Daniel Benjamin argues in Politico that it’s a good thing that people are forgetting about terrorism, because the threat was exaggerated, to the extent that “inhabitants in the tiny towns and villages” of New Hampshire had “fears about imminent attack,” which he says is “a scenario of almost indescribable preposterousness.”
Is it, really? We have seen jihad attacks in Columbus, Ohio; Burlington, Washington; St. Cloud, Minnesota: Little Rock, Arkansas; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and other U.S. cities. Why is it “preposterous” that such an attack could take place in New Hampshire, or anywhere else in the U.S.?
Benjamin is confident that the jihad threat will be all over within a few decades at most. He manifests a total ignorance of the fourteen-hundred-year history of jihad, which I detail in my book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. Unfortunately, it is people like Benjamin, with all their historical ignorance and acceptance of the smear propaganda term “Islamophobia,” who are firmly ensconced today among the political and media elites — which is one key reason why, 17 years after 9/11, there is still so much complacency regarding the nature and the magnitude of the jihad threat.
I hope Benjamin doesn’t come to regret this Politico piece. But I think it is likely that he will, as the jihad advances and places his blasé attitude regarding it in the harshest possible light.
“17 Years After 9/11, People Are Finally Forgetting About Terrorism,” by Daniel Benjamin, Politico, September 11, 2018:
Consider this sign of the times: In late August, U.S. officials expressed confidence they had finally killed Ibrahim al-Asiri, the most fabled Al Qaeda bombmaker of the post-9/11 period. Asiri was reported to have created undetectable bombs and experimented with implanting them inside operatives’ bodies. He had been involved in the near-miss of the “Underwear Bomber” in 2009 and had nearly succeeded in killing former Saudi counterterrorism chief Muhammad bin Nayef. Asiri had haunted the sleep of counterterrorism officials, including me, for years.
Yet his apparent death, which might once have been a Page 1 story, got scant coverage, with no news stories appearing in the New York Times or the Washington Post. In the lede of an op–ed he penned to note this “major counterterrorism success,” former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell wrote, “Amid all the controversies and scandals from Washington dominating our news cycle. … [Asiri’s death] did not get the attention it deserved.”
Of all the unexpected developments of Donald Trump’s presidency, surely one of the more unlikely ones has been the slow but steady ebbing of the nation’s profound, at times almost boundless, fixation on the threat of terrorism….
No wonder, then, that despite the absence of any event resembling 9/11 for all those years, the sense of peril could easily be inflamed by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign—a year-and-a-half-long carnival of fearmongering and Islamophobia. Candidate Trump promised to shut the nation’s doors to Muslims and create a national registry of those in the country, disparaged Islam for being sick at heart, and vowed to wipe out terrorists everywhere and kill their families for good measure….
Though partisans on both sides of the aisle take the terrorist threat seriously, Republicans tend to rate it as substantially greater concern, typically by a margin of 20 or more percentage points. In New Hampshire, where I work, 2016 Republican presidential primary candidates such as Chris Christie and Marco Rubio spoke about their determination to allay the fears about imminent attack they heard from the inhabitants in the tiny towns and villages of the state—a scenario of almost indescribable preposterousness. All of this took place in an America where the chances of being killed by a foreign terrorist were infinitesimal….
None of this is to suggest that the terrorist threat is over and won’t come back. Although ISIS has been defeated in Iraq, many analysts believe the group still has plenty of fighters in the field who went to ground instead of trying to combat a vastly more powerful foe, and that the group will mount an offensive sometime soon. Terrorist groups thrive in conflict zones, and the continuing chaos in Yemen is a perfect setting for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to grow its forces. The challenge of dealing with foreign fighters returning from Iraq and Syria continues to occupy governments around the world. While the level of terrorist violence globally has been declining for the past couple of years, it is nonetheless at a historically high level and isn’t likely to fall off sharply anytime in the foreseeable future.
And these are just the challenges of the moment. Jihadism will remain a potent force for years, and probably decades to come, for several reasons: With a few exceptions, especially among the oil monarchies, the Middle East and such Muslim majority countries as Pakistan remain in poor, sometimes disastrous shape. Economic stagnation is endemic, with job creation a shadow of what it should be. Most people in the region lack real political voice or representative institutions. In the West, especially in Europe, integration of Muslim minority communities is uneven at best, leaving many frustrated at their limited prospects. These big structural facts aren’t going to change quickly. The United States will need to continue investing in counterterrorism for a long time to come.
At the same time, it’s worth recognizing the America is well protected by excellent border controls, capable law enforcement and remarkable intelligence and military capabilities—as the targeting of Asiri underscores. With barely more than 100 people killed in the United States by jihadist operatives since 9/11, the record is a strong one that argues for taking this moment to revise our collective thinking about the terrorist threat. That is, the time has come to absorb the notion that jihadist terrorism is a fact of the contemporary world, that it can be managed but not eradicated and that we have developed excellent though not perfect tools for that task. That understanding, it seems to me, is the precondition for avoiding the kind of overreaction that helped lead us into Iraq and created near hysteria in 2014 when ISIS appeared on the scene….