As US citizens debate whether they are better off now than they were four years ago, there is a similar question with a somewhat easier answer: Are people in the US safer now than they were when US President Barack Obama took office? By most measures, the answer is yes.
More than a decade after terrorists slammed planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside, people in the US have stopped fretting daily about a possible attack or stockpiling duct tape and water. Getting through airport security has become a routine irritation, not a grim foreboding.
While the threat of a terrorist attack has not disappeared, the combined military, intelligence, diplomatic and financial efforts to hobble al-Qaeda and its affiliates have escalated over the past four years and paid off. Terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are dead and their networks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia disrupted.
In some cases, US President Barack Obama’s White House simply continued or intensified programs and policies begun by the Republican administration of former US president George W. Bush, but Obama pursued a more aggressive drone campaign to target terrorist leaders, broadening efforts to help at-risk nations bolster their own defenses and put in place plans to end the war in Iraq and bring troops out of Afghanistan.
As a result, terrorism worries have taken a back seat to the nation’s economic woes.
Unlike previous elections, national security is not a big campaign issue this year.
Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney made no mention of terrorism or war during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Although public opposition to the war in Afghanistan has grown, it is not a top dinner table topic for most people in the US.
“I would have said four years ago that the al-Qaeda movement was emerging as a bigger problem, especially with the emergence of affiliates in places like Yemen and with the spike in homegrown attacks,” said Phil Mudd, a counterterrorism official at the CIA and FBI during the Bush and Obama administrations. “I would say today that al-Qaedaism is on the decline ... the number of places where people want to come after us has declined in the past four years.”
Mudd, now a research fellow at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, said that while militants in other countries may still be causing problems in their own areas, they are less likely to “be sitting there saying how do we get to Los Angeles, and that’s a big change.”
Still, other international dangers remain. Ongoing efforts to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear capabilities have not worked. As Israel’s worries about the nuclear threat grow, the possibility of US involvement in an Israeli strike against Iran has become a front-burner issue.
Defense officials are wary of China’s military growth, and US intelligence agencies have accused Beijing of stealing US high-tech data through computer-based attacks. US officials and security experts are increasingly warning that the US is highly vulnerable to cyberattacks, including one that could take down the electric grid, financial networks or energy plants.
Republicans say Obama has failed to slow Iran’s nuclear program, saying that it could spark an arms race across the Middle East.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of