Terrorism in the USA:threat & response

[davidbfpo]

An ICSR article looking back at the BLA in the early 1970's; which ends with:

The case of the BLA does not offer any tidy counterterrorism lessons. But it does help us remember that homegrown U.S. terrorism did not begin on 9/11. Moreover, the BLA reminds us that domestic violent extremism is not confined to individuals or groups who identify themselves as Muslims. Finally, the campaign against the BLA shows that even extremely violent terrorist groups can be dismantled by relatively mundane counterterrorism tools like police investigations, aggressive prosecutions, and long prison sentences—in other words, by treating terrorists like dangerous criminals.

Link:http://icsr.info/blog/The-Black-Libe...-1970s-America

[jmm99]

As Bob Hope (our expat Brit) used to sing - Thanks for the Memory ....

We should remember context, of course ...

From the START database (its history and methodology), we have four of the USAian groups mentioned in the article:

Perpetrators: (Black Liberation Army) - SEARCH RESULTS: 37 INCIDENTS

Perpetrators: (Black Panthers) - SEARCH RESULTS: 25 INCIDENTS

Perpetrators: (Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)) - SEARCH RESULTS: 7 INCIDENTS

Perpetrators: (Weather Underground, Weathermen) - SEARCH RESULTS: 45 INCIDENTS

and, for comparison, the IRA (not including splinter IRA groups):

Perpetrators: (Irish Republican Army (IRA)) - SEARCH RESULTS: 2673 INCIDENTS

the last being quite a different kettle of fish.

Adding to the foregoing:

Country: (Northern Ireland)(not including attacks related to Northern Ireland, but occuring elsewhere) - SEARCH RESULTS: 3885 INCIDENTS

Country: (United States) - SEARCH RESULTS: 2347 INCIDENTS

Note that (in #s per year) the early 70s in the US far exceeded what has occured since.

Regards

Mike

[Presley Cannady]

We should remember context, of course ...

Context is the last refuge of the guy who says "Hey, simmer down now! Are they really shooting at us?"

From the START database...

Data entry, unlike terrorism, will never die.

[jmm99]

What are you trying to say here ?

Regards

Mike

[davidbfpo]

A lengthy FP Blog article 'Patriot Games' and better explained by the sub-title:

How the FBI spent a decade hunting white supremacists and missed Timothy McVeigh.

Yesterday being the seventeenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City mass murder.

Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...ames?page=full

The article ends with:

There are obviously fundamental differences between targeting the radical fringe Patriot movement and targeting the mainstream Muslim community. Targeting all Muslims for infiltration is akin to targeting all white Americans to gain intelligence on supremacists. And the social consequences of fomenting paranoia and mistrust of government in overwhelmingly law-abiding communities are different than within a movement that fundamentally presumes government malfeasance....

The issue of how the government uses infiltration will continue to be hotly debated. By looking at the lessons of the past, we can start to craft the right questions for the future.

[AdamG]

CLEVELAND (AP) -- Five men, at least three of them anarchists, plotted to blow up a bridge near Cleveland, but there was no danger to the public because the explosives were inoperable and were controlled by an undercover FBI employee, the agency said Tuesday in announcing the men's arrests.

The target of the plot was a bridge that carries a four-lane highway over part of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in the Brecksville area, about 15 miles south of downtown Cleveland, the FBI said.

Authorities said three of the men were arrested Monday and are self-described anarchists, not tied to international terrorism.

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