Terrorism is not simply confined to the US as so many self-centered Americans seem to think. Russia, for example, has had far more major terrorist attacks than has the US. With the exception of the 9/11 attacks, the US has fared rather well. Russia has had several attacks on its Metro (subway) system, something the US has never experienced. They have also had a major attack on a school, a theater, a sports stadium, airplanes, passenger trains, government buildings, hospitals and apartment blocks. Terrorism is far more widespread in Russia than in the US. Yet the US acts as if terrorism was only a threat to itself, and all the world's terrorists were dead set on doing harm to the US. The world's victims of terrorism should band together, pool their resources and assets and cooperate to prevent future terrorist attacks.
Luckily, several terrorist attacks have been averted in the US either due to good police work, good intelligence or the ineptness of the terrorists. Still the US devotes huge sums of money pushing a string in Afghanistan on the theory that if we can stop them over there, it will protect the US homeland here. Nothing could be more ridiculous. Terrorists can spring from anywhere and can attack anywhere in the world. So spending billions of dollars to send troops to Afghanistan and elsewhere is just plain foolhardy. Instead the money should be put into real defense instead of fighting offensive wars which are only pissing off potential terrorists even more and making it more - not less - likely that they will perpetrate terrorist attacks on American soil. Real defense means knowing who is in the US at all times and who is coming and going and where they are coming from or where they are going to. Persons in the US illegally should not be tolerated. Yet, as we know, terrorism can arise from US citizens themselves. That's why good intelligence and good police work are very important.
Here is a list of some of the terrorist attacks in Russia:
March 21, 2010: This week’s terrorist bombings on the Moscow metro killed at least 39 people and injured many more.
September 1-3, 2004: Armed insurgents seize a school in Beslan, in the southern Russian Republic of North Ossetia, taking some 1,000 adults and children hostage. Russian security forces storm the school two days later. More than 330 people -- half of them children -- die in the resulting violence. Radical Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev takes responsibility for the raid.
August 31, 2004: A female suicide bomber kills nine people outside a Moscow subway station. A 10th person later dies of injuries. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov speaks to reporters the night of the blast: "This was a terrorist act. It was carried out by a woman suicide bomber. There was a large amount of explosives involved. [The bomb was] filled with various bolts and metal objects."
August 24, 2004: Two Russian passenger planes crash almost simultaneously, killing all 90 people on board. Female Chechen suicide bombers are later blamed for the crashes.
February 6, 2004: A suicide bombing kills at least 40 people on a subway train in Moscow. A Chechen rebel group claims responsibility. "There was an explosion in the second [metro] car," a woman who survived the blast said. "For a long time, we couldn't open the doors. Then, finally, the driver opened them, and we started walking. We walked for about 2 kilometers. There was panic and a lot of screaming."
December 9, 2003: A suicide bomber kills five people near the Kremlin in Moscow. At least 13 people are wounded.
December 5, 2003: Forty people are killed and more than 100 injured when a bomb explodes on a passenger train traveling between Kislovodsk and Mineralnye Vody in southern Russia.
August 1, 2003: A suicide bomber driving an explosives-packed truck blows up a military hospital in Mozdok, North Ossetia, bordering Chechnya. The blast kills 50 people.
July 5, 2003: Two female Chechen suicide bombers kill 15 other people when they blow themselves up at an open-air rock festival at Moscow's Tushino airfield.
May 12, 2003: Two suicide bombers drive a truck full of explosives into a government complex in Znamenskoe, in northern Chechnya, killing 59 people.
October 23-26, 2002: Armed Chechen militants take 700 people hostage in Moscow's Dubrovka theater. Some 129 hostages and 41 guerrillas are killed when Russian special forces storm the building. Most of the deaths are caused by a gas used by the forces to incapacitate the hostage takers.
The best strategy for combating terrorism is an international network of intelligence operations combined with truly defensive defense expenditures. Strong border, port and critical infrastructure protection, protection against cyber attacks, a national ID card and other measures will prevent more terrorist attacks than sending American troops into other countries ever will. As a byproduct the problems of illegal immigration and importation of drugs will be solved. For a fraction of the cost of fighting offensive wars the American homeland could be well protected. It's time to wake up and smell the coffee. The Pentagon budget and the Homeland Security budgets should be changed around. More should be devoted to Homeland Security than is devoted to the Pentagon. Terrorism is a tactic used not only by jihadis but by any group or individual who has a grievance and wants to cause havoc, and the US should assume a strictly defensive posture. This will actually cause the diminution of potential terrorist incidents as fewer civilians are killed by US troops abroad, one of the main causes of terrorism in the first place.
