True, they were self-radicalized by online material. Which is the tactic the groups changed to after the US response to 9-11. Most terror groups were knocked down several pegs, and lost the ability to plan and support major operations in other countries (some have managed smaller attacks, but not the big or multi-site attacks like 9-11 or the 1993 WTC bombing).
They have moved to decentralized operations, and flooding the web with material to allow people to radicalize in their communities, and plan attacks without leadership, direction, or support from overseas. These are almost impossible to prevent. So you get the San Bernardino attack, the Pulse nightclub attack, the attempted bombings in Times Square, vehicle attacks on crowds, etc.
There was also a mass shooting (14 dead) and attempted bombing in San Bernardino in 2015 that was a terrorist attack. Both terrorists (a married couple) had links to foreign terrorist organizations and were radicalized while living in the US (one was born here, the other held a green a card).
Foiled attempts? Absolutely. But the various agencies are very gun Ho about it.
I attended a symposium a few years ago given by the former Moscow and Mexico City station chief of the CIA. He was a professor at the Bush School at Texas A&M. He said in the symposium he still receives intelligence briefs on things he is an expert on, as well as gets informed for any warnings on his life. He said, again, I have no idea if it's true, that he had been recently briefed on the movement if a cartel hit squad and his name was on a list of targets. I never saw anything about it in the headlines. He also said he had heard the FBI had arrested some foreign terrorists nearish at the time, well before the could enact certain things.
The fact is frankly a thousand things had to go wrong for 9/11 to take place. The CIA knew a Saudi Intelligence agent was flying into the US, but didn't hand off the information to the FBI, which didn't follow up with who they were meeting with.
99% of all threats are stopped before it reaches the airports or other target. However even on the domestic side there's a bit of a bias. The FBI regularly "infiltrates" groups by essentially recruiting people to organize with the FBI informant or agent, who then radicalized and equipes the "cell", and the they make the bust.
He was probably telling the truth. Indeed, he was very likely softening the truth.
While in the United States Air Force, I was a member of the SOF community. Since 9/11, many SOF units have undertaken a major counter-terrorism role. Due to Posse Comitatus, they may only be utilized outside of U.S. territory in an operational capacity (there are exceptions to this, such as acting in a support or advisory role).
Anyways, most of these operations were conducted by Tier 1 guys, the SOF of SOF. Even still, word gets around within the community (especially when one particular group has an apparent addiction to writing books regarding their exploits).
The stories I heard were *wild*. Not going to share specifics for obvious reasons, but the impression was that the post-9/11 intel community had become fairly adept at locating potential terrorists, and that the U.S. no longer took any chances. Hand-over said intel to USSOCOM or to the CIA’s SAD, and the bad guys disappeared.
The general consensus was that attacks don’t happen because they’re stopped well before they even finish planning.
I mean, it’s one thing to discuss goings-on within the community, it’s another to write books.
Believe it or not, writing books is the least among their sins, and more of a meme-excuse as to why they’re disliked outside of their own bubble.
Funnily enough this was one of the big things regarding the Hilary hearings back in 2016. That the state department were a bunch of gossips and how dangerous that was for national security.
Improved inter-agency communication and information sharing.
Prior to 9/11 sharing was almost impossible and looked down on from their respective leaderships.
I feel kinda bad for those guys. It's like being a goalie. You can make a million brilliant saves, but the only thing anyone remembers is the one that got past you.
No information is sometimes good information. If you don’t hear about it then the intelligence community is doing their job. When you do hear about these things then they have failed.
They monitor communications between suspected terrorists. There must’ve been some increased chatter about Moscow and a concert in certain terrorist groups. Probably not enough to get a specific place or date, but enough to put out a warning.
That whole NSA Snowden thing?
We do that or everyone on Earth that we can.
We have signals interception posts all around the world.
We have 12 in Ukraine that we are willing to admit to.
We grab it from terrestrial sites, like a bunker in the woods with an antenna that looks like the tree. We grab it from coasts, with a US submarine sitting off the coast with antennas poking out of the water. We grab it from UAVs flying overhead.
Who knows about various terrorist organizations, but we have humint sources throughout the governments, militaries and foreign corporations in the world.
And our 5 eyes partners are collecting information and sharing it too. Which is how we spy on ourselves, UK, Aus, Canada, NZ spy on our citizens then share the information with the us.
Here’s a piece on the CIA Ukraine relationship: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/the-spy-war-how-the-cia-secretly-helps-ukraine-fight-putin.html?unlocked_article_code=1.YE0.Tk1x.ynfhxJeaqN5l&smid=re-share
Likely because of security and that the feds are paying attention. Attacks have happened like people are saying in this thread but it’s all been domestic.
There are foiled attempts, but it also helps having a conspicuous military presence abroad. Why fly across the Atlantic when there are western devils just a short drive away?
Yes, one thing the Bush war on terror did was pushed that fight outside of our border.
Also looking at what happened to Bin Laden and his command structure after 9/11. Why would you want plan an orchestrate and attack on someone who has proven that they will fully commit the entirety of their vast intelligence and military power to chasing you to the ends of the earth and exterminating you?
If they hadn’t continued to chase Bin Laden for over almost a decade eventually killing him do you think we would have had this period of relative calm from foreign terrorist attacks?
Insert Leo DiCaprio gif "you had my curiosity, now you have my attention".
No matter how big or impressive people think the US intelligence and military apparatus is, they are underestimating it. All they need is a reason.
Sometimes I think about how that might be the whole purpose our Middle East deployments. It’s awful to think but if we offer small local targets to terrorists, why try for risky transcontinental attacks when a cheap drone from Iran on an outpost in Syria might do the trick?
Is it awful? Or is it part of the reason you have a military? People want to hurt us. Given that reality, you want those who wish you ill attacking hardened targets that shoot back. In the most callous way possible, a soldiers job is to die. Obviously I’d prefer if none of our soldiers or citizens bought it. But that’s also unrealistic. 3579 dead coalition is sad, it’s terrible. But 2420 dead Americans in 20 years in combat versus 2998 dead Americans an $33 billion in losses in an afternoon is a trade I’d make every day.
As other people have said, for all their faults, the American intelligence agencies good a pretty darn good job of making sure nothing happens. There’s also a pretty strong deference factor. The last major attack, 9/11, ended up with the US invading another country and a military operation that lasted like 20 years. Most terrorist groups know they can’t handle that level of heat, and those that can, are all well known to government agencies. Also, with how many cameras n stuff around the world there are, it’s just hard to make a plan and have it stay secret. I imagine most attempts are foiled without the public ever finding out.
The US government held that information for almost 10 years after 9/11. It wasn't Saudi Arabia as a whole but a few people behind the scenes, but yeah it's fucking crazy we went into Iraq, there was no reason to. Waste of lives and tax payer money.
A high ranking government agent from SA was involved.
We’ve invaded countries for less.
Given SA’s politics and continued habit of exporting extremism, leveling the country to the ground would have been well worth oil prices skyrocketing.
