The White House will unveil a broad, new strategy Thursday aimed at battling homegrown terrorism in the U.S. The program aims to empower communities by teaching local officials to recognize violent extremism and see the threat as a public safety issue, like the battle against gangs and drugs.
The plan comes as the terrorism threat against the U.S. continues to evolve. All eyes used to be trained on al-Qaida in Pakistan. But more recently the attacks have come from violent extremists here in the U.S. who picked up radical ideas from the Internet. Those plots, though less spectacular, are the ones the Obama administration is trying to fend off.
“What we have to do is be prepared for these different types of approaches that al-Qaida is pursuing,” John Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, told NPR in an interview about the plan. “The large attacks, the small attacks, the groups that are operating together and the individuals who may be vulnerable to these types of entreaties.”
New Partners
The 20-page White House strategy — entitled “Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States” — puts some meat on a bare-bones outline the administration released four months ago. In that August dispatch, the White House laid out broad initiatives for preventing the spread of violent extremism in the United States. That plan, just seven pages long, was criticized for being thin on details.