Commentaries Claim Boston Bombing Highlights US Anti-Terrorism Limitations

The two explosions in Boston on April 15 resulted in three people dead and 176 people injured. This is the bloodiest attack in the United States in the nearly 12 years since the 9/11 incident. On April 16, President Obama issued a statement formally characterizing the incident as an act of terrorism.

After 9/11, the United States has continued to strengthen domestic anti-terrorism measures, achieving quite good results, with no terrorist attacks in 12 years. At the same time, the United States has increased global counterterrorism efforts, continually weakening the forces of al-Qaida, especially in the killing of international terrorism tycoon Osama bin Laden, which is regarded as a landmark victory.

Objectively speaking, the United States’ fight against terrorism is real, but it is also true that other things are “smuggled in” under the name of anti-terrorism. The negative effects of many anti-terrorism ideas and actions still have not been eliminated. Incidents such as torturing prisoners, burning the Quran and filming “Innocence of Muslims,” which insults Islam, not only worsened the relationship between the people of the United States and Islamic countries, but also further deepened the hatred of some terrorists and terrorist organizations toward the United States. From this point of view, the killing of Osama bin Laden is merely the elimination of a terrorist symbol; the terrorist idea or ideological trend has already been formed and has continued to spread. Some organizations with no actual connection to al-Qaida are using its name to attract attention and grow. This trend reflects both the extensiveness and the enormity of the anti-terrorism problem.

What is more noteworthy is that in the past two years, a type of “lone wolf” individual terrorism has begun to appear, causing the United States to face a new terrorist threat. On Dec. 20, 2012, two Pakistani brothers in Florida plotted to detonate bombs in landmark buildings and crowded places in New York; unable to raise money, they postponed the plan and were later arrested. The emergence of these lone-wolf terrorists has greatly increased the randomness of terrorist attacks, making prevention more difficult.

As the saying goes: Any plan, no matter how secret, always has a flaw. The Boston explosions once again proved that in an open public environment it is difficult for security measures, no matter how strict, to be foolproof. Statistics show that in the first 10 years after 9/11, the number of global terrorist attacks increased almost every year. For some countries, terrorism is still the most important security threat and the United States may still be the main target of attacks by terrorist forces. What is certain is that after these years of hard work, the anti-terrorism situation in the United States has not fundamentally improved. Anti-terrorism still has a long way to go.