# Why haven't there been any attacks in the US since 9/11? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 29, 2004, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742 "2004-04-29T20:30:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/41 "2004-05-01T21:19:47Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > So a dozen sniper teams in a dozen states, each team shooting ten people a day and then moving on to a different location (50, 100, 200 miles a day?) wouldn’t give people the shits in due course? OK, so you’re talking about 24 middle eastern people well trained in sharpshooting buying sniper rifles and coordinating a set of 120 murders a day while travelling extensively and having the entire FBI chasing them? I don’t think they would get away with it. Maybe for the first day. Maybe a few of them could do it for a little longer. Some would mysteriously disappear to Gitmo before they started. Some would be caught once they started. A few might get away with it. Assuming that AQ could get 24 expendable sharpshooters into the US for an attack that is more subtle and less shocking than one carbomb… not to mention the coordinators and support crew, so that is another dozen… all of which must know enough about the plot to execute coordinated strikes, but not enough to tattle on the others… It just doesn’t seem bloody likely. Then again, if you had told me that they could hijack 4 airliners at one time 4 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. I just think that the overall effect wouldn’t be that great - a series of carbombs would be better. It isn’t always about how many people die, but about how good it looks in the paper the next morning. I’ve actually always wondered why they don’t just bomb the lines outside of the security checkpoints at airports. You have about a hundred people standing in an enclosed area. That would totally shut down the airline industry for a while, those airports for longer, kill a bunch of people, and leave us scrambling for a way to defend that (how do you defend against a suicide bomber bombing a line at a security checkpoint?) ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/42 "2004-05-01T21:36:17Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > If you believe Al Qaeda’s own stated strategy, another attack on the U.S. isn’t really a direct or crucial part of the plan. While some commentators in the U.S. like to pretend that Osama expected the U.S. to shrivel up and hide after 9/11 (and that we didn’t is some show of our great resolve), his actual expectation was that we would strike back, violently, putting us in direct conflict with the Middle East. As with **minty green** , I am very curious about the veracity of this statement. Because we cannot know what their plans _were_ prior to the attack, all we have is this statement of what their plans _might have been_. How can we be assured that this is so? Where does this quote come from and what evidence do we have that it is true? It really just sounds like Pee-Wee Herman: “I meant to do that.” It really just sounds like the sort of thing one _wants_ to hear from the war-protest quadrant. “See? I told you we shouldn’t be in Iraq, _that’s just what they’d want us to do!!!_” Because it may be what the war protesters _want_ to hear (at least in my interpretation), I have to ask if it’s too good to be true. ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/43 "2004-05-01T21:42:49Z")
> [@Fish](#): > > As with **minty green** , I am very curious about the veracity of this statement. Because we cannot know what their plans _were_ prior to the attack, all we have is this statement of what their plans _might have been_. How can we be assured that this is so? Where does this quote come from and what evidence do we have that it is true? > > It really just sounds like Pee-Wee Herman: “I meant to do that.” > > It really just sounds like the sort of thing one _wants_ to hear from the war-protest quadrant. “See? I told you we shouldn’t be in Iraq, _that’s just what they’d want us to do!!!_” Because it may be what the war protesters _want_ to hear (at least in my interpretation), I have to ask if it’s too good to be true. Yea, because Allah knows that our exercise in Iraq hasn’t pissed off and polarized the Muslim world against us. :-p I always love how, supposedly, AQ was telling the truth when they wanted the Socialists elected in Spain, but lying when they said they wanted Bush elected. We have to remember that these people are as much politicians as anyone else - they do whatever makes them look the best. If they think they can get away with convincing people that they can manipulate elections in Spain or speed up their withdrawl from Iraq, that’s what they’ll say, though all evidence points to the attacks being planned long before this time. If they think that Bush is being a good recruiting poster, that’s what they will say. If liberals think that the war is going badly, that’s obviously what they will say (“we told you so”). Sometimes it is true, sometimes it is a lie. Obviously, I think it would be a stretch for anyone to expect America to shrivel up and die after 9/11. Therefore, that theory can be safely set aside. Remaining theories are that it is a death wish for themselves, a publicity stunt for their recruiting/conspiracy to create conflict with the Middle East, or they didn’t think ahead very much and just wanted to strike out. Or something else. It is an ink blot - everyone will see their own motive behind it. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/44 "2004-05-01T22:32:13Z")
