Why have there been no terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11?

Great Debates
1

Given what we’re hearing about the growing menace of extremist Islamists who are told it’s their duty to attack the U.S. and kill Americans, does anybody find it a a pleasant surprise - but definitely a surprise - that there haven’t been any successful terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11? Today it will be three years.

What do you think is the main reason? Is it:

  1. Homeland Security efforts have been so effective in preventing attacks?

  2. The threat in the U.S. has been overstated. (ie. there just aren’t that many potential terrorists here).

  3. There are terrorists in the U.S. but they’re biding their time and waiting for the right moment.

  4. Terrorists have decided that a strike against the U.S. is not as effective as strikes elsewhere (e.g. Spain).

  5. Other

I’m curious what people think.

2

Do you not consider the anthrax attacks, the Beltway snipings, and the recent mailing of crude letter-bombs to eight western governors to be terrorist acts?

3

Not really.

4

They’re not organized terrorist attacks like you’d see from Hamas or the IRA. No. The beltway snipers were spree killers, not terrorists. The others? I think they’re lone lunatics like the unabomber. But not organized political terrorism.

5

My answer is a mix of #3 (biding time) and #5 (other)

To specify: I suspect that right now, the heads of “Global Terrorism” (whatever that really is - but that’s another thread) are perfectly happy with the very specter of terrorism causing americans to change their way of life, at least somewhat, and more importantly, they are happy with the US bleeding because of them - economically on homeland security (and in general); and real blood in Afghanistan and Iraq :frowning:

I’m afraid that I find it more than likely that if and when US attitudes on terrorism return to blind apathy a few years down the road, that is when a wakeup call will be received.

Right now they don’t need actual violence in order to induce terror…

Dani

6

Put me in the number 2 camp. There never were significant foreign terrorist attacks in the US. There was zero follow up from 9-11. That was the perfect time to really spark fear into the hearts of Americans. An organized structure could have set off crude car bombs every month or two in the US following 9-11. That would have really messed with people’s perceptions, the stock market, etc.

7

#5 They are to busy killing americans in Iraq to bother with the US mainland.

8

I’d argue something similar. Al Qaeda go after easy targets. Pre-9/11, US air travel was an easy target. It isn’t nearly as easy now. Madrid trains were an easy target. Bali, Istanbul, Casablanca, all easy targets. Americans in Iraq, really easy target. (Why have they not yet managed an attack in Britain? Because Britain was a tougher target even before 9/11, due to greater familiarity with terrorist attacks, more familiar even than Spain.)

9

Let’s also remember that we seldom hear about the successes.

10

There have been several failures of the Internet in the three years since 9/11…any evidence that these were engineered by Al Queda?This would be much more effective than blowing up a building.
I think the US has won at least one thing aaginst Al_Queda…it is probably impossible now for them to send the mlarge amounts of money between cells, that they need to launch major attacks. The 9/11attacks probably cost around 3 million $ (for plane travel, apartment rentals, false documents,living expenses, etc.).
I also think (despite much argumnent to the contrary) that Arab governments have cracked down on A-Queda cells in their countries. Yemen, for example, is now quite difficult for them to operate in .

11

To the ones that perished in the attack

you will be avenged

Mainly I believe , if a population is under constant attack, then they become desensitized , while a truly random attack will cause chaos and fear and un ease.

Also they are probably not getting the support in America that they thought they would be getting. There have been no progoms against Islamics specifically , or any foreigners generally.

Lastly , they may believe that time is on their side ,and will pick and choose the moment.

Declan

12

Why weren’t there any attacks in America between 1993 and 2001?

Al Qaeda seems like the type of group to do large scale attacks every few years rather than constant small scale attacks. And they seem to like attacking right before an election (USS Cole and Madrid) or right after a change in leadership (1993 WTC and 2001 WTC), although the sample size is pretty small, so that could be somewhat coincidental.

13

I think there are several reason.

  1. Al-Qaeda is and always has been a fairly formiddable terror network, but I think their power is overestimated or misunderstood by most Americans.

Al-Qaeda has always tended to operate more heavily in the Eastern Hemisphere. They have tended to operate most heavily in regions where Islamic terrorism has the most support amongst the citizenry.

So eventhough they have (a now diminished) impressive global financing operation they do have distinct limitations and reservations when it comes to attacks. It is vastly easier for them to run ops in the Middle East or North Africa than it is in Europe. However due to the large (proportionally) Muslim populations in Europe these days they DO have some inroads that they can make into the European continent, and that is one reason Al-Qaeda has been able to strike Europe more frequently than it has struck North America.

And plus, their money is mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere, it is easier for them to move money into Europe for ops than it is for them to get it in to the United State.

One thing the United States does seem to have an advantage in over Europe is financial accounting and money tracking. The Enron scandal was economically huge, larger than any commercial scandal I can think of in Europe. But overall it was fairly small potatoes and it was achieved via tricking out the system, and the system became even more stringent after that.

Look to Italy and the Parmalat scandal though and you see a scandal that is much more serious than Enron because it shows evidence of a financial accounting system that is basically powerless to stop complete lies and distortion on a total scale by corporations.

While Parmalat (I don’t think, I’m sure they were larger as a proportion of GDP though) was not as large a company as Enron, the things they did were much more deceptive and underhanded, and they were things that Enron couldn’t have gotten away with in the United States even with AA’s help.

  1. It takes a lot to really classify itself as “huge” attack in America. I mean, this is the country with dozens of serial killers, spree killers, school shootings, et cetra every decade.

Things like car bombings, minor hostage takings, small-scale conventional attacks et cetra do not affect the American psyche in a hugely significant manner because they are so quickly overwhelmed by the media rush.

I think Al-Qaeda knows this so they prefer to only attack the United States in ways that guarantee to be huge to American morale.

The destruction of the World Trade Center is something that does that (they failed it once.) And a sinking of a U.S. Naval Destroyer is also a very big thing, but they couldn’t achieve that.

They tried a few things before 9/11 that did not work to the degree they wanted it to, so the hijacked planes were definitely a “Plan B” sort of thing. And even if American planes can still be hijacked in the same manner, the U.S. is much more willing, ready, and able to shoot such commerical planes down now. So the destruction will be difficult to reproduce.

Al-Qaeda has to develop a plan that will actually 1) hurt American morale, 2) be huge in scale and 3) have a decent chance of success, before they can even start implementing it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t even been able to plan anything effectively.

14

Reports are taken MUCH more seriously than they were.

  1. The pilots who were training the “jet terrorists” reported this strange activitiy to authorities. 'Hey these guys just want to learn how to fly in mid-flight. No takeoffs or landings". At the time, the FAA, FBI, etc thought it no big deal.

  2. Around August, 2001 actor James Woods on a flight from Boston to Los Angeles observed some suspicious behavior among some of the passengers. He reported it but not much (if anything) was done about it. He called the FBI on Sept 12th and they were VERY interested then.
    http://www.snopes.com/rumors/woods.htm

  3. Everyone is much more alert to suspicious behavior. The Immigration and Naturalization Service is taking things very seriously too. Remember, they were so backlogged that this snafu occurred.
    *Six months after Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi crashed jet liners into the World Trade Center, the INS sent notice a Florida flight school that it had approved the two men’s visas for flight lessons.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0302/031302tdam1.htm
They were in the process of getting things computerized .

15

Related to the OP’s #4:
What did the terrorists want or expect to happen as a result of 9/11?
Was the way the US & world actually responded significantly different from what they expected?
If so, would this help to explain why nothing similar has been tried since then?