Is Al Qaeda capable of carrying out another Sept. 11 attack in the United States?
The terrorist organization doesn't appear to have sleeper cells in the country able to perform such a mission, or even capable of launching a smaller-scale operation against a "soft" target such as a mall. If Al Qaeda had this capability, its cells would have attacked either at the beginning of the Iraq war in spring 2003 or during the recent presidential election. Almost without exception, the "terrorism" cases in this country since 9/11 have involved wannabes and malcontents accused of "material support" for terrorism, not planners of terrorist acts. Moreover, to its enormous credit, the Muslim American community since 9/11 has rejected Osama bin Laden's ideas.
The most pressing threat to Americans from Al Qaeda is not from within, but from without: its cells and affiliated groups based in Europe.
The attacks on three Madrid trains on March 11, which killed 191 commuters, demonstrated that Al Qaeda-inspired jihadist groups on the Continent are a real threat. And just as it is hard to imagine 9/11 without the "Hamburg cell," future terrorist attacks damaging to U.S. national security probably will have a strong European connection. For example, European members of Al Qaeda could sneak into the United States to launch an attack on the scale of the one in Madrid or they could detonate a radioactive "dirty" bomb in London's financial district, an event that would have a devastating effect on the global economy and, by extension, the U.S. economy.
How Al Qaeda succeeds or fails in Europe is critical to its future in the West. Although few American Muslims have embraced Al Qaeda's ideology, that is not the case with Europe's 20 million Muslims.
Part of the reason is alienation. In general, Muslims in Europe face more discrimination than their U.S. counterparts. Algerians in France and Pakistanis in Britain, for example, are often treated as second-class citizens and are less integrated into their host countries than Muslims in the U.S. As citizens of the European Union, however, adherents of Al Qaeda's ideology have considerable latitude to move around Europe and visit other countries in the West.
