reflectivepundit

Republicans Try to Exploit Failed Attack by Underwear-Bomber

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Republicans did not lose time to attack President Obama and his administration after Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallab, a passenger on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, tried to detonate PETN, a powerful plastic explosive he had hidden in his underpants.

To begin with, Representative Peter King and others criticized the president for not addressing the nation right after the failed attempt on Christmas Day. It is far from clear that this would have been the right move. Why add to the media hype and reward the masterminds of the latest terror plot with the highest level attention they crave? After all, the attempt failed. [As an aside, one wonders why the same people who are so eager to go public with their criticism of Obama remained silent, when President George W. Bush failed to pay attention to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, a real catastrophe…]

More troubling are the Cheney-like voices who exploit the failed attempt by the would-be underwear bomber to intensify their attacks on the current administration’s counterterrorism policy. An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal is a case in point. It calls Janet Napolitano “Secretary of Homeland Anxiety.” If anyone deserves this name, it is the first Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge who took his cue for raising the color-coded terror threat alerts from a White House that was aware that public fear of further terrorism increased the president’s approval ratings and his chances for reelection in 2004.  

As for the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts, they are mostly continuations of measures put in place in the more than seven post-9/11 years of the Bush administration. That is true for airport and aviation security as it is for the intelligence about possible terrorists in pertinent data bases. From what is known so far Abdulmuttallab’s name was on the list of persons with alleged connections to terrorists but not on the no-fly roster. Obviously, it does not make sense to have more than half-a-million names on a general list of somewhat suspect persons without checking that list constantly against important developments and new information—in this case the alarm triggered by the would-be bombers own father. Moreover, these lists should be shared with allies and equally vulnerable countries.

Perspectives on Homegrown Jihadists

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In the last decade, when radical extremism among Muslims in the United Kingdom and other European countries spread and resulted in terrorist violence in Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, many observers assumed that American Muslims were not susceptible to be infected by the virus of extremism and to calls for joining the jihad.

After all, there were and are significant differences between Muslim minorities here and there and their host countries. Contrary to North America’s tradition of immigration from around the globe, the influx of people of different races and different cultural and religious backgrounds is a fairly new phenomenon in Europe with their homogenous societies. And whereas American Muslims are better educated and part of a higher economic strata than the American populace collectively, Muslim newcomers in Europe are well behind native majorities in terms of education and socio-economic background. As a result, American Muslims tend to be part of the mainstream of society whereas European Muslims tend to be alienated from the mainstream of their respective societies.

Lost in such comparisons and assumptions are important lessons to be learned from the history of modern terrorism: Those who establish or join terrorist movements, groups or cells and those who are inspired by radical extremist demagoguery to act as lone wolves tend to come from the middle- or upper middle-class—not from the under-class; they tend to be very well educated—not dropouts. Finally, they may or may not have experienced discrimination because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or any other marker. There are differences in terms of background in that, for example, left-extremists tend to be significantly higher educated and better off than right-extremists. Based on research about the background of suicide bombers and other terrorists in the Middle East, the 9/11 Commission’s findings about the 9/11 hijackers, and open source information about the background of various jihadis, it seems that the latter fit the well-educated, not poor category.

Army Major Nidal Hasan who killed 13 and injured 30 fellow-soldiers at Fort Hood in early November, is a good example: A very well educated man with a middle-class background who moved up the Army’s promotional ladder.

Similarly, the five young Muslim men, who disappeared recently from their homes in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and were arrested in Pakistan before they could realize their alleged plan to join Al Qaeda’s fight against U.S. troops, are well educated off-springs of middle class families.   

The Surge in Afghanistan: Consistent With Obama’s Campaign Speeches

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Tom Hayden, one of the most prominent leaders of the Anti-Vietnam Movement of the 1960s, wrote the other day in The Nation, “It's time to strip the Obama sticker off my car. Obama's escalation in Afghanistan is the last in a string of disappointments.” His sentiment is far from unique among Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters during the presidential campaign.

They either did not pay attention to candidate Obama’s stump speeches during the campaign or they did not want to hear and believe what their candidate said with respect to what he called “a war of necessity”—Afghanistan.  Otherwise, they couldn’t have been too surprised about the president’s finally revealed Afghanistan strategy.

On October 22, 2008, shortly before he won the presidential election, Barack Obama said in a speech in Richmond, Virginia, what he stated in earlier and later stump speeches: 

“Ending the [Iraq] war will help us deal with Afghanistan…In 2002, I said we should focus on finishing the fight against Osama bin Laden. Throughout this campaign, I have argued that we need more troops and more resources to win the war in Afghanistan, and to confront the growing threat from al Qaeda along the Pakistani border…”

“Make no mistake: we are confronting an urgent crisis in Afghanistan, and we have to act. It's time to heed the call from General McKiernan and others for more troops. That's why I'd send at least two or three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan. We also need more training for Afghan Security forces, more non-military assistance to help Afghans develop alternatives to poppy farming, more safeguards to prevent corruption, and a new effort to crack down on cross-border terrorism. Only a comprehensive strategy that prioritizes Afghanistan and the fight against al Qaeda will succeed, and that's the change I'll bring to the White House.”

So, the president decided to do what he said as candidate.

However, it is far from clear whether the positive results of the surge in Iraq can be repeated in Afghanistan by deploying 30,000 more troops there in addition to several thousand additional troops from a variety of other NATO members and the more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers already added on President Obama’s watch earlier this year.