May 2, 2011 - Osama Bin Laden,

After ten years of searching, the United States finally found who they were looking for, Osama

Bin Laden. Bin Laden was the man responsible the deaths of three thousand people during the

September eleventh terrorist attacks. According to history.com, he quickly became public enemy

number one. He was also responsible for starting a group called Al-Qaida, which operated out of

Iraq and allegedly worked with its president Saddam Hussein. This led to an all-out invasion of

Iraq, but after his death and the death of Saddam the war in Iraq dwindled and finally ended

months later.

December 15, 2011 - The war in Iraq is declared over

After Saddam and Bin Laden were killed, there was no reason to continue the war in Iraq.

According to Greg Jaffes article Tell me how this Ends, President Obama who thought the

war was a dumb war and a war of passion, wanted to get the ball rolling and bring the troops

home. Obama wanted to make Iraq a stable country before leaving, and wanted to build up the

education system, trade and commerce. According to Greg Jaffe, the ending that Obama did not

come true. Instead he left iraq weak and after the United States pulled out the Shiite dominated

government Iraqs vice president who happened to be Sunni. This inevitably led to a unstable

government due to the fact that a ethnic cleansing was taking place.
September 11, 2012 - Terrorist attack on a consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi

Due to all the political instability in Iraq and the middle east, many terrorist groups and attacks

started popping up after the US pulled out of Iraq. One event that stood out amongst others was,

the attack on a US embassy in Benghazi. According to CNN.com, there were two navy seal

contractors and Ambassador Christopher Stevens were killed in the attack. After the attacks a

series of hearing took place to see if this event could have been avoided. One of the prominent

figures to come up in these hearings was secretary of state Hilary Clinton. According to CNN,

she stated in her testimony that her and her team took every precaution to ramp up security. It

was later found out that she lied and that major cuts to security had occurred before the attacks.

The attacks in Benghazi was just a start, it set in motion a series of attacks to follow in the future.

April 15, 2013 - Two bombs explode near the finish line of the Boston Marathon

After the attacks in Benghazi many more attacks started happening in the world. A significant

one that happened in the US was the Boston marathon bombings. In Brian Ross article Boston

Bombing Day One, he states that two brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Muslim

decent planned to bomb the Boston marathon on April 15th. They planted two bombs killing
three people and injuring 264 others. After that the man hunt was on, the brothers killed a police

officer to obtain his gun but failed to get it out of its holster. On April19th they got into a gun

battle with police, Tamerlan was killed and Dzhokhar was later captured. This was just the

beginning; more and more Islamic extremists would later show their faces.

June 5, 2014 - Rise of ISIS

The crumbling infrastructure of Iraq made it easy for an Islamic extremist group to take over. In

Ian Fishers article In rise of ISIS, he states that four years ago ISIS was nothing but a small

group who no one took serious, but now due to their cruelty and desire for territory they have

broken the boarders of Syria and Iraq and now they control it all. They are known for public

executions and their beliefs are spreading all over the world. They have taken responsibility for

many terrorist attacks throughout the world, and one that took place in California which is very

close to home.

December 2, 2015 - Islamic Terrorist inspired act in San Bernardino,

In Paul Shinkmans article The Evolving Extremist Threat, he states that, ISIS has inspired

many jihads throughout the world, and the one in California is nothing short of gruesome. At a
Christmas party two Islamic extremists Farook and Malik killed fourteen people and injured

twenty others in the name of Islam. After that incident, they escaped in an SUV where they

ended up have a shootout with police officers. They were eventually gunned down and neither

survived. This was all set-in motion because of the instability in Iraq that gave power to ISIS,

who is very influential to Muslims.

This time line has showed me that the world is not a safe place. There are many ideologies out

there that will kill to get their point across. The world has obtain new and better ways to dealing

with attacks like these, but they have been in ways where we had to learn after the fact. I think

its better to be proactive than being reactive.

Citations

History.com Staff. (2009). Osama bin Laden. Retrieved April 27, 2017, from

http://www.history.com/topics/osama-bin-laden

Jaffe, G. (2016, June 3). 'Tell me how this ends': Obama's struggle with the hard questions of

war. Retrieved April 27, 2017, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/obama-

legacy/ending-war-in-iraq.html

Benghazi Mission Attack Fast Facts. (2016, August 31). Retrieved April 27, 2017, from

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/10/world/benghazi-consulate-attack-fast-facts/

Ross, B. (2016, April 8). Boston Bombing Day 1: The Stunning Stop the Killers Made After the

Attack. Retrieved April 27, 2017, from http://abcnews.go.com/US/boston-bombing-day-

stunning-stop-killers-made-attack/story?id=38335067

Fisher, I. (2015, November 18). In Rise of ISIS, No Single Missed Key but Many Strands of

Blame. Retrieved April 27, 2017, from

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/world/middleeast/in-rise-of-isis-no-single-missed-key-but-

many-strands-of-blame.html?_r=0

Shinkman, P. D. (2015, December 07). The Evolving Extremist Threat. Retrieved April 27, 2017,

from https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/12/07/san-bernardino-shooting-shows-

evolving-isis-threat?int=news-rec