Emerson: Not at all. If anything, the threat is greater now than before the World Trade Center bombing as the numbers of these groups and their members expands. In fact, I would say that the infrastructure now exists to carry off twenty simultaneous World Trade Center-type bombings across the United States. And as chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons become available to them, the threat becomes ever more ominous. Just because someone holding a gun to your head doesn't pull the trigger should not be understood as the threat not existing. It would be suicidal to permit our national security to depend on the good will or rationality of radical fundamentalists.
MEQ: And in the meantime, what are they doing?
Emerson: They use the United States as a base to spread the word of extremism, to proselytize, and to recruit new members to their interpretation of Islam. They also make efforts to become entrenched and legitimate so that they can provide a base here for the entire panoply of radical policies inimical to the democracy, pluralism, and respect for the individual that characterize Western political life.
In that regard, the Islamists make the Mob look tame. Maybe we should turn loose Guido and his cousins to hunt down the Osamas of the world?!