Rise of far-right violence leads some to call for realignment of post-9/11 national security priorities

By Greg Miller August 5 at 7:40 PM

The United States continues to employ a staggering arsenal of armed forces, unmanned drones, intelligence agencies and sweeping domestic authorities to contain a threat — Islamist terrorism — that has claimed about 100 lives on American soil since the nation mobilized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

No remotely comparable array of national power has been directed against the threat now emerging from the far right, a loose but lethal collection of ideologies whose adherents have killed roughly the same number of people in the United States, post-9/11, as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State combined.

The disparity is a source of growing alarm for officials and experts, some of whom now say the United States is overdue for a realignment of national security priorities as violence on the far right escalates.

In the aftermath of a pair of attacks that left dozens dead or wounded in Texas and Ohio over the weekend, a roster of former high-ranking counterterrorism officials issued a statement Sunday saying that domestic terrorism should be treated “as high a priority as countering international terrorism has become since 9/11.”

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