Adfero Group HSPI

Senator Susan Collins ripped in to representatives of the Department of Defense this week. The issue was one so absurd that I could not believe it at first. The Department has categorized the Fort Hood Shootings where Major Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people as an example of “workplace violence.” The Senator responded rightly; she was not incredulous, she was livid. Calling this incident of terrorism workplace violence equates it with the proverbial postal employee gone wild. This was an act of Islamic terrorism.

The U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security held a joint hearing today with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs entitled “Homegrown Terrorism: The Threat to Military Communities Inside the United States.” According to the Department of Defense, American soil is the most dangerous place for our service men and women outside of actual war zones due to radicalism and homegrown terrorism.

The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence has issued a report calling attention to a new threat to the U.S. homeland. Boko Harem has up to this point focused largely in Nigeria but has recently turned its violence toward international targets.

Recent developments in terror threats against the United States are at odds with the latest counterterrorism line coming out of the White House. We need some new thinking.

ABC News Video: In a sharp reversal of the Obama administration’s policy on trying Sept. 11 suspects in U.S. courts, mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators will be tried in a military commission at Guantanamo Bay.

We’ve got anti-Muslim accusations. We’ve got anti-American accusations. We’ve got anti-Peter King accusations. We’ve got charges of bigotry, racism and religious intolerance. We’ve got a New York Times magazine writer asserting that “America is a tinderbox of prejudice and fear.” In short, we’ve got a lot of hysteria.

Like any movement that spans continents and has millions of affiliates, the global Muslim Brotherhood is hardly a monolithic block. Personal and ideological divisions are common. Divergences emerge on how the movement should try to achieve its goals and, in some cases, even on what those goals should actually be.

A public forum will be hosted Tuesday on Capitol Hill discussing Attorney General guidelines for law enforcement domestic intelligence as it relates to homegrown radicalism. Participants include Rep. Rush Hold, Chairman of House Intelligence and Michael Isikoff, national investigative correspondent for NBC, among others.

FBI agents say Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, planned to detonate explosives during a tree lighting downtown. But he’d been working all along with undercover agents, an affidavit says.

As investigations continue into the bombs shipped from Yemen to the United States, the news last week about a plot to bomb Washington, DC Metro stations should not be forgotten. Indeed, the arrest of Farooque Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, is evidence of another kind of ongoing terrorist threat to the United States, one that stems from citizens and immigrants. Ahmed’s arrest shows the threat of smaller-scale terrorist attacks carried out by U.S. citizens is growing. U.S. citizens are particularly attractive to al Qaeda and other terrorists because they can more easily plot and prepare for attacks without drawing the attention of law enforcement, the intelligence community or the Department of Homeland Security.

The Middle East has undergone a sea change at the geostrategic level, presenting U.S. policymakers with a new set of serious challenges. To design a new approach to the region that would have resonance with the key players and be ultimately successful in preserving its vital interests, the United States needs to fully understand and assimilate “why and how” this shift has taken place in the region. In this four-part series, I will attempt to shed some light at the root developments that have caused the demise of the old Mideast order, the birth of the new order and its significant impact on U.S. strategic interests, and the viable policy options at the disposal of the United States, given the new realities of the region.

At a full hearing of the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee with DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller and NCTC Director Michael Leiter, the message delivered was loud and clear. The risk of smaller scale, more individualized attacks by al Qaeda and its sympathizers within the United States is growing. Period. There should be no more blissful ignorance to our operating environment in America. It can not be afforded.

Before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, DHS Secretary Napolitano, FBI Director Mueller and NCTC Director Leiter each underscored the growing threat of homegrown terrorism and warned that there are increasing numbers of Americans inspired by al Qaeda. This summer, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released an English-language magazine, appropriately titled Inspire. This is a dangerous tool, in part because it isn’t masses of jihad-waging Americans that we foresee threatening homeland security – it’s the lone wolf radicalized in secret, which is exactly for whom Inspire was written.

It is now nine years since we suffered the huge tragedy of the 9/11 attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. A hand full of very dedicated killers took the lives of thousands, grounded the entire U.S. commercial Air Industry and paralyzed our Nation. As the time between 9/11 and the present lengthens, people forget. It is a natural human reaction and typically American. We forget that we were attacked, that Afghanistan and Iraq were reactions to 9/11 and the war that Al Qaeda declared on us and which Saddam Hussein cheered – they were not unprovoked assaults on innocent regimes.

It never ceases to amaze me the people who proclaim to be representatives of God but are so willing to unleash hate. Such is the ministry of Rev. Terry Jones and his Gainesville, FL church. In what can only be accurately described as an incendiary act, on Saturday evening, September 11, Jones and his church will burn copies of the Quran, the holy book of Islam.

By Justin Hienz
On Friday, President Obama weighed in on the continuing debate over whether to allow construction of an Islamic Center near Ground Zero in New York City. To be sure, those objecting to the Islamic Center are opposed not simply to the new place of Muslim worship but to the idea that anything related to Islam can safely exist so close to the site of al Qaeda’s greatest victory, without dishonoring the dead. This viewpoint is flawed, because it is based on a misunderstanding of religion generally, Islam specifically. Now more than ever we need authoritative voices to take a stand and guide the public towards a more nuanced and accurate understanding of the Muslim faith.

Terrorism in Africa, like all questions of strategy and of strategic consideration, is context specific – to time, space, actors and events. Generalizations of terrorism in Africa, past and present, are most unwise and unhelpful. Countering terrorist threats in Africa requires a deep understanding of Africa – from subregion to subregion, country to country, and small folk community to small folk community. Thus, as I teach my students, understanding terrorism and counterterrorism in Africa requires knowledge of Africa, first and foremost. Policymakers would be wise to follow suit.

On March 29, two suicide bombings targeting Moscow’s subway system killed dozens and injured many others. The bombs reverberated here in the United States. New York immediately beefed up its subway security. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CN) warned all Americans to be extra-vigilant on buses and trains. However, the American response to the Moscow bombings misses the real terrorist threat to the United States. U.S. intelligence should prioritize and focus on America’s most dangerous enemies. Here is a list of the groups posing the most immediate threat to the United States.

Today we need to remember one of the major acts of terrorism that happened here at home – the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. The truly scary part is that these terrorists were Americans and they killed Americans – homegrown domestic terrorists who were mad at the government and took the lives of 168 American men, women and children. I hope that others join me in remembering those who died that day. Let us not ever forget that day, as it marks the first awakening and a change in our way of life.

By Edward Alden
The failed Christmas bombing plot has been called, by everyone up to President Obama, a massive failure of the intelligence and targeting systems that are supposed to identify would-be terrorists before they come so close to succeeding. But the more we have learned about what the government knew before the attacks, the more it looks like this was instead a very near miss by agencies that were doing most of the right things.