Preventing Terrorism: Post 9/11

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Since September 11, 2001, the concept of terrorism went from an abstraction in most people's minds to a front-and-center concern for residents of the United States. Al-Qaeda had launched a simultaneous attack through plane-hijacking upon New York City and Washington D.C., killing over 3000 (vast majority Americans). A combination of greater information sharing and coordination with modern telecommunications, along with the American-led military actions in Southwest Asia lead to an incredible spike in the number of terrorist incidents in the Eastern Hemisphere. The greatest concentration of terrorist incidents over the last ten years has been in Iraq; which can be attributed almost entirely to the amount of U.S. assets in country until 2010…show more content…
One of the most important angles though is the synthesizing of relevant information. Post 9/11, one of the greatest breakdowns in this regard has been cited as one of the major contributing factors to the Fort Hood Incident in 2009 (Steinhauer). According to Steinhauer's reporting, a 2010 report on the incident compiled by U.S. Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) showed that at multiple points, law enforcement and the military ignored red flags regarding accused shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. Some of these red flags included contact with the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Aliki between 2003-09, and speaking defensively of Osama bin Laden during his residency as an Army psychiatrist. Liberman and Snowe accuse the FBI and military officials of failing to properly adjudicate the complains against Hasan, which may have prevented him from being in position act out against the military station. This goes to a larger point however, no matter how many laws may be passed in theory, there is no way to prevent terrorism outside of long and hard work by intelligence officials and law enforcement; and in some cases just raw dumb luck. In fact, one of the major criticisms of anti-terrorism intelligence gathering laws is that it allows officials to gather too much information spread over too large a potential area, making it difficult to piece together disparate parts in order to come up with a…show more content…
One of the biggest day to day alterations of American life has been the increased security presence for mass transit and large public venues. One of the most consistent complaints about this increased security state comes in complains about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) (Alberts 2010). He reports that the Obama Administration has had to make more direct pronouncements in order to justify to the public the TSA's security procedures, which many find some combination of intrusive, obstructive, and just plain unwieldy. Along with various new iterations of security, such as No-Fly Lists, various telecommunications dragnets, and the Patriot Act, a great deal of resurgence in the area of civil liberties has ocurred within American politics. Although the current iteration of the movement is still nascent, many believe that it will have to force many government entities, especially in the federal government, to reassess many of the methodologies and techniques used by various government entities to affect security upgrades. For much of the general public, many of these supposed upgrades have grown into full blown nuisances that make many forms of travel more of a chore than anything

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