6 years after 9/11, the same threat
Nearly six years after the Sept. 11 attacks, are
we safer?
Why is this man
smiling?
Nearly six years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives expended in the name of the war on terror pose a single, insistent question: Are we safer?
There’s another question that comes to my mind - will those citizens who continue to support the government also accept responsibility for the death and destruction resulting from that support?
In a dark and strikingly candid two pages, the nation’s intelligence agencies offered an implicit answer, and it was not encouraging. In many respects, the National Intelligence Estimate suggests, the threat of terrorist violence against the United States is growing worse, fueled by the Iraq war and spreading Islamic extremism.
After years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq and targeted killings in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, the major threat to the United States has the same name and the same basic look as in 2001: Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, plotting attacks from mountain hide-outs near the Afghan-Pakistani border.
There is one bright spot in the few measly pages [.pdf] we, the people, are allowed to see.
Jihadist sentiment has so far turned out to hold little attraction for American Muslims, by contrast with those in Europe generally and the United Kingdom in particular.
Posted: Thu - July 19, 2007 at 06:34 AM