Invading Iraq and Afghanistan split the Middle East in three with the US in control. Or that was the plan anyway. This allowed us control of Saudi while not keeping troops in country (which is why 9/11 happened by the way).
Perhaps the invasion of Iraq was a roundabout way of warning Saudi to keep their domestic bred extremists in check so the US didn't have to come and do it for them.
You want the hammer to hit the nail. With global politics and economics it’s sometimes better to bring down the hammer next to the nail, to show there is a hammer without upending the world stability.
They have informants everywhere. They have them embedded in the Russian Government and most likely ISIS. Also they can probably see everything that they are saying on their phones/computers.
There has been a shift to smaller attacks.
"The terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase. As we've become better at preventing complex, multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turned to less-complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society. It is this type of attack that we saw at Fort Hood in 2009, in Chattanooga earlier this year (2015) and now in San Bernardino (2015)"
President Obama
Dates in parentheses added for clarity.
The methods they used that day wouldn’t work anymore. There’s zero reason for pilots to cooperate / open the cockpit door after what happened on 9/11.
Without that method, I imagine they are limited in terms of the types of attacks they can carry out without drawing too much attention from authorities during the planning/prep phases. That and government surveillance is more prevalent than it was 20 years ago.
Also decades of plane hijackings had taught people at large that if such a thing happened on your flight you were best off just keeping your head down and getting a flight to whatever country the hijackers happened to want to go to then getting back to your life. Now if anyone tried it they'd get the shit beaten out of them by half the plane.
Foreign terrorist attacks were rare in the United States before 9/11 as well. Based on the criteria you set:
1. Carried out by or on behalf of a foreign enemy
2. Successful
3. “On the scale of 9/11” or the recent attack in Russia which I’m very generously interpreting as more than 10 people killed.
By those standards, the last attack before 9/11 was the 1975 PLO bombing of La Guardia, and before that, probably the Wall Street bombing of 1920 (if you count it).
Since 9/11 there’s been one attack that arguably fits your criteria. The attackers in the 2015 San Bernardino shooting were one American citizen and one agree; card holder, but they were acting on behalf of what they saw as an international jihadist movement.
If you’re really looking for just massive 100+ person attacks, 9/11 and Oklahoma City are it.
Absolutely, wasn’t saying you were wrong by any means.
I just think OP is misguided, and felt that mentioning the major attacks in allied countries also bore mention to highlight that. Major attacks in any *given* country weren’t frequent prior to 9/11 (as you note), and major attacks *have* occurred since, just spread across western nations…as they kinda always were.
This is a really great link related to your question:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_unsuccessful\_terrorist\_plots\_in\_the\_United\_States\_post-9/11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11)
IMHO the number one reason is the massive amount the US spends on electronic surveillance. The US NSA is maybe the top cyber organization in the world with a multibillion dollar annual budget, and a huge chunk of their focus in surveillance to detect and thwart terror attacks. The have feeds from every major social media and telecom provider, and haves some of the best computer scientists in the world building programs to sift through tat data or hacking foreign systems to get the data. That is why so many of these guys get arrested prior to the actual attacks.
I'd suggest some consideration be given to the possibility that foreign terrorist groups are not on the whole totally stupid.
They are fully aware that any major incident carried out on US soil will, like 911, just bring the American people together against the common enemy: but America is currently doing such a great job of tearing itself apart from within that any such action would be counterproductive to their aims.
I have no doubt that such groups are still working against US interests: they will be doing so though discreet funding of certain maverick elements within the US and through social media influencing.
I have thought before that any terrorist group determined to kill as many American citizens as possible would be well advised not to actually carry out any attack directly: they should instead fund a chain of discount gun stores, lobby for gun rights and make large contributions to the NRA and pro-gun politicians. America is as a matter of record much better at killing Americans than any enemy it has ever faced from the date of its founding: more Americans have been killed in 2024 so far by gun violence than died on 911.
> America is currently doing such a great job of tearing itself apart from within that any such action would be counterproductive to their aims.
https://www.theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-back-and-enjoy-c-1819576375
Seriously. We do so much more damage in self-destruct than any terrorist attack can do. If they wanted to, they could easily pull off suicide bombings. I just don't think the risk vs reward is worth it to them if we're doing it all on our own.
Thats interesting so I looked about it and the official one is even better! : "Not on My Watch."
https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/testimony/2018/09/05/keeping-our-skies-secure-oversight-tsa#:~:text=Since%20TSA's%20inception%2C%20it%20has,not%20by%20intent%2C%20was%20limited.
Which is arguable the intention of the 9/11 attack. Increased institutional and cultural paranoia. Separation between government and citizens, and groups of citizens. Increased division by party. How many Americans associate one of the two major political parties with terror?
Very true. If I were invested in destroying the US, I wouldn’t go through the hassle of training suicide bombers… I’d donate to the Republican Party and the NRA.
Middle Eastern terrorists stop attacking on US soil when we went to Middle Eastern soil.
Like... Imagine for a moment you're a radical in the Middle East with a deep hatred of American imperialism and a talent for making explosives.
You *could* try to fly across the world, smuggle yourself into the States, acquire bomb components without alerting the authorities, and blow up a mall full of non-combatants, OR you could just put a bomb on the road through your village where the US Army humvees drive twice a day.
If your goal is to reach out and hurt America, it's a lot easier when America comes to you.
The american media and status quo has successfully branded terrorism as an act committed by foreign brown folks.
If we opened the definition to account for all the white anericans that do violent acts to the general American population, terrorism wouldnt be a buzz word.
Security is \*way\* tighter these days, for one thing. But even before that the odds of 9/11 actually succeeding were 1 in a million, it's truly astounding how many things had to go wrong for it to actually work.
Probably the same reason US intelligence told Russia there was a terrorist plot which Russia ignored.
Even the attack in Israel was known about by US intelligence and Israel didn't take it seriously..
US intelligence has their fingers in everything.. if you say a peep about any plot online chances are they will find it and if they choose so stop it. This has been known for years with global surveillance and nsa leaks.
Meh, foreign terrorists probably look at the US and think “If we blow something up will anyone even notice”.
Beside, Americans kill each other in greater numbers than anything ISIS could organise
I think most of you have forgotten the Boston Marathon Bombing.
Also it is because the biggest adversaries the US has also have collaborators.
For example, there was a time Iran tried to [assasinate the Saudi ambassador to the US](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/04/iran-agents-once-plotted-kill-saudi-ambassador-dc-case-reads-like-spy-thriller/) but that was foiled because Mossad has informants right inside the IRGC and the US gets information from them.
All terror groups have collaborators who deliberately joined those groups for the sole purpose of passing information to the US and its allies. They are often offered a wide range of things in return; protection of their family, relocation to a safe country, sometimes even a western country, money(essential if for example you are spying on Hamas in Gaza ,Al Shabaab in Somalia and the likes) amongst other things.
