Why hasn’t America been attacked since 9/11 ?

As we remember 9/11, a common question that is asked is “Why hasn’t America been attacked again?”

Dick Cheney on 9/10/06 Meet the Press, said “VICE PRES. CHENEY: But the fact of the matter is, I think we’ve done a pretty good job. And I don’t know how you can explain five years of no attacks, five years of successful disruption of attacks, five years of, of defeating the efforts of al-Qaeda to come back and kill more Americans. You’ve got to give some credence to the notion that maybe somebody did something right.”

Or, maybe there are some other reasons.

Richard Perle and David From made an interesting assertion in their 2003 book An end to evil : how to win the war on terror . They theorized that al-Qaeda would only launch a devastating attack that would be comparable to 9/11 in terms of death and destruction otherwise they would be seen as weakened. In other words, al-Qaeda’s mantra is large scale multiple pronged attacks or nothing. Perle/From’s opinion is that unless it is bigger than 9/11, don’t bother.

In Ron Susskind’s 2006 book, The One Percent Doctrine, he writes essentially the same storyline; specifically that U.S. intelligence believed al-Qaeda plotted a hydrogen-cyanide gas attack on New York City subways in 2003 — only to have it aborted by al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, because, some U.S. intelligence officials surmise, it wouldn't be dramatically bigger than al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks.

When we hear with great fanfare about the aborted terrorist plot in Great Britain, and then we find out that the plotters did not even have passports yet, it is very obvious that these plots are in their early stages of development. The successful attacks (London/Madrid/ Manila/etc.) may be more of an effort by separate groups with different, and local, agendas.

So maybe before Cheney pats himself on the back, maybe he should consider that maybe al-Qaeda doesn’t feel it needs to attack to spread its message … since everyday, al Jazeera televises the image of America supporting the attacking of Muslims.

I’ll liken it to the fact that I haven’t had a driving accident since I was a teenager … but that doesn’t make me a safe driver.
I would feel safer if the borders were secure; the cargo was inspected; and airline security system did not have so many undetected security lapses.

SOURCE : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14720480/page/5/
SOURCE : http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1206001,00.html
SOURCE : http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/388F6BEF-FFAE-4060-98EA-0ABB487EE1ED.htm

FYI - I am about a quarter of the way through Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton's book - Without Precedent : The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission. It brings back lots of memories that still choke me today.