I spent 35 years working to protect critical national security infrastructure against a variety of terrorist threats and immersed myself in the ways and means of terrorist threats to the U.S. During those years, there was lively debate among terrorism experts about the extent to which foreign actors could successfully infiltrate terrorist teams into the homeland.
Our war on terrorism overseas, however much it is now derided by both Left and Right, saw two important accomplishments: First, it destroyed many of the sanctuaries on which transnational terrorist groups relied; second, it sent a message to the world that we were deadly serious about crushing these groups.
We've sent a clear signal that we're no longer in the business of crushing terrorist groups or their sponsors, no matter how great a threat they pose.
Though unwilling to pull a trigger or plant a bomb, were nonetheless willing to hide terrorists from authorities.
Following Parry's analysis of other terrorist threats, I fear the answer is a resounding no.
Foundations have been laid for precisely the same kind of terroristic destabilization operations Parry lays out for the Middle Eastern terrorist groups - only these would likely be much worse because the full resources of China's Ministry of State Security and the intelligence organs of the People's Liberation Army would be deployed in their support.
Noting how federal law enforcement and counterintelligence has been prostituted to serve such ends as surveilling "Pro-life advocates, parents who protest at school board meetings, [and] traditional Latin Mass Catholics," he asks if we can now count on both to take on the "Far more difficult task of investigating actual hard-core, violent, and foreign-trained terrorists." To which I would add, are they even remotely capable of taking on highly sophisticated, Chinese state-sponsored terrorists? With Parry, I can only observe, "We are about to find out."
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