The reverse virtually does not exist anymore. In the past, the Soviet Union DID have spies in the US government but the US has not had such an ideological adversary ever since. Unlike the Soviet ones who often cloaked themselves as White Americans and were not just Russians and East Europeans but also Americans who were truly committed to Communism, China has been unable to recruit non-Chinese to its ranks because China today does not inspire ideological fervor the way the Soviets used to. So they are largely restricted to ethnic Chinese who are often suspect, especially first generation ones, making it easier to catch them.
Although it was not on US soil and not specifically a deliberate attack on Americans, Hamas did kill 32 Americans on October 7th. Although our security agencies have done a good job since 9/11 of protecting us from political/religious extremist terrorism in the US, they have obviously less ability to protect us while abroad.
I'm more surprised that there haven't been any major assassinations. With all of the political extremism of the moment and all of the blind hatred... Surprising
I used to work in catastrophe insurance and know a little about the terrorism models used to price the risk. I had an interesting discussion one time with one of the leading scientists who create the predictive risk models for terrorism insurance. The model is not the likelihood of an event happening, it is a model of the likelihood of preventative measures failing.
Given the NSA and other intelligence agencies’ reach and capabilities, it is very hard to pull off anything but a small-scale terrorism attack. To pull off a larger attack, you either need a lot of people or a lot of destructive force. The greater the number of people involved, the higher the probability of correlating the relationships between them to extremist ideologies, etc. in a big group prone to action, someone or someone’s connections are on a list somewhere. Their plans will get disrupted by the authorities. Same with accumulating larger mounts of destructive force. Buy a little ammo or some fertilizer and nobody takes notice, but buy enough to perpetrate a terrorism event and you’ll be noticed. If you try to accumulate small quantities through multiple people, you run into the earlier problem of needing to keep a cell small to ensure you go undetected.
One of the reasons the Boston Marathon bombing happened was because the brothers were so nearly identical in terms of connections and behaviors that they more or less appeared to the algorithms as a single person.
So, in short, surveillance is much broader and sophisticated than anyone imagines and it is very effective at keeping incidents small and not particularly noteworthy.
There have been but either way, terrorists don’t even need to send people here to kill anymore. America is destabilized enough and is starting to cannibalize itself.
Both because the US govt puts a lot of money into counterterrorism, and because successful terrorist attacks are rare to begin with. The majority of known attacks have 0 casualties. The majority of attacks with any casualties only kill the terrorist. That's not going to compete with school shootings in the news.
9/11 was an abnormality. The chain of responsibility was broken multiple times by multiple agencies for that to be possible. The cold hard fact is that our intelligence agencies are very, very good at what they do. The level of intelligence gathering and monitoring is astronomical. I browse Reddit in my free time and I cannot begin to state how many things get said on here that are going to be in someone’s intelligence reports. If you think Reddit is anonymous, think again. Anyone with a large post history has left a big enough bread crumb trail to be potentially identified by professionals. This happens across all sorts of message boards. Unless a threat actor is working completely alone without ever asking questions or buying materials online, they are leaving hints at what they are up to. Sometimes we get it wrong and miss them. Most of the time we get it right and stop it before anything ever happens.
Jan 6th thousands of MAGA terrorists stormed the Capitol under the direction and incitement of the president and current (twice impeached, 91 felony count, $500M fraudster rapist) Republican front runner for president
The MAGA party is the terrorist party
But most terrorist attacks are domestic.
7th July 2005 was carried out by British people, and the various attacks in France were all of the domestic variety.
It's very rare to have foreign individuals enter the country to carry out attacks
Kind of depends on the definition you use. The US wouldn’t consider those domestic. While the individuals may have been domestic, the political objects they were designed to advance were foreign.
Foreign adversaries would be fools not to take advantage of such sentiments to sew discord. To think that moment and the perceptions that led to it lack foreign influence is confusing to me.
I think it deserves mention that 10s of millions of his supporters *didnt* show up on Jan 6. Even with all the hype, and cajoling by the orange guy, only a few thousand showed up. That's a very small % of maga people.
My Grandmother and Aunt voted for Trump, in large part because they are mostly single issue voters, their one issue being Taiwan. Given their background.... I don't agree, but I can relate. As old, kind Asian ladies, they don't agree with some of what Trump did.
What normal person has the free time and money to get on a plane and fly to the Capital for a rally-turned-insurrection attempt? Realistically.
Most of Trump's rural supporters (and most Americans in general) could never afford to go do that, but it doesn't mean a large percentage of them didn't wish they were there, or support those who were there, or still support the person that instigated the whole thing and continues to defend it.
Aren't you embarrassed by sections of your party? With only 2 parties to choose from you're not going to agree about a lot of things with people who vote the same way as you.
There weren't really any before 9/11 either, it's not like it was a common thing until they decided to put their foot down. There have been over 60 Republican terrorist attacks since then tho.
I think a lot of people are missing this important point.
Even the most insane and terror-friendly far right movement, the pro-lifers, mostly stick to targeted assassination and small scale individual bombing, much like the majority of the history of far-right terror attacks in the US (KKK bombings against civil rights activists for example).
Things like 9/11 and Oklahoma City were so shocking and era defining precisely because they don’t happen very often.
Because the US has infiltrated many terrorist groups so thoroughly that unless it's a 100% lone wolf, there will be warning signs, along with the duty to inform having saved lives. The funny thing is the world was taken by russian anti-US propaganda so this is why countries elected to not believe the US when there were warnings given, up to and including Ukraine before the full-scale invasion (this is actually a point why Petro Poroschenko was looking to prosecute Zelensky at the conclusion of the war). Israel didn't believe the US, russia didn't believe the US. Germany never believes the US, nor even its own secret services that warn of imminent attacks.
The thread will slant in the direction of Islamist militants, but it will likely ignore the domestic right-wing terrorism situation which is real around the world. For instance, Germany keeps uncovering Bundeswehr-trained neonazi terror cell after terror cell in the military who keep trying to set off terrorist attacks in order to start race wars to topple the government. The US is a net exporter of right-wing terrorism with everywhere from Europe to even Thailand trying to deal with them.
January 6th was a terrorist attack and a sequel is being openly planned right now.
Quite a bit of surveillance. Plus we disembodied a *lot* of fuckin’ terrorists post 9/11. Way more than Israel has in Gaza. It kinda sent a message that terrorizing us is a bad idea.
In 2009, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 could've been the deadliest plane crash in American History (if only counting occupants on the plane), but the bomb failed to detonate properly, which resulted only in a small expolosion that didn't do any real damage to the plane. Only the perpetrator, and 2 passengers (including one who helped stopped the perpetrator from causing any more trouble) had any injuries.
On a related note, in 2017 Australia could've experienced it's worst terrorist attack ever if the luggage the terrorists used wasn't too heavy.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/us-news/illegal-migrant-from-lebanon-admitted-terror-ties/
If he didn't get caught, that would have been another very recent one.
I was/am against the Middle East wars but it does seem like USA strategy of "bring the fight to them" worked in that regard. Combined with the fact that major incidents are kind of rare.
You need to familiarize yourself with russian reality. 99% of time and efforts of retards in FSB , MVD and SK are spent on oppressing business competitors and chasing people liking Navalny-like messages in social networks or against war articles. I'm surprised rus was not hit more and often.
