{"id":16900,"date":"2012-10-29T09:39:04","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T17:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=16900"},"modified":"2012-10-29T10:32:01","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T18:32:01","slug":"the-puny-terrorist-threat-and-our-rulers-best-efforts-to-keep-you-scared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/29\/the-puny-terrorist-threat-and-our-rulers-best-efforts-to-keep-you-scared\/","title":{"rendered":"The Puny ‘Terrorist Threat’ And Our Rulers’ Best Efforts to Keep You Scared"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/em> this past weekend published a rather remarkable article<\/em><\/a> talking openly about some basic facts that it typically ignores completely: (1) al-Qaeda is primarily motivated by America’s “unqualified support for Israel and the rulers\u00a0of the Persian Gulf states,” as well as US militarism in the region, (2) al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorist threats are not nearly as big a danger as Washington would have us believe.<\/p>\n

While “jihadists of various kinds,” the article says, “are flourishing in Africa and the Middle East,” Americans are notably misled regarding the actual threat they pose.<\/p>\n

…most of the newer jihadist groups have local agendas, and very few aspire to strike directly at the United States as Osama bin Laden\u2019s core network did. They may interfere with American interests around the world \u2014 as in Syria, where the presence of militant Islamists among the rebels fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad has inhibited American efforts to support the uprising. But that is a far cry from terrorist plots aimed at the United States itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A far cry, indeed. But the US has that bad habit of declaring the world it’s own backyard. One group’s local agenda<\/em> is another American imperialist’s threat to the homeland<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Importantly, the article says that unfortunately, “most of the political realities that inspired Bin Laden\u2019s organization are still in place,” like unqualified support for Israel, propping up Arab dictatorships, and bombing various countries in the region on a near daily basis. That doesn’t bode well for anybody, as I’ve talked about at length<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even on the margins, the US seems intent on stoking its own threats. The article mentions Boko Haram, an Islamist group in Nigeria that has an agenda for Nigeria and Nigeria alone. Does anybody think it helps that, for example, a congressional report<\/a> last year insisted on building up Nigerian security forces and essentially starting a proxy war with Boko Haram? “While I recognize there is little evidence at this moment to suggest Boko Haram is planning attacks against the [US] homeland, lack of evidence does not mean it cannot happen,\u201d Patrick Meehan, the\u00a0chairman of the committee that drew up the report\u00a0was quoted as saying<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It reminds me of this Washington Post<\/em> article<\/a> last year that said even as the Obama administration bombs Somalia, emphasizing the threat posed by al-Shabab, officials\u00a0were concerned “that a broader [drone] campaign could turn al-Shabab from a regional menace into an adversary determined to carry out attacks on US soil.” Brilliant.<\/p>\n

But even despite America’s stubborn insistence on a stupid, overly interventionist foreign policy that creates more enemies than it eliminates, the “terrorist threat” is small and getting smaller.<\/p>\n

The National Counterterrorism Center\u2019s annual report for 2011<\/a>\u00a0said about 10,000 acts of violence occurred in 2011 that the government classifies as terrorism, killing about 13,000 people total. Zero terrorist attacks occurred in the US and three-quarters of the fatalities were in just four countries, which happen to be virtual war zones:\u00a0Afghanistan,\u00a0Iraq,\u00a0Pakistan, and\u00a0Somalia.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, those all happen to be countries in which US foreign policy has been excessively interventionist and brutal and which only became hot-spots of \u201cterrorism\u201d following US wars or proxy wars.<\/p>\n

The report says, out of about 13,000 people, only 17 American citizens were killed in terrorist incidents last year: 15 in Afghanistan, one in\u00a0Jerusalem, and one\u00a0in Iraq.\u00a0Even counting all 17 US\u00a0deaths by terrorism last year, that amounts to .001% of Americans died from government-designated terrorism last year.<\/p>\n

Compare that with the amount of time and resources allocated to address this overwhelming terrorist threat.<\/p>\n

“Warnings about a dangerous world,” writes<\/a> Micah Zenko in Foreign Affairs<\/em>, “benefit powerful bureaucratic interests. The specter of looming\u00a0dangers sustains and justifies the massive budgets of the military and the intelligence agencies, along with the national security infrastructure\u00a0that exists outside government \u2014 defense contractors, lobbying groups, think tanks, and academic departments.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times this past weekend published a rather remarkable article talking openly about some basic facts that it typically ignores completely: (1) al-Qaeda is primarily motivated by America’s “unqualified support for Israel and the rulers\u00a0of the Persian Gulf states,” as well as US militarism in the region, (2) al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorist threats […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-16900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16900"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16906,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16900\/revisions\/16906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16900"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}