I have often felt that America has sometimes been guilty of overreaction to the threat of terrorism. So I was encouraged to see an op-ed piece by Ted Koppel making the same case.

He acknowledged that terrorism “is designed to produce overreaction. It is a means by which the weak induce the powerful to inflict damage upon themselves—and al Qaeda and groups like it are surely counting on that as the centerpiece of their strategy.”

Closing nearly two-dozen embassies and consulates for a week may have been a wise move on the part of the United States. But it certainly illustrates the point that Ted Koppel was trying to make. A perceived threat from a terrorist group is enough to disrupt the diplomatic corps in embassies all over the world.

He also brings his focus back home. He noted that the United States “has constructed an antiterrorism enterprise so immense, so costly and so inexorably interwoven with the defense establishment, police and intelligence agencies, communications systems, and with social media, travel networks and their attendant security apparatus, that the idea of downsizing, let alone disbanding such a construct, is an exercise in futility.”

Last week I talked about the new book by John Whitehead, A Government of Wolves. The title comes from CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow who said: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” This nation of sheep is wiling to sit back and have allowed an antiterrorism network to expand and intrude into its lives. And those who question any overreaction are often accused of being against the war on terror.

Ted Koppel also notices how we live with the threat of terror. “We have created an economy of fear, an industry of fear, a national psychology of fear. Al Qaeda could never have achieved that on its own. We have inflicted it on ourselves.” That I would suggest is a perfect definition of overreaction.