Why Have We Not Been Attacked Again? Competing and Complementary Hypotheses

[Ron Humphrey]

Drawing on Bill's last note and excluding France - which I know little about - where do we start on the "Home Front"?

In the UK, particularly drawing upon the Northern Ireland experience, counter-terrorism has focussed on pursuing the plotters, or violent extremists; other strands in the national CT strategy called Op Contest: Prepare, Prevent and Protect have had less immediate impact.

Containing violence by law enforcement and intelligence gathering - which eventually we got right in Northern Ireland - enabled political compromise via lengthy negoitations. Successful AQ / extremist attacks if kept to the minimum have been likened to being short and painful, not war.

Oddly the Prevent strand - which effectively seeks mobilisation against violent extremists - has yet to get far beyond rhetoric and funding the "usual suspects".

Incidentally a fifth 'P' is added by some; not to Provoke. I am sure the Muslim communities are the normal, primary consideration; let us not overlook the majority non-Muslim population.

A small start.

davidbfpo

I would suggest that we consider that any given subset of society has ways within which it deals with its own(per se) to directly approach Terrorism's roots with a solution in search of a problem might be a big tendency we must over come before really getting into the meat of the prevention.

In relation to the P I would posit in order to believe that one is proactively seeking to avoid provocation then one must have already decided that that provacation does indeed exist. This would in some ways seem like giving up the war before the battle is even begun.

[davidbfpo]

For some data and so history check: http://counterterrorismblog.org/ which today has a long article No Attack in the US Since 9-11? By Madeleine Gruen & Frank Hyland. Which ends with a suggestion mre analysis to come.

davidbfpo

[selil]

As a "victim" the touchstone of 9/11 is hugely important. As the aggressor 9/11 is a complete operation and the next "big" operation is being planned and 9/11 is ignored. As such in the plans of Al Queda 9/11 has little to no relevance other than a "lessons learned".

Even then 9/11 for Al Queda was only about 75 percent successful. One of the four planes did not hit it's intended target. As such the relevance is how to be more successful in the future. So far as a domestic entity Al Queda has succeeded with a truck bomb and a jet liner.

I would propose that the time delay to the next big successful attack is partially caused by looking for a new vector to to create fear and terror. That is why we haven't been attacked yet.