Despite al Qaeda’s increasing use of the Internet to attempt to radicalize and recruit homegrown terrorists in the United States, the turnout has been tiny and mostly inept, according to a new study from the RAND Corporation.”America’s homegrown jihadist terrorists have not shown great determination or very much competence,” said Brian Michael Jenkins, the study’s author and senior adviser to the president of RAND, a nonprofit research organization.
“A careful analysis of these cases shows that the United States must remain vigilant, but not overreact.”A total of 176 Americans have been indicted, arrested or otherwise identified as jihadist terrorists or their supporters since Sept. 11, 2001. Those 176 people were involved in 82 cases, 20 of which were disclosed in 2010, versus 15 in 2009.
