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.

Just as there was a chance to prevent the 9/11 attacks, if intelligence on some of the hijackers and FBI agents’ field reports had been coordinated and analyzed, the available information about Abdulmuttallab (his father’s alarm in reaction to his son’s embracing of the jihadi cause, his purchase of a one-way ticket to the U.S., his traveling without checking luggage) should have been enough to follow the example of U.K. authorities that stopped him from entering the country.

Far more important than fighting over terminology (I actually prefer the term terrorism rather than “radical extremism”) are urgently needed improvements in the way intelligence is shared, analyzed, and utilized in order to prevent terrorism. Not only aviation terrorism. At this time, terrorists may well watch the heightened attention to airport and aviation security in the wake of the most recent incident to select very different targets.

As for Republicans and aviation security, Politico reminded us this morning that "[o]ver the summer, 108 House Republicans voted against the final conference report of the 2010 appropriation bill for the Department of Homeland Security, which included funding for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures."

Referring the claim of responsibility by Al Qaeda’s branch in the Arabian peninsula, the Wall Street Journal editorialized, “Al Qaeda has sent a message to the Obama Administration: You are in a war. Someone in our government needs to say clearly that they now understand the message.”

Why in heaven should somebody in our government say that they now understand the message? In their many, many pre- and post-9/11 communications Al Qaeda leaders have repeated their declarations of war again and again. And the Bush administration was all too willing to respond with the “war on terrorism” that is now continued by the Obama administration.

I repeat what I have written here and elsewhere many times: Wars cannot be fought successfully against terrorists precisely because they are non-state actors without armies. Wars certainly cannot be fought against a global web of semi- or fully autonomous terrorist cells or lone wolves who are infected with the virus of hate and terror. Wars can be fought against state sponsors of terrorism.

Intelligence can pinpoint terrorist headquarters, training facilities, hiding places that then can be attacked by military forces, commandos or unmanned predators. Indeed, under President Obama’s watch predator strikes against terrorists and their supporters in Pakistan and Yemen in particular have been successful and significantly increased. On this count, the troop surge for Afghanistan, and the slow-pace troop withdrawal from Iraq, the Obama administration certainly shouldn’t be lectured by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and similar conservative voices.

Nor should the Journal’s editorial writers sell as a new insight what everyone with any interest in terrorism and counterterrorism knows for a long time, namely, as they put it, “we have to think more broadly about jihad and the potential recruitment of terrorists anywhere in the world, including inside the United States. We and our European allies have to revisit the problem of fiery imams using mosques as recruitment depots for airline suicide bombers. The close call in the airspace over Detroit gives ‘probable cause’ new meaning.”

No, we knew about this global recruitment scheme and that this sort of inspirational terrorist contagion cannot be fought in a war long before that close call on Christmas Day.

It is despicable that the House Republican Conference offers TV networks appearances by GOP lawmakers who are eager to attack the Obama administration's alleged mishandling of counterterrorism.These are the same types who pleaded for bipartisanship in matters of terrorism/counterterrorism when George W. Bush resided in the White House.

P.S.  (Dec. 30, 2009) As expected, Dick Cheney could not keep his tongue but joined the conservative chorus of Obama critics. As POLITICO reports this morning, "Former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Barack Obama on Tuesday of 'trying to pretend we are not at war' with terrorists, pointing to the White House response to the attempted sky bombing as reflecting a pattern that includes banishing the term 'war on terror' and attempting to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center."

Cheney's stubborn defense of the "war on terrorism" term plays actually into literally all terrorists' linguistic preferences; they all claim to be warriors, combatants, soldiers, members of armies or commandos who fight wars against their enemies. Why elevate them to something they are not?