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One of the most common questions that homeland security and law enforcement officials and expertsi tell me they get asked by their friends and relatives is “Why Haven’t We Been Attacked Again?” It’s an question I’ve been asking them as well. I call these common queries “Barbecue Questions (or “Cocktail Party Questions” in the colder weather) as they are usually asked during social occasions. 

The answer is there apparently isn’t one answer. The indispensable Homeland Security Watch blog has posted a new report titled “Why We Haven’t Been Attacked Again: Competing Hypotheses for Homeland Attack Frequency” based on an open source literature review by a team from the Science Applications International Corporation and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. 

The 200-page report offers a number of reasons and puts them into two categories potential ideas which have been nicely summarized by Homeland Security Watch’s Jonah Czerwinski: 

Capabilities – Terrorists have been unable to succeed in conducting another large-scale attack on the homeland due to the effectiveness of U.S. defenses or because of the terrorists’ limited capabilities. The authors further address this thesis as part of two different “baskets” of issues:

• U.S. and Allied Counterterrorism Efforts: U.S. and allied initiatives have decisively limited terrorists’ capabilities to conduct attacks on the homeland by driving al-Qaeda’s leaders from their Afghanistan sanctuary, disrupting several terrorist plots, and forcing operatives to focus on preserving their own security rather than training for and carrying out new attacks. At home, potential targets have been hardened, coordination between government agencies has improved, and public awareness has increased scrutiny of suspicious behavior.

• Terrorist Attack Capabilities: Limitations on terrorist capabilities that are less dependent on U.S. and allied counterterrorism activities have prevented terrorist attacks on the U.S. This treatment suggests that a number factors independent of our anti-and counter-terrorism efforts are to credit. Examples of such factors include the time needed to recover from damage done to al-Qaeda and the requirements necessary for deploying terrorist veterans of the Iraq war, the challenged of acquiring WMD capabilities, and the broad assimilation of U.S. Muslims limiting the pool of potential “homegrown” jihadists.

Motivations – While a number of terrorist groups possess the ability to attack the United States, they have chosen not to do so for a variety of reasons. These categories are further subdivided into the following four baskets:

• Another Attack is a Bad Idea: Terrorists have concluded that another strike on the United States is ill-advised. This category suggests that al-Qaeda’s leaders prefer to wait until they can perpetrate an attack that surpasses 9/11 in terms of destruction and symbolism or that terrorists are concerned that another attack on the homeland would be counterproductive/ineffective in achieving their objectives.

• These Are Busy Times: Various groups maintain a significant attack capability, but other targets (i.e. n Europe, Middle East, and apparently China) are more attractive than the U.S. homeland due to operational challenges or political inclinations.

It is my strong feeling that engaging and including the public on these big questions, like ‘Why We Haven’t Been Attacked’, is very important — first because it is somewhere on all of our minds and shouldn’t only be discussed at barbecues, but also because the government needs to citizenry to understand that there are going to be a lot of uncertainties facing us in the years to come. To me, restoring trust and two way communication between the government and the governed on these security issues is as crucial a task as the next president, no matter who it is, will face. Letting the public in on the uncertainties that our nation faces is a good way to do begin doing that.