terrorism

May 8, 2013
Guantanamo's Collapse

The Department of Defense has requested $170 million to upgrade the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in next year's budget, but no amount of money will repair the government's irrational terrorism detention policy that is collapsing even more quickly than the dilapidated facility in which the hunger striking detainees are housed.
April 24, 2013
Beware of Easy Answers to the 'Who Dropped the Ball?' Question

Discussion of the Boston bombing case is now into full 20-20 hindsight mode trying to figure out why we did not prevent Tamerlan Tsarnaev from executing the attack when the government had been alerted to his potential radicalization two years ago. There are probably important policy lessons to be learned from this incident -- but it is far too easy for politicians and commentators to lay blame on keystone cops who shirked their responsibilities and bureaucrats who refused to share information with each other.
April 22, 2013
Interrogate Boston Bomber for Intelligence & Then Prosecute Him

Some politicians and pundits are agitating for the captured Boston Marathon bomber to be declared an enemy combatant, sent to Guantanamo, and tried in a military commission. But the only legal, pragmatic, and effective way to handle this situation is to conduct a lengthy interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and then prosecute him in United States federal court.
April 20, 2013
Boston Bombing Suspects Raise New Terrorism Questions

With the Friday arrest of suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing investigation has entered a new phase. Yet to be uncovered are the motives of the bombers—the other suspect, Dzhokhar's older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed during a gun battle with authorities—and their possible connection to foreign groups that use terrorism to advance political agendas.
April 18, 2013
Good Outruns Evil in the Wake of the Boston Marathon

Words can’t describe the events that transpired on Monday afternoon in Boston. What began as a beautiful, jovial, and exciting day, quickly transformed into chaos, confusion, and utter horror. While I will never understand or know what it was like to be there when those first two explosions occurred, the atrocious nature and closeness of this event impacted me in a way that I know at least 26,000 other people share.  I was one of the runners.
April 17, 2013
Mostly Quiet on the Western Front

While the horrific bombing at the Boston Marathon has brought concerns about terrorism back to the forefront of national attention, it is worth remembering that terrorism inside the United States is exceedingly rare. Over the past 40 years, just over 3 people on average have been killed by acts of terrorism per year (remove 9/11, and the average is 1.4 deaths per year).
March 16, 2013
New TSA rules? Allow the knives, lose the marshals

The TSA just can’t win. For years, it has been ridiculed and criticized for spending time and energy at screening checkpoints on low risk threats like grannies with walkers or children in diapers.
February 1, 2013
Homegrown Muslim-American Terrorism Down for Third Year in a Row

The number of homegrown terrorism incidents by Muslim-Americans has dropped for the third consecutive year, a study released Friday by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security has found.
November 29, 2012
Program Brings National Security Fellows to Duke

Two mid-career officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation began classes this fall as the first students in the new Counterterrorism and National Security Fellows Program at the Sanford School. The program is designed to give mid-career military and national security officials a deeper understanding of the policy-making process, broaden their communication and problem-solving skills and deepen their understanding of other cultures.
October 24, 2012
What the Next President Needs to Know about Countering Violent Extremism

A Bangladeshi student apparently “inspired by al-Qa’ida,” was arrested last week by the FBI for planning to set off a bomb at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “It is disturbing, but not surprising, that there continues to be a supply of these radicalized individuals around the world who have a strong desire to kill Americans,” said Duke University Associate Professor of the Practice of Public Policy David Schanzer.