The Triangle

Issue date: 1/22/10 Section: Ed-Op

Media Credit: Kent Nishimura Abaca Press/MCT Campus

Human memory works in an interesting way- sometimes we can recall what flavor of ice cream we had at our fifth birthday party, but can't remember what we ate for breakfast mere hours ago. Other times, we forget that a city was attacked by terrorists while under our political reign. Recently in an interview, Rudolph Giuliani publicly forgot that one of the most defining moments of the past decade, Sept. 11, happened during his stint as mayor of New York City. Maybe he had a case of Freudian repression when he stated matter-of-factly, "We had no domestic attacks under Bush."

No matter what caused this memory lapse, it is easy to become swept up in the paranoia of the media and forget how America felt after Sept. 2001. Under the Bush administration (post-9/11), there was a handful of small-scale terroristic actions including a shoe-bomber (the so-called Al-Qaeda devotee was recently convicted) and anthrax attacks. This past Christmas, under the Obama administration, a man smuggled an explosive onto a Detroit-bound plane and attempted to ignite it. Although the plot was unsuccessful, it brought the buzzword "terrorism" back into the American media with a vengeance. In addition to this domestic attack, a suicide bomber killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan on Dec. 30.

Terror analysts have discovered that 2009 had the highest terrorist activity of any recent year- however, they also found that the plots are becoming more and more unsuccessful. In light of the Detroit bomber, Mark Lowenthal, assistant director of the Central Intelligence Agency for analysis from 2002 to 2005, stated, "[Terrorists are] less capable, even if they're still lethal … they're not able to carry out the intense planning they once did." Another expert, Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and psychiatrist, has been quoted as saying he believes "Al-Qaeda [is] in decline" and that the "new generation of extremists [will] be less skilled and [will] likely pose less of a threat than the network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks."

Based on these expert opinions, one would think that the mass-hysteria that terrorism had once caused (the Terror Index, markedly increased airplane security) is dwindling and becoming more and more unnecessary. Well, Rush Limbaugh and his cronies want you to think again! After all, terror attacks only happen under presidents who call themselves Democrats- George W. Bush sure took the security assessment that warned America of Sept. 11 to heart! Oh wait …

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