If your eye is on terrorism, the target is always moving

If your eye is on terrorism, the target is always moving

The recent unsuccessful attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day over Detroit has inspired some bizarre reactions from people who should know better, from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s statement two days later that “the system worked” to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s assertion three days ago that America “had no domestic attacks” under President George W. Bush.

We took Napolitano to the woodshed in a Dec. 29 editorial. “Saturday Night Live” skewered the former New York mayor with an observation — we’re paraphrasing — that everyone knew we’d forget about 9/11 sooner or later; we just didn’t expect Giuliani to be the first.

What are we missing?

If there is a lesson from any of this, it is that we as a nation — a nation of people and a national security apparatus — seem to have learned little or forgotten much about the threats facing the nation that seemed so obvious eight years ago when the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks toppled both World Trade Center towers and killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Or maybe it’s just that the enemy is growing and evolving faster than the people’s ability to follow and the security apparatus’ ability to cope.

Consider that the terrorism plot that failed continues to get a lot more attention — at least political attention — than the one that succeeded. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to ignite his underwear bomb was foiled by passengers and crew on Christmas Day, just as shoe bomber Richard Reid was foiled in December 2001, when he attempted to bring down a trans-Atlantic flight from Paris to Miami. Meanwhile, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi succeeded in his attack, and is getting a lot less attention.

Potential disaster

To be sure, it is difficult to imagine the fallout if Abdulmutallab had been successful and a plane with 300 passengers rained down on Detroit in pieces large and small, ala Lockerbie, Scotland. It is worth noting that Detroit has one of the largest concentrations of Middle Eastern immigrants in the country. Imagine if, as clean-up got underway and stories were broadcast about Detroit families whose happy anticipation of kids arriving home for the holiday had turned to grief, some segments of Detroit’s non-Muslim population had been inspired to go on a rampage. Some people could have been killed for no other reason than they “looked Muslim?” A Mosque or two (Qurans and all) might have been torched in Detroit.

The bomber would not have only killed 300 people, crippled holiday air travel, terrorized a city and demoralized a nation, he would have provided anti-Muslim scenes from the American heartland, scenes that would have played on al Jazerra for days and be on the Internet forever.

Were Abdulmutallab’s handlers thinking that far ahead? We can only guess.

Well-planned attack

We do know that al-Balawi’s handlers were thinking ahead. He had ingratiated himself with a Jordanian intelligence analyst and dangled in front of the CIA a tantalizing proposition. He could give them information that would facilitate the elimination of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s No. 2 man, long a high-value target. It was enough to get al-Balawi invited inside a CIA base camp in Afghanistan’s Khost province. When approached by a security guard, he detonated a bomb killing himself, his Jordanian sponsor and seven CIA employees or contractors. He may have done even more damage but for the security guard’s intervention.

None of us can imagine the damage that attack has done to CIA operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The knowledge of operations in that area that died with those men and women is inestimable.

Who dropped the ball?

But getting back to Christmas Day, obviously balls were dropped that allowed Abdulmutallab to even get on a plane bound from Amsterdam to Detroit. There are people who should be identified as having failed and who should be fired. That said, the only people who have gotten fired in connection with some past disasters are those who warned of the impending disasters, but this is supposed to be a new era.

Congressional hearings will be held. President Barack Obama announced about a dozen changes designed to increase airport security and to break down walls that inhibit the wider and quicker distribution of intelligence reports and to encourage interagency and international partnerships to analyze reports.

As encouraging as that might be, the reality is that the target is moving. Consider the five young Washington, D.C.-area men who were arrested in Pakistan Dec. 8 and who have been accused of going there to plan “terrorist activities.” Consider Abdulmutallab’s background as a child of privilege growing up in Yemen and educated in Great Britain. Consider reports that there are any number of German-born or -reared Muslims who have been radicalized and are being trained in the Middle East for terrorist missions. Consider the growth of al-Qaida-linked groups in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa that are encouraging young men to reach beyond their regional turf wars and join in assaults against the West.

If Washington politicians obsess about Abdulmutallab’s failure instead of concentrating on the broader issues of terrorism and why the number of potential terrorists seems to be growing, the likelihood of future attacks on the United States specifically and the West in general will grow. And some will inevitably succeed.