At this point, it's safe to say you have heard about the
failed bomb attack in Times Square. I heard about it Sunday morning and one statement that kept being repeated by authorities was "we dodged a bullet". Indeed. The intent behind this incident is apparent. The perpetrator concealed the vehicle's VIN and attached a different set of license plates lifted from another car. The materials used in making the bomb, albeit crude, are very lethal.
For the record, I am not an expert in counter-terrorism or criminal psychology. The only thing I really have is my educational background in national security issues and a lot of reading. Books. Blogs. Open-source websites. The issues, while on the surface seem clear cut, are amazingly complex. I agree with what the FBI has stated - "homegrown" terrorists and sympathizers will become as great a concern as al-Qaida.
But the phrase "we dodged a bullet" implies that the target of that bullet knowingly did something to avoid being hit. Or that the shooter simply missed. Either way, from what I've read so far, nobody saw this coming. So you can't really dodge something if you can't see it coming. Ultimately, this was an operational error on whoever made the bomb. I don't believe this bomb attack was intended to be a warning.
In plain terms, we got lucky. Granted, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies stop the majority of threats against the US. The unfortunate thing is that terrorists only have to be successful once. And with the internet in play, anyone can search for bomb-making instructions. The tools for terrorism are only a mouse click away. During my junior year of college, I took a course on terrorism. The final project was to plan a fake attack using everything we had learned that semester. Every logistical detail had to be planned out. The main lesson I learned from that assignment was: you can buy anything off of eBay; Google Maps and other satellite imagery websites eliminate many transportation issues, and the myriad of newspaper stories like
this one or
this one do the surveillance work for you.
I find that homegrown terrorists will be the biggest threat in the coming years. People have plenty to be pissed off about. The economy stinks. Unemployment is still rampant. Millions of people have lost their homes to foreclosure.
Look what happened in Austin. You can't stop it 100% of the time. The debate between civil liberties and the government's need to increase national security will grow more intensely over the next several years. Unless, of course, Americans are willing to accept a certain level of successful terrorist attacks on our soil. The other side of the coin doesn't guarantee safety either. Look at Israel - a certain police state that still has had more terrorist attacks on its soil than the US. Living in a free and open society will sometimes have repercussions. And while extremist Muslim organizations have made promises of nuclear attacks against the US, the homegrown threat looms larger and more real.
