....yes, I checked, it really is.
The US faces growing challenges in countering international terrorism as resources are diverted to other threats, experienced security officials leave and “complacency” spreads, experts have warned.
It is 25 years this week since the 9/11 attacks launched by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida on New York and Washington, which killed about 3,000 people and led to decades of conflict, radicalisation and instability across the Middle East and beyond.
Though there have been no successful attacks on anything like a similar scale in the US since, and only a small number inspired by extremist Islamist ideologies, many are warning of growing risks.
As they were in the years and months before 9/11, as it turned out but learning lessons isn’t humanity’s strong point, it seems.
(Telegraph: 16 November 2023)
ReplyDelete‘The Guardian has deleted Osama bin Laden’s anti-Semitic “Letter to America” from its website after it went viral and received praise from teenage TikTok users.’
That was just over a month after the atrocities of 7th October 2023; the letter went viral among pro-Palestinian social media users sharing bin Laden’s justification for the 2001 attacks and praising his call for vengeance for ‘the oppression of the Palestinian territories’ in an assault against ‘Americans and Jews’.
Three years on, the Telegraph is reporting that:
‘Over the past year in particular, recruitment efforts have been rewarded with a resurgence of young people, including Britons, seeking to join the major terror groups.’
I shall be very relieved indeed if we get through the day without a terrorist incident of some kind.