The White House has issued a list of 78 terrorist attacks, saying most were underreported. The Trump administration, under fire for immigration restrictions and other policies it says are designed to curb terrorism, has portrayed the news media and other institutions as playing down the threat.
But the list, which was released on Monday night and details episodes from September 2014 to December 2016, includes dozens of attacks that were covered heavily in the news media, including by The New York Times. (Examples are included in the list below.)
Just as striking was what the list excluded: attacks targeting Muslims, who make up the overwhelming majority of victims of Islamist terrorism.
The list does not mention, for instance, two suicide bombings in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed dozens in November 2015, or the wave of Boko Haram attacks across northern Nigeria, which have been among the world’s deadliest terrorist assaults.
Though there have been many attacks in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, the list mentions only one: a June 2016 bombing that killed Nepali and Indian security contractors. The list describes the target as “a bus carrying Canadian Embassy guards,” which is correct but in keeping with the document’s emphasis on Western targets — a focus that is sometimes misleadingly narrow.
Prominent attacks carried out by non-Muslims are also conspicuously omitted. In June 2015, Dylann S. Roof opened fire in a predominantly black church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine. That November, three people were shot to death at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs. Robert L. Dear Jr., describing himself as a “warrior for the babies,” acknowledged that he had carried out the attack, but he was later declared mentally unfit to stand trial.
Right-wing violence has been rising in the United States, according to a recent report by the New America Foundation, and has in some years claimed more lives than Islamist attacks in the country.
The White House’s list, by focusing on a significant but narrow slice of terrorism, feeds into perceptions that the administration is seeking to target Muslims with other policies, particularly its immigration restrictions against predominantly Muslim countries.
Here is the list from the White House, along with our references to news coverage. Some names from the list have been edited to correct spelling.
MELBOURNE, Australia
When: September 2014
Target: Two police officers wounded in knife attack
To read the entire article click here: New York Times