US authorities have reported at least 10, but up to 200, plots depending on your source, including various al-Qaeda plots to attack inside the US and against her allies since 9/11 . An unknown number of al-Qaeda efforts to case targets in the US or infiltrate operatives into our country have been thwarted. According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, ?Al-Qaeda maintains the ability and the intent to inflict significant casualties in the US with little warning.? If true, TRC must examine the following theories of why al-Qaeda has not successfully attacked the US since 9/11.
Suicide missions require a team.
DHS?s first Secretary Tom Ridge contended: ?You don?t need too many committed to martyrdom to wreak havoc.? But, the more people involved in a plot, the easier it is for law enforcement to detect some component of the cell and eliminate it. A suicide mission is rarely, if ever, conducted without outside assistance from handlers. Community policing and awareness programs help, as does existing interaction and relations with local police before an attack.
US Muslims want the US dream ? not Jihad.
Free speech commitments that often have religious undertones generally have a countervailing and moderating tendency and emphasize that life, too, is sacred. In other words, Arab Muslim communities may be hotbeds of dissent, but being permitted to talk and influence politics and social norms precludes taking dissent to the next level of direct action. Collective vigilance is moderating attempts at covert meetings or plenary sessions. For example, the Muslim community in Brooklyn turned in radicals intent on bombing Herald Square.
Muslims are better integrated into US society. This is not the case in European nations like Denmark , Germany , France , and the UK . This may put pressure on less integrated societies to strive for integration, lest they be targeted like the UK and Spain were or threatened like Italy and Denmark have been. Arab Americans feel loyalty to their country more so than European Muslims do; they have more at stake in keeping the peace.
The US homeland is better protected.
Entry to the US is more difficult for those who might wish to do harm. Protective measures?some sadly laughable–put into place after 9/11 are unlikely to have prevented attacks themselves. Using Israel as a case study, far more extensive security protocols may not thwart or counter terrorism perfectly. Looking at our own land border security, entry may not be as difficult as we would like to think. There are between 1-4,000 illegal entries, spanning the globe, to the US per day. However, even if we are not better protected (which is debatable), our enemies hear and read that we are and do not know fact from fiction.
The al-Qaeda-core is dead.
A clever tool was used against the RAF in the 1980s. The German government made a campaign to infiltrate the group public. It remains unknown how many operatives were dispatched or recruited, but it led to the RAF?s demise because they focused so much on vetting everyone interested in membership as a spy for the government. Membership constricted considerably because no one knew who was bona fide terrorist versus a government agent. This same theory might be difficult to apply to al-Qaeda but certainly worth the effort in setting the network on its heals. It is unlikely that Osama Bin Laden is dead. It does not really matter, as witnessed by Zarqawi?s martyrdom and the continued attacks by his organization.
Osama Bin Laden is patiently planning another blockbuster.
9/11 took two years to plan. March 11 took six months to plan. Oklahoma City took less than one year to plan. With the extreme provocation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq that resulted in a ?deafening silence? from the moderate Muslim world, one would have expected numerous targeted attacks against the US and/or its allies by now. Looking back at FBI Director Mueller?s statement about al-Qaeda?s ability and intent, three years later, nothing of substance has materialized.
The rule of diminishing returns dictate that multiple small-scale attacks will not serve al-Qaeda?s purpose like one 9/11-plus attack would, and failure to be spectacular would cause the US to be inured to al-Qaeda terrorism.
Muslim terrorists are focused on US allies in Europe and US forces in Iraq.
There is a compelling incentive for most states, including rogues like Iran , Libya , Syria , and Sudan , to cooperate in the GWOT because they too could be the site of the next attack (Saudi Arabia , Morocco , Turkey , Indonesia , Jordan ) or at least have civilian victims in the next attack. And, much of the international support for the US by the Islamic world is simply because of being victimized by jihadist terrorism.
Attacks might be insufficient to compel a US withdrawal from Iraq. But, by attacking allies, they might withdraw, leaving the US alone and more vulnerable, susceptible, or degraded to al-Qaeda later. Attacking US troops in Iraq is part of a larger war, specifically regarding infidels? presence in Saudi Arabia. The war in Iraq seems to be sucking up suicide bombers (shahids) from around the world; many from Saudi.
We are lucky.
Conclusion
The US does not have homegrown radicals like the UK and Spain does, and few malcontents have the means or the inclination to strike the US from abroad. More disconcerting than Jihadist terrorism is US homegrown terrorists: those of Timothy McVeigh , Ted Kaczynski, John Allen Mohammed/John Lee Malvo, or Eric Robert Rudolph?s ilk. These men?although women are certainly not immune?are notoriously difficult to identify and counter. So, while homeland security seems to focus a great deal on the international jihadist movement, successful and deadly attacks are equally or more likely to come from someone who looks less like Osama and more like Tim, Ted, John, or Eric .
