Boston Marathon Bombings
Reader comment on item: Boston Bombers' Motivations No Mystery

Submitted by Khalilah Sabra, May 4, 2013 12:12

Despite massive investments in manpower and money in homegrown terrorism, the United States has little to show for it. The detection, diagnosis and attempts at eliminating the components responsible for the type of violence in Boston has not been as precise as most Americans hoped or assumed. Massive resources throughout the government and private sectors have been allocated and re-allocated to the task of preventing terrorism. The magnitude of the American investment in this goal is extraordinary. These efforts, however, often lack a conceptual - let alone empirically-based – foundation for understanding terrorists and their acts of violence. This void creates a serious challenge at many levels, from policy-level decisions about how a state should respond to terrorism, to individual-level decisions about whether a given person of interest, who espouses extremist ideas, truly poses a serious threat to U.S. personnel, assets, and interests. A surfeit of young Muslim men continue to eagerly join these radical Islamist groups, ready to sacrifice their lives for the cause. Before the Boston marathon, there had not been any major terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11 but several young terrorists have come perilously close to succeeding in what could have been highly destructive attacks.

Be this the case, then why is the most obvious void not being addressed, which is the failure to utilize components of the Muslim community as an effective mechanisms for delivering training? Human resources from within the American Muslim community are able and willing to provide valuable data on a variety of topics that may help government assess training and information needs. These resources are also capable of recognizing the driving forces behind threats, perhaps long before law enforcement agencies have access or able to comprehend which radical entities are currently committed to catalyzing action. Accurate research can help law enforcement agencies make the most of training resources, from immediate issues of response and defense to long-term questions about how the United States should shape its future national security strategy advantage.

Counter terrorism research must shift the emphasis from surface sensationalism to the plausibility of plot pattern which is based on sound behavior-based surveillance, not profiling, which has proven to be an inaccurate indicator of other types of targeted violent crimes.

On the surface, it is difficult to grasp how American intelligence, by far the most sophisticated in the world, can have such trouble mastering the problem of relatively small and primitive few. The fact is, if you do not understand the message in the language it is written, you miss a great deal of what is being said.

Grouping Muslims as a whole is an error that can affected the quality of the research process. This error not only influences the various stages of the research process on terrorism but results in inaccurate or useless research findings that created expensive policies that did not render Americans more safe than they were before 9/11.

Khalilah Sabra, Executive Director

Muslim American Society, Immigration Justice Center.

www.masijc.net

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