If you would have asked me, and if you would have asked nearly any American after 9/11, if another terrorist attack of any kind on American soil would happen within the next eight years I believe most would have said yes. I mean, if they are capable of hijacking four planes and crashing them into buildings, surely they would attack us again in the near future.
But we have not been attacked by terrorists since 9/11 on American soil. Let me first say that this is a great thing. I am a big fan of people not killing other people. But none the less, it is still surprising. How can we not have been attacked? I mean, it would be so easy. Movie after movie is made about how easy it would be to have a terrorist attack that would deeply impact America. It would be easy to attack America in much cheaper, much easier, and much more effective ways that what they did on 9/11. But it hasn’t happened. And this leaves a huge “WHY?” left to be answered.
There are multiple theories as to why. People try to answer the question. Perhaps this link addresses this issue the best. There are legitimises probably to most of those theories, and in reality, it is probably a mixture of some of them. Although I tend to believe that it is primarily because the terrorists are dumb. They just simply haven’t attacked us because they are dumb.
So if we look at the past eight years we can realize that although we all somewhat expect to have been attacked, it hasn’t happened. We’re safer than we thought…
…from terrorists.
It does seem to me that there is a greater chance for some wack-job to come and shoot up a mall, or a school, or a bunch of women exercising at LA Fitness. These things, and many, many more like them have occured countless times since 9/11. The chances of being killed in a violent attack is more likely to come at the hand of one of our own citizens than it is from a muslim terrorist.
Perhaps you’re more likely to be shot just for being a woman, or a doctor, or a student. Not for being American.
My boy, Thomas L. Friedman asked this question in 2005. He tended to believe in the Bush kept us safe theory.
I have no real answer to the question, but what I do think is that we are missing something big to help us answer this question.
Or maybe the terrorists are just dumb.
Stepping Back 