Conclusion

Nineteen years after 9/11, the terrorist threat to the United States is far different from what it was on that day when Al Qaeda carried out an attack that killed almost 3,000 people in a matter of hours, using 19 men, trained in Al Qaeda’s Afghan camps, who entered the United States on temporary visas. Today, the threat to the homeland from jihadist groups is more limited and largely stems from lone actors living in the United States and inspired by jihadist ideology, but without direct support from foreign terrorist organizations. However, the Pensacola attack provides another reminder that 100 percent security from attacks involving foreign organizations is impossible.

At the same time, the past few years have shown that ideologies beyond jihadism, most notably far-right ideologies and movements, are likely to play a growing role in the terrorist threat to the homeland, perhaps eclipsing the threat from jihadism that predominated for years. This threat comes from a broad range of ideologies and movements, not just the far right, and is likely to be deeply shaped by the internet and generated in many cases by lone actors rather than mirroring a now outdated vision of the jihadist organizational threat.

Meanwhile, the United States has faced jihadist insurgencies like that of ISIS, which at one point ruled over territory the size of Britain, that would be difficult to imagine in 2001. In the case of ISIS, the United States once again demonstrated its ability to deny jihadist groups the ability to transition from insurgencies into sustainable quasi-state entities controlling large swaths of territory. At the same time, the United States has not demonstrated an ability to definitively defeat its jihadist enemies and continues to wage seemingly endless counterterrorism wars in multiple countries. Unable to fully extirpate jihadist insurgencies from the Middle East, the United States should focus on addressing specific threats and containing global jihadist organizing, rather than attempting to transform Middle Eastern politics as a whole.

Looking forward, American policymakers should urgently prioritize reviewing the current state of American counterterrorism, determining its effectiveness, and identifying the objectives the United States seeks, particularly in its wars abroad. This effort will have to address the fact that terrorism of all kinds has posed an extremely limited threat to the homeland, particularly in comparison to a pandemic that in less than a year has killed well over 600 times as many people as terrorism of all ideological stripes has killed in the 19 years since the 9/11 attacks. An approach attuned to today’s threats will also require efforts to address the systemic societal polarization and tensions that help make America vulnerable to terrorist violence.