Why hasn't AQ attacked the U.S. again?

So it's E-Day and we now know one of our worst fears hasn't been realized: Osama and cohorts haven't pulled off a repeat of Madrid. Of course, the U.S. itself hasn’t been attacked again by AQ or other global jihadists since 9/11.

Why?

A few months ago, I speculated that there just aren’t that many jihadists with global reach or commitment:

I’m not talking about a coordinated, complex event like 9-11. I’m wondering why nobody has, say, sprayed a NY subway with an AK-47. (Note to the FBI: I’m not advocating that, thank you.) There are essentially no security barriers stopping someone from doing that.

One reason could be that AQ prefers to hold off and focus on “spectacular” attacks. Maybe. But then AQ isn’t really a cohesive organization and is more of a movement, with supporters encouraged to wreak havoc as they can. (See Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey, Spain, Indonesia, and Morocco--all victims of seemingly independently operating AQ sympathizers ) So why haven't they hit the U.S.? My guess: Without some local component (ending the occupation of Iraq, toppling the House of Saud, etc.) in the end there are very few willing and motivated enough to "martyr" themselves.

In this morning's Wash Post, David Ignatius adds some weight to that assessment (aka WAG):

The long-dreaded attack could still come at any time. But analysts suggest several possibilities: Al Qaeda may be much weaker than generally believed, bin Laden's ambitions may increasingly be political, and disruption efforts against him may be working.

The weakness of bin Laden's organization is clear to Peter Bergen, one of the few Western journalists to have interviewed him. "I don't think they have the people here in the United States to conduct operations. It's that simple," contends Bergen, who is now a fellow at the New America Foundation. This view is shared by Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operations officer who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "He would have struck us by now if he could have," he argues.

Gerecht discounts a widely cited estimate that 18,000 to 35,000 terrorists passed through al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan. In rebuttal, he cites an interview he conducted in 1999 with bin Laden's chief Afghan rival, the Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated two days before Sept. 11, 2001. He told Gerecht that he had faced at most 700 to 1,000 of bin Laden's Arab-Afghan fighters.

The LAT's Terry McDermott, who'se writing a book about Khalid Sheik Mohamed and the 9/11 plot, has also come to the same conclusion. As he and I have discussed, most of the men who went through AQ's camps were cannon fodder to throw against the Northern Alliance. (McDermott has written about all this; I'll include the link as soon as I find it.)

Comments

[jesse flynt]

Give them time. Granted there have been no recent attacks. But The Power that drives Militant Islam is no longer centralized. Rather, they have appropriated common media, internet, and word of mouth to proliferate their ideologies and recruit converts. Most who subscribe to their world view are realatively isolated. Wait until potential terrorists in america begin finding one another in larger numbers- they will become bolder. Some however, have been isolated and outcast most of their lives for one reason or another are looking for some source of power or respect. I remember the story of a young boy who, shorly after the 9/11 attacks, flew a single enjine cesna into a local building. Leaving a suicide note, he expressed sypathetic sentiments towards militant islam. Am I crazy or does anyone else remember this?

oooh sory for the typo- I meant Engine, not "Enjine." Forgive me, im new at this