By Brigitte L. Nacos
Well before the first exit polls about “Super Tuesday’s”
primary contests and long before the first results were available, the director
of national intelligence Mike McConnell warned that al-Qaeda was improving its
capability to attack the United States again by producing militants,
including new Western recruits, capable of blending into American society and
attacking domestic targets. According to Mark
Mazetti of the New York Times, the intelligence boss told the Senate
Intelligence Committee that “Al Qaeda is gaining strength from its refuge in Pakistan and is steadily improving its ability
to recruit, train and positioning operatives capable of carrying out attacks
inside the United States.” Furthermore, the Times learned from an
intelligence source that this threat estimate “was based in part on new
evidence that Qaeda operatives in Pakistan were training Westerners,
most likely including American citizens, to carry out attacks.”
I couldn’t help but think of McConnell’s warning earlier in the day as I listened to Senator McCain’s victory speech during the night, when he promised to defeat the enemy abroad and at home. Traditionally, the majority of Americans has considered Republicans in the White House and in the Congress as tougher than Democrats, when it comes to terrorism in particular and national defense in general. Thus, it is entirely possible that another round of publicly pronounced terror threats by high officials in the homeland security community in the run-up to the November election will benefit the eventual Republican presidential nominee, most likely Senator McCain, the most hawkish of them.
The Bush administration and their staunch supporters in the “war on terror” do not deserve credit, when it comes to the real 9/11 culprits. Instead, they should be taken to task for the failed “war on terrorism” policies of the past—most of all the failure to finish and win the just war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and, later on, in the Pakistan region they were allowed to escape to. In their haste to start the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, leading administration figures lost interest in defeating the true architects of 9/11 and other catastrophic terror strikes.
It is astounding that the administration has very detailed intelligence about the activities of al-Qaeda leaders and their followers but no clue how to stop these people once and for all. If the revelation that al-Qaeda Central plots and trains recruits for another terrorist spectacular is based on clear evidence, not speculation, there must also be information on where exactly these activities take place and opportunities to finally finish the unfinished fight against bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and the rest of the al-Qaeda Central clique. That would be the real “mission accomplished” in the fight against terrorism.
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