**Avenger:** No, I meant hundreds of thousands. See, there’s this myth now that after 9/11 the world came together and started singing Kumbayah together in love, peace and harmony. But then that big bad Bush came along and ‘squandered’ it all by going after Iraq. The fact of the matter is, the love and good will around the world lasted about two weeks. As soon as the U.S. announced that it was going after the Taliban, huge protests began around the world. There were numerous protest in London organized by the Stop The War coalition and International ANSWER. Estimates of attendence for the biggest one ran anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000, depending on who you ask. [Journalists for Peace 2001](http://www.city.ac.uk/AUT/november.htm) > [@](#): > > AUT members opposed to the bombing joined a protest organised by CND and the Stop the War Coalition on Monday 8 October. > > Picture gallery of 8 October protest. > > They also marched on the 50,000-strong national CND demonstration against the war on Saturday 13 October in central London. > > **Demonstration against the war - 18 November 2001** > > AUT members and students from City University joined tens of thousands of demonstrators calling for an end to the war against Afghanistan on Sunday 18 November. [http://www.dailyherald.com/special/waronterrorism/story.asp?intID=37174157](http://www.dailyherald.com/special/waronterrorism/story.asp?intID=37174157)Allies Vow Help Amid Protests > [@](#): > > LONDON - Muslim activists protested in the streets, Europeans worried about retaliatory terrorist attacks and allied governments reiterated their support for the United States as airstrikes continued Tuesday on Afghanistan. > > In Egypt, university students burned U.S. and Israeli flags and chanted, “Arrogant George Bush, tomorrow you will reap the fruits of your war!” > > In Indonesia, hundreds of Islamic activists clashed with police outside the American Embassy in the capital, Jakarta. Police fired shots in the air and used a water cannon and tear gas to drive demonstrators away from the heavily fortified building. Several people were injured. > > Sudanese protesters also targeted the American Embassy. Police fired tear gas at demonstrators who tried to storm the embassy in Khartoum, detaining three people who were released later. > > In a Muslim-dominated region of the Philippines, about 5,000 protesters chanted “Death to America” and “Long live Osama bin Laden” as they burned American flags and a picture of Bush. Muslim leaders in the city of Marawi warned Americans in the region that they were not safe. > > Malaysia’s powerful Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party accused the United States of striking against Afghanistan without evidence and asked the United Nations to declare it a terrorist state. > > Pakistan and Palestinian authorities took steps to curb protests that broke out after the first wave of U.S. and British strikes against Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Afghanistan Sunday night. > … > About 2,500 demonstrators marched to the U.S. embassy in Athens, chanting “murderers, murderers.” Yeah, everyone was just rallied around the U.S., weren’t they? This was only a few weeks after 9/11, mind you. The fact is, everyone loved the U.S. only when it was kicked and down and burying its dead. The minute it got back on its feet and started going after the bad guys, the old order re-asserted itself. In fact, there were far greater protests against the war in Afghanistan than again the war in Iraq. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2004, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/45 "2004-05-01T23:02:51Z")
I’m still looking for the “hundreds of thousands” you cited, **Sam.** Or are you saying we should round up every anti-American-post-9/11 nutjob on the planet, lump them into one group, and hope that the total number will actually approach six digits all together? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/46 "2004-05-02T00:06:59Z")
The Stop the War coalition said that over 100,000 protested in London on one day, and there were many days of protests. And let’s not forget that a whole bunch of people on this board were against the war in Afghanistan at that time. Luckily for them, all those posts vanished in the great SDMB meltdown, or you can bet I’d be reminding them of it. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/47 "2004-05-02T00:12:03Z")
[Here’s your link](http://www.bradfordstopwar.org.uk/events/011118nat/index.html): > [@](#): > > Three coachloads of anti-war protesters from Bradford joined some 100,000 other from around the country in a march from Hyde Park to trafalgar Square, doubling last month’s turn-out of 50,000, and reflecting the full breadth, depth and diversity of anti-war feeling in Britain. Trade unionists, Muslim organisations, community groups, anti-racists, human rights activists, anti-globalisation activists, students and MPs heard a wide range of speakers condemn the US-led military action in Afghanistan. ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/48 "2004-05-02T00:14:19Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > The minute it got back on its feet and started going after the bad guys, the old order re-asserted itself. That’s probably because a lot of people view us as the bad guys, with some reason. Oh, wait, I forgot, America always sat in a little box and never hurt anyone, and was randomly attacked completely unprovoked one day for no reason. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/49 "2004-05-02T00:23:06Z")