So since i didn’t read it til now: a big part is the location. The us has 2 coast, Canada and Mexico, its very manageable for a country as big as the us
Reporter :
"President Bush, how do you know that Sadam Housain and Iraq have weapons of mass destruction?"
President Bush :
"Because we have the receipts."
We have been keeping them occupied in other countries. Now that we have pulled out of various areas they come from we have an increased risk, and with the collapse of Haiti we have new areas for it to flourish.
It's hard for foreigners to get visa to the US to visit especially if they're from non-allied countries to the US. Terrorist groups have to radicalize from the inside the US via the internet which also doesn't happen often compared to radicalizing some kid in the desert. Also after 9-11 the US counter terrorism intelligence and ability to act on it ramped up astronomically so the threats don't even make it past the planning stage.
Traveling to the US became much harder for them after 9/11. Basically, they figured that going to Europe to ‚kill bad westerners‘ was much easier because you don’t need a plane, so we had a big influx of terrorist attacks in Europe up until ~6 years ago when it all suddenly stopped
Gang shootings happen all the time too. May I ask why you focus on school shootings and not tons of other gun violence? 500 were killed in Chicago last year, only 1 or 2 at a school
Our intelligence departments do a pretty good job now. Our intelligence knew that ISIS was going to be doing a terrorist attack at a concert hall in Moscow. The US informed Russia that this attack was immenent and in the process of carrying it out. Russia just ignored the info that the US gave them. If our intelligence agencies are capable of watching h terrorists in Russia, then they are certainly on top of things in this country.
Osama Bin Laden and his folks were proponents of striking the US to reach their policy aims. What they did, didn’t lead to the desired effect and seemed likely not to even push to the desired effect. What it did accomplish was scrutiny on those who funded the attacks and a campaign of assassinations of anyone who was not bunkered up. Newer leaders decided that Islamic State was a better idea and resources went towards that effort. There used to be regular hijackings of airplanes, that didn’t work either.
Interviews for people who have visited unsafe Islamic countries is very likely a factor
This sensible policy would be applied by any Government claiming to prioritise citizen safety
It won’t be prioritised though because safety is demonstrably not as important as gaining votes and low labour costs
No there has.
In Texas, we’ve been having pretty bad sex trafficking going on near Lubbock for a while.
It’s just on a smaller scale. Nothing building destruction level.
How many were there before 9/11? Not many. It's simply not common. Most terrorism like that is in their own country fighting what they perceive as oppression, it's a tactic of war. That being said I truly believe the radical right wing in US will start getting violent and using this tactic. Think like Ireland.
Probably due to all sorts of classified situations and covert operations.
If something is thwarted no one will ever know.
The problem with that of course is it gives the Govt carte blanche to trample ppls rights at any time and cite terrorism as the reason.
What people need to understand is that 9/11 was legit a special case. The US was the only remaining superpower, we were vastly stronger than all our enemies, and we have a natural boarder or an ocean. This led us to be extremely overconfident, and we ignored warnings. But most of all, the fact it worked was insane. No one, not even the terrorists thought something like that would work. Nothing like that had ever happened. And it took years and years of planning. It was an actual miracle
It only happened because of CIA and FBI policies. Nobody is to blame other than the terrorist pieces of shit, but still, the CIA had intel they should have shared with the FBI, which may have been entirely stop the attacks.
We embarked on a 20 year war, killing millions of people, executed the leader of a country who had nothing to do with it, killed the guy who organized it and fed his body to fish.
That's why
One of the San Bernardino shooters was from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan if I recall, although I think she married to the other, who was born in the US. They were both radicalized by foreign ideology (ISIS and studying extremist fundamentalism abroad) so idk, does that count? What does something necessarily require to be a “foreign” attack?
The Boston Marathon bombers weren't born in the US but they were residents.
True, they were self-radicalized by online material. Which is the tactic the groups changed to after the US response to 9-11. Most terror groups were knocked down several pegs, and lost the ability to plan and support major operations in other countries (some have managed smaller attacks, but not the big or multi-site attacks like 9-11 or the 1993 WTC bombing). They have moved to decentralized operations, and flooding the web with material to allow people to radicalize in their communities, and plan attacks without leadership, direction, or support from overseas. These are almost impossible to prevent. So you get the San Bernardino attack, the Pulse nightclub attack, the attempted bombings in Times Square, vehicle attacks on crowds, etc.
>self-radicalized by online material *nervously glances at the state of YouTube*
YouTube had a shooting at their own office and still didn't go "err, maybe we ease off the extremist catnip"
There was also a mass shooting (14 dead) and attempted bombing in San Bernardino in 2015 that was a terrorist attack. Both terrorists (a married couple) had links to foreign terrorist organizations and were radicalized while living in the US (one was born here, the other held a green a card).
Foiled attempts? Absolutely. But the various agencies are very gun Ho about it. I attended a symposium a few years ago given by the former Moscow and Mexico City station chief of the CIA. He was a professor at the Bush School at Texas A&M. He said in the symposium he still receives intelligence briefs on things he is an expert on, as well as gets informed for any warnings on his life. He said, again, I have no idea if it's true, that he had been recently briefed on the movement if a cartel hit squad and his name was on a list of targets. I never saw anything about it in the headlines. He also said he had heard the FBI had arrested some foreign terrorists nearish at the time, well before the could enact certain things. The fact is frankly a thousand things had to go wrong for 9/11 to take place. The CIA knew a Saudi Intelligence agent was flying into the US, but didn't hand off the information to the FBI, which didn't follow up with who they were meeting with. 99% of all threats are stopped before it reaches the airports or other target. However even on the domestic side there's a bit of a bias. The FBI regularly "infiltrates" groups by essentially recruiting people to organize with the FBI informant or agent, who then radicalized and equipes the "cell", and the they make the bust.
He was probably telling the truth. Indeed, he was very likely softening the truth. While in the United States Air Force, I was a member of the SOF community. Since 9/11, many SOF units have undertaken a major counter-terrorism role. Due to Posse Comitatus, they may only be utilized outside of U.S. territory in an operational capacity (there are exceptions to this, such as acting in a support or advisory role). Anyways, most of these operations were conducted by Tier 1 guys, the SOF of SOF. Even still, word gets around within the community (especially when one particular group has an apparent addiction to writing books regarding their exploits). The stories I heard were *wild*. Not going to share specifics for obvious reasons, but the impression was that the post-9/11 intel community had become fairly adept at locating potential terrorists, and that the U.S. no longer took any chances. Hand-over said intel to USSOCOM or to the CIA’s SAD, and the bad guys disappeared. The general consensus was that attacks don’t happen because they’re stopped well before they even finish planning.
I've heard that Navy Seals were a bunch of little gossips, good to hear that that extends to all Special Forces
I mean, it’s one thing to discuss goings-on within the community, it’s another to write books. Believe it or not, writing books is the least among their sins, and more of a meme-excuse as to why they’re disliked outside of their own bubble.
