Why have there been no big domestic terrorist events in the news since 911? Are we extremely vigilant? Lucky? Or are terrorists just stupid. Certainly they wish for success. What is the most damaging in the USA since 2001? What is the biggest close call? Can we credit the TSA for our success?
This? This? That? What about this guy?
Granted, these haven’t had exactly the same level of death and destruction as 9/11, and others have been caught before they could bring their dastardly plans to fruition, but there they are.
Only 1 of those was successful. He had no conspirators. None more damaging? Any organized plots tied to a group? In 11 years? Our government is great at doing it’s job! :dubious:
You realize we don’t live in a black and white world, right?
Our government, while not perfect, is not completely incompetent. And had our intelligence services been a bit more on the ball, maybe 9/11 doesn’t happen.
So, yeah, part of the reason is that our government is doing a better job than it was 10+ years ago. I don’t think it’s anywhere close to perfect or efficient, but I’ll give them credit for not being bumbling idiots.
Also, attacks of the scope and scale of 9/11 are difficult to plan and execute. While we’ve built up a terror mastermind narrative of the events, there was quite a bit of groundwork and logistical support established for the 9/11 terrorists. There aren’t many terrorist groups targeting the US that have the resources to pull it off, and many of them have higher priorities elsewhere (Afghanistan, for one).
Close calls include the Shoe bomber, the underwear bomber and the bomb in NYC that only smoldered.
Also, the Bush regime had the smarts to go after them on their turf; their hideouts, rather than wait around to see if they’d try another attack here in the US.
Slate ran a very interesting series of articles asking this very question, with several possible explanations ranging from “terrorists are dumb” to “our government has kept us safe” to “it’s only a matter of time and statistics”. Here’s the whole series in its entirety.
Look at the missed opportunities and outright ineptitude by the government departments that resulted in 9-11 (up to and including one guy getting his student visa 6 months after he died). Now that it is top priority for all departments, and the FBI is not stuck in the mode “we can’t do that because we don’t know for sure”, it’s tougher to do this.
They had the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber, but the number of non-arab suicidal Islamic fanatics is quite limited; and the number not already on someone’s watchlist due to their outspoken views, probably even fewer. Arabs coming into the USA with suspicious backgrounds - even more likely to be watched, if they are allowed in at all.
That’s why there’s always Kenya, India, and other easier targets.
One issue is that the US does not have a population of domestic terrorists in the country. Countries that had had a large number of terrorist attacks had this: look at the UK IRA bombings or the Basque terrorist bombings in Spain. In both cases, you had citizens involved in the terrorist organizations, which made them harder to root out.
While there are a few US citizens who are terrorists, they are usually loners who are not making detailed plans to succeed. It’s much easier to find non-citizens who are terrorists, who go through immigration and whose presence can raise suspicion.
Look at it the other way: why have there been not that many big domestic terrorist events in the news *before *9/11 ? Osama didn’t wake up from a cryo-tank in 2000, and his laundry list of grievances weren’t exactly based on recent events either.
The answer here is that no matter what Bush/Rove/Cheney’s propaganda machine would have you believe there aren’t all that many suicidal terrorist groups out there ; and even fewer that actually have the kind of tentacles, resources and smarts/know-how to pull off an international operation to begin with.
9/11 may have spurred on amateurs like the shoe bomber, but those guys are likely clowns even to the actual terrorists. Lobbing a handful or mortar rounds into an US base in Iraq on the WE is easy. Being a deep cover mole in America is hard.
Don’t credit the TSA: http://blog.tsa.gov/2012/01/tsa-top-10-good-catches-of-2011.html
Moved from General Questions to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Stay tuned for my question about TSA failures including some anecdotes from friends.
We can hardly wait.
I think its more or less this. The fact is there isn’t really much to be gained by targeting the US with terrorist attacks, and doing so is pretty risky, so there aren’t that many people that want to do it. And the ones that do tend to be schizo loners with few resources and no relevant skills.
Bin Laden’s Al-Queda group was something of an outlier in thinking that there was something to gain by blowing up buildings half a world away. And while they were very successful at blowing those building up, I don’t think many observers would say that the cause of radical-Islam was really advanced in any way by the results. As a result even related Islamic terror groups are apparently pretty happy to stay and fight and die in places they actually live near and care about.
@Really-
Sarcasm?
Hey that’s my name!
They used to call me Not-so-B.
For a start you can rule out “terrorists are dumb”. They are exactly as smart as the rest of us on average (which may indeed count as dumb, I suppose).
One of the main components of a terrorist attack is surprise. [del]Surprise and fear[/del]. Doing again what you’ve done before is not as effective as doing something new, AND you are always trying to hit them where they least expect it, not where they are now alert.
Also, they don’t need to go to the US to kill Americans any more. The US has considerately shipped tens of thousands of Americans over to places where Al Quaeda are already. If in 10 years the US are completely out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but still in say Saudi and Yemen, they may consider such homelands strikes again, I imagine.
It seems to me the resources needed are money for flight training, plane tickets, general living expenses while coordinating everything, and (morbidly), box cutters. Logistics would simply be finding four flights leaving at the appropriate times so the attacks would all happen in the same time frame. What am I missing? It really doesn’t seem to be rocket science, nor all that expensive.
If that is true… Why haven’t they done a variation of it again? Why do they have to tip us off with chatter? Why do they ask stupid questions?
“Do they keep the door locked when they use the bathroom?”
It is not as easy as some may think to find a suicidal ideologue who can successfully pull off an attack. But there have been numerous terrorist attacks since 9/11, I have no idea what this debate is about.
Haven’t anti-Imperialists had their hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan and across the Arab Spring?