**Minty:** Here’s your [Link to the Khalid Shaikh Muhammed story](http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040330-120655-9785r.htm). > [@](#): > > LONDON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda’s purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes. > Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization’s plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators. ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/50 "2004-05-02T14:51:54Z")
Great. Now do you have a _credible_ source, one that isn’t run by the Moonies? Incidentally, the alleged lost posts that you refer to were from approximately mid-January 2002 to March or April of that year. The war in Afghanistan was on for several months before that. Plenty of time for you to dig up all those alleged posters decrying the war in Afghanistan. I’m sure there were a couple, but that’s hardly surprising given the international nature of this board. Happy searching. I’ll even spot you **elucidator**. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/51 "2004-05-02T16:08:43Z")
It _has_ been a while since the WTC attack. On the other hand, it seems to me that such attacks in the US only happened at long intervals even before we started spending billions on the so-called war on terror. I think we need a lot more evidence before we can say anything in either direction about the matter. For example, what is the historical mean time between attacks in the US? And what is the standard deviation of those times? Sush information would give us some insight into whether or not the time since WTC is significant. I don’t see how the matter can be settled for sure. It is an uncontrolled experiment. There is no control group and we don’t know that our war on terror (don’t laugh, it’s serious) is the only, or even the principle, determinant. ---
**Author:** ![Avenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@Avenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avenger)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/52 "2004-05-02T19:35:46Z")
> [@](#): > > The Stop the War coalition said that over 100,000 protested in London on one day, and there were many days of protests. Sure they did. However, their ‘estimates’ of numbers can be treated sceptically. The police estimated 15,000, which is still more than I would’ve thought, to be fair, but nothing like the 1 million + (or 2 million + if we’re going with the Stop The War Coalition numbers!) marching against the Iraq ‘adventure’. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2004, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/53 "2004-05-02T22:32:10Z")
I would imagine that if the Stop The War folks actually got 100,000 folks in one protest, there’d be pictures of it in the major media – sorta like the stuff we got with the Anti-Iraq-War protests, which _were_ impressively massive. But even assuming the numbers were accurate and not overly exaggerated ( **cough\*ahem** ), I still fail to see the “ **hundreds** of thousands” **Sam Stone** was flogging. At least in my book, “hundreds of” suggests more than one hundred, since there’s supposed to be a plurality involved… ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2004, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/54 "2004-05-03T01:53:41Z")
The Khalid Shaikh Mohammed story doesn’t seem very credible to me…Or, if it is, it seems that they were pretty stupid. The implication seems to be that they were planning the same sort of attack (and, indeed, I remember that Bin Laden issued some statement shortly after the attacks that claimed that there would be more planes crashing into buildings…which I also took to be meaningless bluster). The original attack was premised on the element of surprise…Indeed, that was the diabolical brilliance of their plan. You can probably only hold off a plane of passengers with box-cutters if they believe the worst thing that you could possibly do is to kill all of them…And, indeed, the plane where the passengers found out what was going on in the larger scheme of things via cell phone and revolted and that crashed in Pennsylvania is evidence of this. Besides which, there was the issue of how easy it would be for anyone vaguely Arabic to show up at flight schools without attracting attention. Hell, even before 9/11 they attracted attention, just not quite enough for the authorities to connect all of the dots. And, of course, there was the increased security on airplanes. Before 9/11, you could probably get things like box-cutters onto planes without question. And, if they managed to catch you, you could just feign ignorance that you can’t take such a thing on-board. I am not claiming that security is good enough that it is impossible to get such things onto planes now (didn’t someone smuggle some of these things onto a plane several months after 9/11 purportedly to demonstrate the security weaknesses?), but it is at least a much riskier endeavor. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2004, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742/55 "2004-05-03T01:56:48Z")
> [@Avenger](#): > > Sure they did. However, their ‘estimates’ of numbers can be treated sceptically. The police estimated 15,000, which is still more than I would’ve thought, to be fair, but nothing like the 1 million + (or 2 million + if we’re going with the Stop The War Coalition numbers!) marching against the Iraq ‘adventure’. Yeah…I am sort of amused that **Sam** is willing to accept the Stop War Coalition’s numbers so uncritically. I can’t imagine that he was quite so willing to at the time. Even when I am sympathetic with a protest, I still treat the numbers that event organizers claim are there with a certain amount of skepticism. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-havent-there-been-any-attacks-in-the-us-since-9-11/242742.md?page=2)