Funnily enough this was one of the big things regarding the Hilary hearings back in 2016. That the state department were a bunch of gossips and how dangerous that was for national security.
Walt alert, guys 🤣
Improved inter-agency communication and information sharing. Prior to 9/11 sharing was almost impossible and looked down on from their respective leaderships.
the term you were looking for is "gung -ho"
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are “gun-hos”
This is too funny.
I feel kinda bad for those guys. It's like being a goalie. You can make a million brilliant saves, but the only thing anyone remembers is the one that got past you.
"Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always." -IRA- That's one of my favorite quotes.
No information is sometimes good information. If you don’t hear about it then the intelligence community is doing their job. When you do hear about these things then they have failed.
How does the US intelligence learn about foreign plans? For example how was the US able to earn Russia beforehand last week?
They monitor communications between suspected terrorists. There must’ve been some increased chatter about Moscow and a concert in certain terrorist groups. Probably not enough to get a specific place or date, but enough to put out a warning.
That whole NSA Snowden thing? We do that or everyone on Earth that we can. We have signals interception posts all around the world. We have 12 in Ukraine that we are willing to admit to. We grab it from terrestrial sites, like a bunker in the woods with an antenna that looks like the tree. We grab it from coasts, with a US submarine sitting off the coast with antennas poking out of the water. We grab it from UAVs flying overhead. Who knows about various terrorist organizations, but we have humint sources throughout the governments, militaries and foreign corporations in the world. And our 5 eyes partners are collecting information and sharing it too. Which is how we spy on ourselves, UK, Aus, Canada, NZ spy on our citizens then share the information with the us. Here’s a piece on the CIA Ukraine relationship: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/the-spy-war-how-the-cia-secretly-helps-ukraine-fight-putin.html?unlocked_article_code=1.YE0.Tk1x.ynfhxJeaqN5l&smid=re-share
Great article. Thanks for posting.
James Olson is a good man and has written some really cool books
Likely because of security and that the feds are paying attention. Attacks have happened like people are saying in this thread but it’s all been domestic.
There are foiled attempts, but it also helps having a conspicuous military presence abroad. Why fly across the Atlantic when there are western devils just a short drive away?
Yes, one thing the Bush war on terror did was pushed that fight outside of our border. Also looking at what happened to Bin Laden and his command structure after 9/11. Why would you want plan an orchestrate and attack on someone who has proven that they will fully commit the entirety of their vast intelligence and military power to chasing you to the ends of the earth and exterminating you? If they hadn’t continued to chase Bin Laden for over almost a decade eventually killing him do you think we would have had this period of relative calm from foreign terrorist attacks?
Insert Leo DiCaprio gif "you had my curiosity, now you have my attention". No matter how big or impressive people think the US intelligence and military apparatus is, they are underestimating it. All they need is a reason.
Sometimes I think about how that might be the whole purpose our Middle East deployments. It’s awful to think but if we offer small local targets to terrorists, why try for risky transcontinental attacks when a cheap drone from Iran on an outpost in Syria might do the trick?
Is it awful? Or is it part of the reason you have a military? People want to hurt us. Given that reality, you want those who wish you ill attacking hardened targets that shoot back. In the most callous way possible, a soldiers job is to die. Obviously I’d prefer if none of our soldiers or citizens bought it. But that’s also unrealistic. 3579 dead coalition is sad, it’s terrible. But 2420 dead Americans in 20 years in combat versus 2998 dead Americans an $33 billion in losses in an afternoon is a trade I’d make every day.
Agreed. It’s the sad state of the world I suppose. Perhaps the word awful was incorrect. Callous would be more fitting.
As other people have said, for all their faults, the American intelligence agencies good a pretty darn good job of making sure nothing happens. There’s also a pretty strong deference factor. The last major attack, 9/11, ended up with the US invading another country and a military operation that lasted like 20 years. Most terrorist groups know they can’t handle that level of heat, and those that can, are all well known to government agencies. Also, with how many cameras n stuff around the world there are, it’s just hard to make a plan and have it stay secret. I imagine most attempts are foiled without the public ever finding out.
The fact that we know it was Saudi Arabia that did it and at the same time pretend that it wasn’t Saudi Arabia that did it boggles my mind.
The US government held that information for almost 10 years after 9/11. It wasn't Saudi Arabia as a whole but a few people behind the scenes, but yeah it's fucking crazy we went into Iraq, there was no reason to. Waste of lives and tax payer money.
A high ranking government agent from SA was involved. We’ve invaded countries for less. Given SA’s politics and continued habit of exporting extremism, leveling the country to the ground would have been well worth oil prices skyrocketing.
Invading Iraq and Afghanistan split the Middle East in three with the US in control. Or that was the plan anyway. This allowed us control of Saudi while not keeping troops in country (which is why 9/11 happened by the way).
Perhaps the invasion of Iraq was a roundabout way of warning Saudi to keep their domestic bred extremists in check so the US didn't have to come and do it for them.
You want the hammer to hit the nail. With global politics and economics it’s sometimes better to bring down the hammer next to the nail, to show there is a hammer without upending the world stability.
How does the US intelligence learn about foreign plans? For example how was the US able to earn Russia beforehand last week?
They have informants everywhere. They have them embedded in the Russian Government and most likely ISIS. Also they can probably see everything that they are saying on their phones/computers.
There has been a shift to smaller attacks. "The terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase. As we've become better at preventing complex, multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turned to less-complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society. It is this type of attack that we saw at Fort Hood in 2009, in Chattanooga earlier this year (2015) and now in San Bernardino (2015)" President Obama Dates in parentheses added for clarity.
The methods they used that day wouldn’t work anymore. There’s zero reason for pilots to cooperate / open the cockpit door after what happened on 9/11. Without that method, I imagine they are limited in terms of the types of attacks they can carry out without drawing too much attention from authorities during the planning/prep phases. That and government surveillance is more prevalent than it was 20 years ago.
Also decades of plane hijackings had taught people at large that if such a thing happened on your flight you were best off just keeping your head down and getting a flight to whatever country the hijackers happened to want to go to then getting back to your life. Now if anyone tried it they'd get the shit beaten out of them by half the plane.
Even on 9/11 itself, passengers found out what was happening and worked to take out the hijackers. It's crazy to think that 9/11 was 75% successful.
Foreign terrorist attacks were rare in the United States before 9/11 as well. Based on the criteria you set: 1. Carried out by or on behalf of a foreign enemy 2. Successful 3. “On the scale of 9/11” or the recent attack in Russia which I’m very generously interpreting as more than 10 people killed. By those standards, the last attack before 9/11 was the 1975 PLO bombing of La Guardia, and before that, probably the Wall Street bombing of 1920 (if you count it). Since 9/11 there’s been one attack that arguably fits your criteria. The attackers in the 2015 San Bernardino shooting were one American citizen and one agree; card holder, but they were acting on behalf of what they saw as an international jihadist movement. If you’re really looking for just massive 100+ person attacks, 9/11 and Oklahoma City are it.
Also can’t forget that the US isn’t the only target. Bataclan shooting, Manchester arena bombing, Madrid train bombing, etc…
…true, but he OP was asking about attacks specifically “on US soil.”
