Perhaps people have decided to go back to sleep, September 11, Bali and Madrid were abberations, the threat is overstated by our own governments and every policy decision is intended to consolidate their power using ficticious enemies, be it Nazism, Communism or "Islamism".
Maybe the cries of driving the Jews into the sea and getting young people to kill themselves just to murder innocent people has gotten to me. Perhaps the talk of Bin Laden and his idological ilk about avenging the crusades and taking the violence to the west for years sunk through into my brain when they started getting serious and blowing up Australians partying in Bali, a place of no apparent significance to the terrorists and an attack on "white meat" that had nothing to do with any of their "grievances".
Maybe you are right, these groups are not a threat, if they were supressed so very well by thuggish dictatorships in the Arab world how could they ever even aspire to take their war to the next level. Is it so inconcievable that with weapons of tremendous destructive power substantial damage could be visited upon mankind.
I am not talking about a clash of civilizations I am talking about a group which is a vast minority within a religion. Those who operate as true nternational terrorists are a minority within that minority. So you have a few thousand individuals intent on causing damage with significant funds at their disposal and the ideological motivation behind it. You cannot bomb these individuals out of existence, effective counter-terrorism measures must be enacted that do not infringe on the individual rights of citizens and there must always be proper oversight.
The fact is that some countries (notably Pakistan) have weapons which could kill millions of people and are in such a delicate political situation with regards to these fringe groups. If such a group, with enough money and just a few members was to obtain these weapons they would not hesitate to use them, this would be very bad for everybody.
There should be an open and measured discussion of these problems that lays them out on the table so that they can be dealt with without the fear mongering and politiking. I think that the actual threat is not explained properly in the media and the entire "terror alert level" is a load of rubbish, one can gather more from listening to what is said and what is known than any sensationalist rubbish. So I would like to see faster trials for those in Gitmo, the utter farce of the beurocrats trying to nail an effective legal system hardly inspires faith in their ability to counter an elusive enemy. I would like to see stronger alliances formed with countries throughout Asia. This polarity between people literally seems to be one of world view, one where the threat from terrorism is understated and one where it is overstated. I would much rather move against an opponent with too much than too little so I guess that I fall into that camp.
Check it;
http://internet-haganah.com/jihadi/salafy.html,
http://memri.org/