The Changing Face Of Terrorism

When most Americans hear the word “terrorism”, they probably think of al-Qaeda, and of course with good cause. But as this interesting article from the Associated Press notes, almost all of the terrorist actions carried out in this country after 9/11 were committed by American citizens, not foreign Muslim extremists (it appears likely that this is true even for the yet-unsolved anthrax mailings that directly followed the Sept. 11th attacks). Although none of these domestic terrorism cases come anywhere close to reaching the monstrous impact of the 2001 attacks (most of them are in fact property destruction incidents), they do illustrate that our most potent and potentially dangerous extremist elements come from within rather than from a foreign source.

The above article contains a link to the Terrorism Knowledge Base, an exhaustive listing of every major terror attack that has occurred in the world since the late 1960’s. It is interesting to note that excepting a couple of jihad-inspired incidents and attacks on anti-Castro groups in Florida, every terrorist incident recorded in the US after 9/11 can be attributed to the Earth Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Front, or a related organization. To be fair, none of these attacks involved any sort of personal violence, being merely property crimes. Still, this does make clear that the far left in the US is much more prone to direct action at this point than is the far right.