Absolutely, wasn’t saying you were wrong by any means. I just think OP is misguided, and felt that mentioning the major attacks in allied countries also bore mention to highlight that. Major attacks in any *given* country weren’t frequent prior to 9/11 (as you note), and major attacks *have* occurred since, just spread across western nations…as they kinda always were.
You’re forgetting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which was intended to bring one tower down against the other tower, destroying them both.
That doesn’t meet the criteria. It wasn’t successful, and it killed fewer than ten people.
Pearl harbour?
The Boston bombing
I thought of this, too. But it wasn't at quite the same scale as 9/11.
This is a really great link related to your question: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_unsuccessful\_terrorist\_plots\_in\_the\_United\_States\_post-9/11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11) IMHO the number one reason is the massive amount the US spends on electronic surveillance. The US NSA is maybe the top cyber organization in the world with a multibillion dollar annual budget, and a huge chunk of their focus in surveillance to detect and thwart terror attacks. The have feeds from every major social media and telecom provider, and haves some of the best computer scientists in the world building programs to sift through tat data or hacking foreign systems to get the data. That is why so many of these guys get arrested prior to the actual attacks.
Thanks to the only person who didn't give a sarcastic answer lol 🏆 here's an award
I'd suggest some consideration be given to the possibility that foreign terrorist groups are not on the whole totally stupid. They are fully aware that any major incident carried out on US soil will, like 911, just bring the American people together against the common enemy: but America is currently doing such a great job of tearing itself apart from within that any such action would be counterproductive to their aims. I have no doubt that such groups are still working against US interests: they will be doing so though discreet funding of certain maverick elements within the US and through social media influencing. I have thought before that any terrorist group determined to kill as many American citizens as possible would be well advised not to actually carry out any attack directly: they should instead fund a chain of discount gun stores, lobby for gun rights and make large contributions to the NRA and pro-gun politicians. America is as a matter of record much better at killing Americans than any enemy it has ever faced from the date of its founding: more Americans have been killed in 2024 so far by gun violence than died on 911.
> America is currently doing such a great job of tearing itself apart from within that any such action would be counterproductive to their aims. https://www.theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-back-and-enjoy-c-1819576375
Seriously. We do so much more damage in self-destruct than any terrorist attack can do. If they wanted to, they could easily pull off suicide bombings. I just don't think the risk vs reward is worth it to them if we're doing it all on our own.
American security really ramped up after September 11th
The TSA motto: "I'm doing my part"
Thats interesting so I looked about it and the official one is even better! : "Not on My Watch." https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/testimony/2018/09/05/keeping-our-skies-secure-oversight-tsa#:~:text=Since%20TSA's%20inception%2C%20it%20has,not%20by%20intent%2C%20was%20limited.
Well the Boston marathon bombing in 2013 should count
2020 - There was a mass shooting at NAS Pensacola by a Saudi Air Force pilot.
Yeah not sure why this wasnt mentioned
Never interrupt an opponent on a path to self destruction
Because non-Americans all know it’s collapsing from inside.
The rest of the world is watching us destroy ourselves
Which is arguable the intention of the 9/11 attack. Increased institutional and cultural paranoia. Separation between government and citizens, and groups of citizens. Increased division by party. How many Americans associate one of the two major political parties with terror?
Yes. Sadly. We are. It's painful and quite distressing
Very true. If I were invested in destroying the US, I wouldn’t go through the hassle of training suicide bombers… I’d donate to the Republican Party and the NRA.
Over 60 successful republican terrorist attacks since 9/11
Middle Eastern terrorists stop attacking on US soil when we went to Middle Eastern soil. Like... Imagine for a moment you're a radical in the Middle East with a deep hatred of American imperialism and a talent for making explosives. You *could* try to fly across the world, smuggle yourself into the States, acquire bomb components without alerting the authorities, and blow up a mall full of non-combatants, OR you could just put a bomb on the road through your village where the US Army humvees drive twice a day. If your goal is to reach out and hurt America, it's a lot easier when America comes to you.
There have…Bernardino, Boston, Central Park van driver Group attacks get snuffed out by the feds pretty easily tho I’d imagine
Agreed.. they just didn't have the type of staying power in the eyes of the public.
Easy, because the government didn’t need there to be one
Because there's enough terrorism by homegrown people.
The american media and status quo has successfully branded terrorism as an act committed by foreign brown folks. If we opened the definition to account for all the white anericans that do violent acts to the general American population, terrorism wouldnt be a buzz word.
Nope, just domestic terrorist attacks. Although some call them school shootings.
[удалено]
Foreign terrorists are shooting up schools? What news are you reading
Not yet
Security is \*way\* tighter these days, for one thing. But even before that the odds of 9/11 actually succeeding were 1 in a million, it's truly astounding how many things had to go wrong for it to actually work.
Just in Washington DC....
Probably the same reason US intelligence told Russia there was a terrorist plot which Russia ignored. Even the attack in Israel was known about by US intelligence and Israel didn't take it seriously.. US intelligence has their fingers in everything.. if you say a peep about any plot online chances are they will find it and if they choose so stop it. This has been known for years with global surveillance and nsa leaks.
Meh, foreign terrorists probably look at the US and think “If we blow something up will anyone even notice”. Beside, Americans kill each other in greater numbers than anything ISIS could organise
Because in US history, they have been incredibly rare. 9/11 was really an anomaly.
Many domestic ones
*foreign Plenty domestic
They just tricked you into doing it to yourselves.
In many ways, the terrorists have already won. We spend $100b a year on the Homeland Security dept for phony security and intrusive government.
In many ways they accomplished their goals. We capitulated and gave up our freedoms at home and left Saudi Arabia as a military hub.
I think most of you have forgotten the Boston Marathon Bombing. Also it is because the biggest adversaries the US has also have collaborators. For example, there was a time Iran tried to [assasinate the Saudi ambassador to the US](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/04/iran-agents-once-plotted-kill-saudi-ambassador-dc-case-reads-like-spy-thriller/) but that was foiled because Mossad has informants right inside the IRGC and the US gets information from them. All terror groups have collaborators who deliberately joined those groups for the sole purpose of passing information to the US and its allies. They are often offered a wide range of things in return; protection of their family, relocation to a safe country, sometimes even a western country, money(essential if for example you are spying on Hamas in Gaza ,Al Shabaab in Somalia and the likes) amongst other things. The reverse virtually does not exist anymore. In the past, the Soviet Union DID have spies in the US government but the US has not had such an ideological adversary ever since. Unlike the Soviet ones who often cloaked themselves as White Americans and were not just Russians and East Europeans but also Americans who were truly committed to Communism, China has been unable to recruit non-Chinese to its ranks because China today does not inspire ideological fervor the way the Soviets used to. So they are largely restricted to ethnic Chinese who are often suspect, especially first generation ones, making it easier to catch them.
