear and consequently overestimate the gravity of the threat. You could also add #5, people who assign an idiosyncratic weighting of the importance of tail risks (specifically, improbable but very damaging events); such people may be acting rationally but under a wierd utility, to (attempt) to emulate how an economist would put it….
Plus #6, people who actually enjoy the idea of total war, without having to put up with the inconvenience of actually being involved in one.
Total war? Who’s in a total war? Are you really so brainwashed as that? Ask the Japanese if it’s fair to compare Iraq to a "total war". I feel certain they would be insulted.
“How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!” —- Neville Chamberlain (1938)
Read the second clause of the sentence and try again.
No you try again. You made the rather baseless insinuation. I’m merely pointing out that it’s baseless and removed from reality.