Well, it's good to see that the former CIA employee is now worried about the war on terror. But it's a bit late. On July 10, 2001--two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon--Johnson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times ("The Declining Terrorist Threat") in which he argued that Americans were "bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism" and, in truth, had "little to fear" from terrorism. And, in turn, he rebuked his former colleagues in the national security bureaucracy for using the "fiction" of the terrorist threat to pump up their budgets.
Note he's blaming Johnson for having a "pre-9/11 mindset" for something he wrote... pre-9/11.
What did Gary Schmitt write in November 2000?
The reason is that, as horrific as terrorism can be, its human and material costs have a minimal impact on the American population. Oh, we loudly demand that the culprits be caught and justice meted out. But that indignation passes rapidly as the terrorists’ deeds fade and the terrorists themselves disappear into the shadows. And the dirty little secret is that governments are often happy that’s the case. If terrorism is state-sponsored, then governments are faced with a choice between waging war in return and ignoring an act of aggression, neither of which is without consequences.
...
Study of Revenge, then, is about an ongoing war. But this war by unconventional means is not recognized as such. Rather, as Mylroie points out, the conventional wisdom is that terrorism today is chiefly a product of transnational organizations, motivated by religious extremism, only loosely tied together and, more often than not, directed and funded by a single individual, Usama bin Laden. Witness our initial reaction to the attack on the USS Cole. Putting aside for the moment that even bin Laden depends on state sanctuary and state assistance to operate, isn’t it reasonable to ask what states had the most to gain from raising the price for our presence in the Gulf?
(thanks to Cloudy who wants me to credit someone at the DU forum)