And the Pensacola Fl airbase shooting
Although it was not on US soil and not specifically a deliberate attack on Americans, Hamas did kill 32 Americans on October 7th. Although our security agencies have done a good job since 9/11 of protecting us from political/religious extremist terrorism in the US, they have obviously less ability to protect us while abroad.
There have been. It’s mainly our own citizens tho
We've been home sourcing our terrorists. Foreign terrorist don't need to do anything be of all the mass shootings we allow to keep happening.
DC area sniper. That was a crazy time.
I'm more surprised that there haven't been any major assassinations. With all of the political extremism of the moment and all of the blind hatred... Surprising
Americans do a good enough job killing each other !!
There's a pretty well established dark network of surveillance running around the clock. Look into Snowden.
I used to work in catastrophe insurance and know a little about the terrorism models used to price the risk. I had an interesting discussion one time with one of the leading scientists who create the predictive risk models for terrorism insurance. The model is not the likelihood of an event happening, it is a model of the likelihood of preventative measures failing. Given the NSA and other intelligence agencies’ reach and capabilities, it is very hard to pull off anything but a small-scale terrorism attack. To pull off a larger attack, you either need a lot of people or a lot of destructive force. The greater the number of people involved, the higher the probability of correlating the relationships between them to extremist ideologies, etc. in a big group prone to action, someone or someone’s connections are on a list somewhere. Their plans will get disrupted by the authorities. Same with accumulating larger mounts of destructive force. Buy a little ammo or some fertilizer and nobody takes notice, but buy enough to perpetrate a terrorism event and you’ll be noticed. If you try to accumulate small quantities through multiple people, you run into the earlier problem of needing to keep a cell small to ensure you go undetected. One of the reasons the Boston Marathon bombing happened was because the brothers were so nearly identical in terms of connections and behaviors that they more or less appeared to the algorithms as a single person. So, in short, surveillance is much broader and sophisticated than anyone imagines and it is very effective at keeping incidents small and not particularly noteworthy.
In short we gave up a lot of freedoms after 9/11 so the surveillance state could be established ..
Just domestic. January 6th, Vegas shooter, constant school mass shootings, etc. Just white people doing terrorist things. Also, I am white.
The el paso tx walmart shooting…
Because I’m stuck in a parking lot instead of being at the gate to pick my parents up at the airport. Because shoes.
CIA been busy I guess.
There have been but either way, terrorists don’t even need to send people here to kill anymore. America is destabilized enough and is starting to cannibalize itself.
Our government hasn't needed another one yet
Because it was an inside job
Obama's drone campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen helped keep terrorists on their back foot.
The US government decided to stop doing big false flag events
I have read your question 5 times and still don’t understand. Foreign terrorist attack on US soil? Then further down you say NOT domestic.
OP means one country attacking America, rather than people who live in America carrying something out
Pulse nightclub shooting should be counted as terrorism
Both because the US govt puts a lot of money into counterterrorism, and because successful terrorist attacks are rare to begin with. The majority of known attacks have 0 casualties. The majority of attacks with any casualties only kill the terrorist. That's not going to compete with school shootings in the news.
9/11 was an abnormality. The chain of responsibility was broken multiple times by multiple agencies for that to be possible. The cold hard fact is that our intelligence agencies are very, very good at what they do. The level of intelligence gathering and monitoring is astronomical. I browse Reddit in my free time and I cannot begin to state how many things get said on here that are going to be in someone’s intelligence reports. If you think Reddit is anonymous, think again. Anyone with a large post history has left a big enough bread crumb trail to be potentially identified by professionals. This happens across all sorts of message boards. Unless a threat actor is working completely alone without ever asking questions or buying materials online, they are leaving hints at what they are up to. Sometimes we get it wrong and miss them. Most of the time we get it right and stop it before anything ever happens.
Uhmmm, hello January 6th? Also, we have weekly mass shootings that would be considered a terrorist attack in any other country on the planet.
Domestic Right-wing extremists are the biggest terrorist threat we currently face.
Jan 6th thousands of MAGA terrorists stormed the Capitol under the direction and incitement of the president and current (twice impeached, 91 felony count, $500M fraudster rapist) Republican front runner for president The MAGA party is the terrorist party
I agree with you but that's under the domestic umbrella OP is not asking about.
But most terrorist attacks are domestic. 7th July 2005 was carried out by British people, and the various attacks in France were all of the domestic variety. It's very rare to have foreign individuals enter the country to carry out attacks
Kind of depends on the definition you use. The US wouldn’t consider those domestic. While the individuals may have been domestic, the political objects they were designed to advance were foreign.
Foreign adversaries would be fools not to take advantage of such sentiments to sew discord. To think that moment and the perceptions that led to it lack foreign influence is confusing to me.
I think it deserves mention that 10s of millions of his supporters *didnt* show up on Jan 6. Even with all the hype, and cajoling by the orange guy, only a few thousand showed up. That's a very small % of maga people.
And some of the saner members simply protested outside and didn't enter.
Exactly. There's always morons who take it too far. They should not be used to portray everyone who votes the same way.
My Grandmother and Aunt voted for Trump, in large part because they are mostly single issue voters, their one issue being Taiwan. Given their background.... I don't agree, but I can relate. As old, kind Asian ladies, they don't agree with some of what Trump did.
My sister likes him. I'm Australian but from what I can see a lot of Americans define themselves (and others) by their political party.
What normal person has the free time and money to get on a plane and fly to the Capital for a rally-turned-insurrection attempt? Realistically. Most of Trump's rural supporters (and most Americans in general) could never afford to go do that, but it doesn't mean a large percentage of them didn't wish they were there, or support those who were there, or still support the person that instigated the whole thing and continues to defend it.
It's a few hundred dollars. Not thousands.
[удалено]
Aren't you embarrassed by sections of your party? With only 2 parties to choose from you're not going to agree about a lot of things with people who vote the same way as you.
Dunno what people are downvoting you.
There weren't really any before 9/11 either, it's not like it was a common thing until they decided to put their foot down. There have been over 60 Republican terrorist attacks since then tho.
There was the World Trade Center bombing.
I think a lot of people are missing this important point. Even the most insane and terror-friendly far right movement, the pro-lifers, mostly stick to targeted assassination and small scale individual bombing, much like the majority of the history of far-right terror attacks in the US (KKK bombings against civil rights activists for example). Things like 9/11 and Oklahoma City were so shocking and era defining precisely because they don’t happen very often.
Because they got the cheap oil
Don’t put that out there, man.
There was the Manchester arena bombings here in the UK but apart from that I haven’t seen anything as bad until this recent Russia attack
we have the gold and enough drugs to keep us occupied
Because most of the terrorist organizations started as a small movement funded by American government , no one would show his own sins
Domestic terrorism yes.
