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HughPickens.com [hughpickens.com] writes:

National Security experts Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin write in the NYT that in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris, most Americans probably feel despair, and a presentiment that it is only a matter of time before something similar happens here. "But such anxiety is unwarranted. In fact, it’s a mistake to assume that America’s security from terrorism at home is comparable to Europe’s [nytimes.com]. For many reasons, the United States is a significantly safer place. While vigilance remains essential, no one should panic." According to Simon and Benjamin the slaughter in France depended on four things: easy access to Paris, European citizens happy to massacre their compatriots, a Euro-jihadist infrastructure to supply weapons and security agencies that lacked resources to monitor the individuals involved - problems the United States does not have — at least not nearly to the degree that Europe does, undermining its ability to defend itself.

For example, Europe’s external border controls allow for free border-crossing inside most of the European Union [wikipedia.org], making it life simple for criminals. But the United States doesn’t have this problem. Pretty much anyone coming to the United States from Middle Eastern war zones or the radical underground of Europe would need to come by plane, and, since 9/11, we have made it tough for such people to fly to the United States. The United States has another advantage: an intelligence, law enforcement and border-control apparatus that has been vastly improved since the cataclysm of 9/11 [dhs.gov]. Post-9/11 visa requirements and no-fly lists weed out most bad actors, and both the Bush and Obama administrations demanded that countries in our visa waiver program provide data on extremists through information-sharing pacts called HSPD-6 agreements. "None of this should lead American authorities, or the American people, to settle into a false sense of security," conclude Simon and Benjamin adding that "what the Paris attacks show is that the world needs America’s intelligence and security resources even more than its military might."

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