Lauren: I'm doing an internship report writing school But there is less reason to be fearful today, in my view, because we're doing a much better job of countering the threat. Let's remember that the 19 hijackers who changed our world a dozen years ago were in many cases living right under our noses. Had we been less complacent about our security and more competent about connecting the dots, it's entirely possible, if not probable, that the attack never would have happened. As for the tradeoff we have made between civil liberty and national security ever since, I suspect that's one reason why the death toll from terrorism is so low.