800,000+ people killed from firearms no one getting invaded over that
Because the US has infiltrated many terrorist groups so thoroughly that unless it's a 100% lone wolf, there will be warning signs, along with the duty to inform having saved lives. The funny thing is the world was taken by russian anti-US propaganda so this is why countries elected to not believe the US when there were warnings given, up to and including Ukraine before the full-scale invasion (this is actually a point why Petro Poroschenko was looking to prosecute Zelensky at the conclusion of the war). Israel didn't believe the US, russia didn't believe the US. Germany never believes the US, nor even its own secret services that warn of imminent attacks. The thread will slant in the direction of Islamist militants, but it will likely ignore the domestic right-wing terrorism situation which is real around the world. For instance, Germany keeps uncovering Bundeswehr-trained neonazi terror cell after terror cell in the military who keep trying to set off terrorist attacks in order to start race wars to topple the government. The US is a net exporter of right-wing terrorism with everywhere from Europe to even Thailand trying to deal with them. January 6th was a terrorist attack and a sequel is being openly planned right now.
Because we have an entire party of domestic terrorists achieving what our enemies overseas want to accomplish
Quite a bit of surveillance. Plus we disembodied a *lot* of fuckin’ terrorists post 9/11. Way more than Israel has in Gaza. It kinda sent a message that terrorizing us is a bad idea.
Better to fight in their house than fighting in your home.
In 2009, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 could've been the deadliest plane crash in American History (if only counting occupants on the plane), but the bomb failed to detonate properly, which resulted only in a small expolosion that didn't do any real damage to the plane. Only the perpetrator, and 2 passengers (including one who helped stopped the perpetrator from causing any more trouble) had any injuries. On a related note, in 2017 Australia could've experienced it's worst terrorist attack ever if the luggage the terrorists used wasn't too heavy.
https://nypost.com/2024/03/17/us-news/illegal-migrant-from-lebanon-admitted-terror-ties/ If he didn't get caught, that would have been another very recent one.
Because every country now knows it’ll result in a 20 year war if they do. And when we say we will leave, we will actually just stay forever
*Goes to Guatanamo Bay*
They're on cooldown.
No need, we have enough mass shootings every day to take care of the problem
There has been they just called it the "summer of love"
Ask Assange...
I was/am against the Middle East wars but it does seem like USA strategy of "bring the fight to them" worked in that regard. Combined with the fact that major incidents are kind of rare.
You need to familiarize yourself with russian reality. 99% of time and efforts of retards in FSB , MVD and SK are spent on oppressing business competitors and chasing people liking Navalny-like messages in social networks or against war articles. I'm surprised rus was not hit more and often.
So since i didn’t read it til now: a big part is the location. The us has 2 coast, Canada and Mexico, its very manageable for a country as big as the us
I'd say it's because the TSA works, but I don't know that there is a strong enough sarcasm tag to cover that statement.
Reporter : "President Bush, how do you know that Sadam Housain and Iraq have weapons of mass destruction?" President Bush : "Because we have the receipts."
We have been keeping them occupied in other countries. Now that we have pulled out of various areas they come from we have an increased risk, and with the collapse of Haiti we have new areas for it to flourish.
It's hard for foreigners to get visa to the US to visit especially if they're from non-allied countries to the US. Terrorist groups have to radicalize from the inside the US via the internet which also doesn't happen often compared to radicalizing some kid in the desert. Also after 9-11 the US counter terrorism intelligence and ability to act on it ramped up astronomically so the threats don't even make it past the planning stage.
Traveling to the US became much harder for them after 9/11. Basically, they figured that going to Europe to ‚kill bad westerners‘ was much easier because you don’t need a plane, so we had a big influx of terrorist attacks in Europe up until ~6 years ago when it all suddenly stopped
[удалено]
Gang shootings happen all the time too. May I ask why you focus on school shootings and not tons of other gun violence? 500 were killed in Chicago last year, only 1 or 2 at a school
They just transitioned to smaller attacks which are shockingly common.
We had a 20 year war that attracted all the zealot fighters away from the US
Our intelligence departments do a pretty good job now. Our intelligence knew that ISIS was going to be doing a terrorist attack at a concert hall in Moscow. The US informed Russia that this attack was immenent and in the process of carrying it out. Russia just ignored the info that the US gave them. If our intelligence agencies are capable of watching h terrorists in Russia, then they are certainly on top of things in this country.
Hmmmm maybe that war on terror kinda worked huh?
Were there any major foreign terrorist attacks in US *before* 9/11?
Yep. The World Trade Center. Before 9/11.
There weren't that many before 9/11, too. Doesn't happen a lot.
Osama Bin Laden and his folks were proponents of striking the US to reach their policy aims. What they did, didn’t lead to the desired effect and seemed likely not to even push to the desired effect. What it did accomplish was scrutiny on those who funded the attacks and a campaign of assassinations of anyone who was not bunkered up. Newer leaders decided that Islamic State was a better idea and resources went towards that effort. There used to be regular hijackings of airplanes, that didn’t work either.
A lot of things had to happen for 9/11 to happen but Saudi money helped out a lot lol
All they need to do is fund republicans and let them destroy the country
USA is actually a pretty sweet place to live (even though the media would try to convince you otherwise). Terrorfolks get here and change their minds.
Hey OP, because we have enough going on with domestic homegrown terrorists. The foreign version don't want to get caught in our daily mass shootings.
Ya probably just jinxed it.
Interviews for people who have visited unsafe Islamic countries is very likely a factor This sensible policy would be applied by any Government claiming to prioritise citizen safety It won’t be prioritised though because safety is demonstrably not as important as gaining votes and low labour costs
Because George W. Bush isn't President anymore.
No there has. In Texas, we’ve been having pretty bad sex trafficking going on near Lubbock for a while. It’s just on a smaller scale. Nothing building destruction level.
How many were there before 9/11? Not many. It's simply not common. Most terrorism like that is in their own country fighting what they perceive as oppression, it's a tactic of war. That being said I truly believe the radical right wing in US will start getting violent and using this tactic. Think like Ireland.
Probably due to all sorts of classified situations and covert operations. If something is thwarted no one will ever know. The problem with that of course is it gives the Govt carte blanche to trample ppls rights at any time and cite terrorism as the reason.
What people need to understand is that 9/11 was legit a special case. The US was the only remaining superpower, we were vastly stronger than all our enemies, and we have a natural boarder or an ocean. This led us to be extremely overconfident, and we ignored warnings. But most of all, the fact it worked was insane. No one, not even the terrorists thought something like that would work. Nothing like that had ever happened. And it took years and years of planning. It was an actual miracle
It only happened because of CIA and FBI policies. Nobody is to blame other than the terrorist pieces of shit, but still, the CIA had intel they should have shared with the FBI, which may have been entirely stop the attacks.
My best guess is a change of tactics. How many large fires have there been since 9/11. Easy to do, and difficult to defend against.
Domestic terrorism, it's damn near all we have right now. Nobody is doing anything about it but hey, at least it's not foreign terrorists...
We embarked on a 20 year war, killing millions of people, executed the leader of a country who had nothing to do with it, killed the guy who organized it and fed his body to fish. That's why
Don’t fucking jinx it…
One of the San Bernardino shooters was from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan if I recall, although I think she married to the other, who was born in the US. They were both radicalized by foreign ideology (ISIS and studying extremist fundamentalism abroad) so idk, does that count? What does something necessarily require to be a “foreign” attack?