I think TPM Reader BG has this largely correct …
I appreciate your latest post about how many mistakes the alleged perpetrator made, and we are all extremely thankful that he was as bad at this as he was. But that’s not an accident.
Good intelligence work, good police work, more aware citizenry and other measures set up since 9/11 have limited — for now, and hopefully far into the future — the ability of major terrorist plots to get off the ground in the US. Major cells get disrupted, chatter on social media leads to arrests, and then great police work over this past weekend gets the bad guy in no time. There simply isn’t any scope for large-scale, mass-casualty events at the moment in the US. Our strategy is working. It is impossible to prevent every idiot with an internet connection and a pressure cooker from blowing something up. What we can do — and are doing — is make sure that the numbers are limited, the major plots don’t happen, and the casualties are kept to a minimum. Fear and chaos are not the answer. We are winning this war.
