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Williamson Murray and Ralph Peters make many excellent points in their essays
onIslamic radical terrorism. They are undoubtedly correct that only a small
numberof the Westerners who have traveled to Syria, Iraq, and other terrorist
hot spots to join Sunni extremist organizations will be able to return home and
carry out major terrorist attacks. Those who do make it through will not pose an
existential threat to Americas government or society. Murray and Peters rightly
notethat we should be much more concerned about the possibility that radical
Islamists obtain weapons of mass destruction in Muslim countries and seek to use
them against theUnitedStates.
I do think, however, that they understate the dangers of attacks on the US homeland
that fall short of the weapons of mass destructions threshold. The scarcity of
significant terrorist attacks in recent years has led Americans to assume that the days
of mass casualty attacks are past, but history teaches us to beware of the assumption
that recent trends foretell the future. As the working group members discussed
at length during the roundtable discussion on this topic, Americans are paying
insufficient attention to black swan eventsmajor events anticipated by no
onein which terrorists inflict serious harm on the United States.
The counterterrorism trends that Americans hope will continue are not as positive
as is commonly believed. Only luck has spared the United States from several mass
casualty attacks in the last few years. Had the underwear bomber of 2009 or the
Times Square bomber of 2010 possessed better detonators, then Flight 253 and
theTimes Square bombing would have joined the short list of deadliest terrorist
attacks on the US homeland.
Terrorists have caused some real harm since 9/11, both to individual Americans
and the national well-being. The Beltway sniper and the Boston Marathon bombers
paralyzed cities and killed or maimed substantial numbers of Americans. The
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increase in the Muslim percentage of the European population, stemming from high
Muslim birthrates and low birthrates among the rest of the population, is increasing
the voting power of Muslims, many of whom evidence a disturbing sympathy for
ISIS. Pressure from Muslim interest groups and self-appointed tolerance czars will
make European politicians increasingly reluctant to take actions against Islamic
extremism either at home or abroad.
American policy changes in South Asia are causing a rise in the danger posed by
the multitude of anti-American extremist groups in Pakistan. As the US presence
inAfghanistan shrinks, so does Americas ability to identify and strike terrorists
across the border in Pakistan. The drawdown of the US military presence has
necessitated removal of intelligence facilities and drone bases and weakened
US influence over the Pakistani government. The rise of ISIS has hastened the
shiftin intelligence community assets from Pakistan to Iraq and Syria, degrading
Americanintelligence on violent extremists in Pakistan and also on Pakistans
nuclear weapons, which constitute a grave danger.
Another country that poses a greater terrorist threat than most Americans realize
is Iran. Since 9/11, most US efforts to thwart terrorism against the US homeland
have focused on Sunni extremist organizations because Sunnis comprise the
overwhelming majority of the terrorists who have attacked the United States
to date. Given the international tensions surrounding Irans nuclear weapons
program, however, it is conceivable that the Iranians would at some point abandon
their policy of refraining from terrorist strikes in the United States. The Obama
administration has said it will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, and Iran remains
on course to develop nuclear weapons; chances are thus good that the United States
or Israel will one day take vigorous action to destroy the Iranian weapons, an event
that could cause the Iranians to unleash violence in the United States. With nearly
one million people of Iranian origin residing in the United States, Iran no doubt
hassleeper cells that could be used for that purpose.
The question of how to combat Islamic extremism also generated considerable
rumination during the working group session. One instrument that the West has
been particularly remiss in using is supporting the education of Muslims. Most
foreign support for education today is concentrated on primary education, to the
detriment of higher education, which is where the biggest problems lie. The large
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The publisher has made this work available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license 3.0. To view a copy
of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0.
Hoover Institution Press assumes no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party
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remain, accurate or appropriate.
Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
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MARK MOYAR
Mark Moyar is a senior fellow
at theJoint Special Operations
University. He is the author of
numerous books and articles,
including Triumph Forsaken:
The Vietnam War, 19541965
and A Question of Command:
Counterinsurgency from the
Civil War to Iraq. He holds a BA
summacumlaude from Harvard
anda PhD from Cambridge.
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