Terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology.
It is often a method – a short cut, actually – to make a political group known. And sometimes, it is a strategy to simply just generate mayhem. What happened in Boston was a tragedy by people who wanted to cause chaos. There are no rational justifications for these acts.
I have been humbled by the love and affection that people across the country (and the world) have shown over the last few days. The tweets. The Facebook posts. The moment of silences at every sporting event. I am honored to live in a country whose citizens – in their entirety – have shown (and continue to show) compassion and empathy for those who have lost.
What I have not been impressed by is those who have faulted the security in Boston for not being careful enough. Maybe this is so – I agree that even more aggressive law enforcement tactics are necessary to prevent such atrocities. Nonetheless, it is easy to blow the recent terroristic attack out of proportion and immediately blame those in charge of security at the marathon. I, too, fell victim to making such an accusation; I could not believe that such an attack had happened. Why was security not tighter? Why did we not see it coming? Why are there so many unanswered questions?
But, it is important to realize that this past decade has been America’s decade with the fewest successful terrorism attacks. According to the Global Terrorism Database, with the exception of 9/11, there has been an overall gradual decline in the number of terrorist attacks, especially since the 1970s.
Since 2001, the number of fatalities in terrorist attacks has reached double digits only once (in 2009) when an Army psychiatrist killed 13 people. This is a far contrast with the 1970s, by far the most violent decade. In the 1970s, there were over 1,350 attacks carried out by many radical groups, including extremists of the left and the right, white supremacists, Puerto Rican nationalists, and black militants. According to Dr. Gary LaFree, a University of Maryland criminologist and the director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, there were about 40 percent more attacks in the United States in the decade before September 11 than in the decade after. Dr. LaFree states that this is because “…police agencies, led by the F.B.I., are far more proactive. They’re interrupting the plots before the attacker gets out the door.”
In Boston, there was in fact a heavy security presence, including bomb-sniffing dogs that were deployed before the race. However, the attack demonstrated one huge advantage for terrorists: security officials have to be great all the time, and terrorists have to be good only once.
When all is said in done, we are pretty lucky to live in America. On the day of the Boston attacks, there was a car bomb in Afghanistan that killed over thirty people. Such attacks are commonplace in unstable countries, and I think it is easy to take the security that our country offers for granted.
There will always be madmen, and unfortunately such acts of terrorism will probably never be completely eradicated. And yet, on the whole, I feel safe living in America.
To those in the marathon who continued to run to the hospital to donate blood. To those in the city of Boston who offered their homes to families of the injured. To those who took a second to empathize with those who suffered. To the policemen, spectators, and runners who stayed by the scene to help those injured. I salute you. And I salute the security of the United States as well. I do not fault you for what happened this past week – thank you for always being there.
And now it is simply time to learn how to better counteract acts of terrorism in the future.