1/11/10

Fareed Zakaria reminds us, "The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction."  This weekend's continuing coverage of the failed underpants bombing saw several prominent conservatives sink to an unprecedented depth of hysteria and nonsense. If taken seriously,  such responses would risk turning a failed attack into a successful one.

If we are to fight terrorists successfully, we as a nation must keep our poise and  learn from this failed attempt.  Congress should work to aid the administration, by using its hearings on the attempt to put together a pragmatic plan for improving our security at home.  As President Obama declared in his speech last week, the U.S. must move forward with the recognition that "great and proud nations don't hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want, and so long as I am President, we will never hand them that victory."

On terrorism, conservatives move from politics of fear to politics of nonsense.  Over the weekend, core elements of the conservative foreign policy establishment shifted from fear-mongering to nonsense-peddling, making claims with absolutely no basis in reality.  In an absurd illustration of this shift, Keep America Safe - the outfit designed to protect the abysmal legacy of the Bush administration on counterterrorism - released a video attacking the Obama administration's response to the failed underpants bombing, complete with a ticking clock and an explosion at the video's conclusion.  Sadly, throughout the weekend, other conservatives have adopted this same hyperbolic rhetoric:

Liz Cheney: Liz Cheney went on ABC's "This Week," alleging that the Obama administration was caught off guard by terrorist activity in Yemen, despite the Administration's year-long, close scrutiny of precisely that issue. On Sunday, Cheney said "after the president's press conference, when you had John Brennan and Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano brief, they both said they were surprised that Al Qaida in Yemen was operational."

In fact, as the President's chief homeland security and terrorism advisor John Brennan said on Fox News last weekend, "We've worked with the Yemeni government closely since the first day of this administration." Assistance to Yemen in Obama's first year rose from 8.4 million dollars to 40.3 million dollars, nearly a five-fold increase.  [Liz Cheney, 1/10/10. John Brennan, 1/03/10 IPS, 1/06/10]

Rep. Peter Hoekstra: On CBS's Face the Nation, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R - MI) inflated the role of former Guantanamo detainees and seemed to forget the haphazard way in which the Bush Administration had released those who are now in Yemen: "The second thing that came out of Yemen was that this was -- you know, that the core of Al Qaida in the Arabian peninsula are people that have been released from Gitmo. Yet in December, the president released more individuals from Gitmo." Unfortunately, the roots of this problem lie, as one Adminstration official put it to reporter Greg Sargent, in Bush administration failures to do "the work of screening detainees slated for release that the Obama administration is doing," work that includes a task force for review detainees' cases, as well as actual record-keeping efforts that did not exist under the Bush administration. The White House says it has "been presented with no information that suggests that any of the detainees transferred by this administration have returned to the fight." [Rep. Peter Hoekstra, 1/10/10. Greg Sargent, 1/07/10. NY Times, 1/7/10.]

Rep. Peter King: When asked what concrete recommendations he would make to strengthen America's counterterrorism policy, Rep. Peter King (R - NY) said "I think one main thing would be to -- just himself to use the word terrorism more often." As the Washington Monthly's Steven Benen noted, this is "why Republicans aren't taken more seriously when it comes to the substance of public policy." [Rep. Peter King, 1/06/10. Steve Benen, 1/06/10]

Republican Massachusetts Senate Candidate Scott Brown:  Echoing the fear-hyping tactics of Keep America Safe, Republican Massachusetts Senate Candidate Scott Brown filmed a commercial in which he said "Some people believe our Constitution exists to grant rights to terrorists who want to harm us. I disagree. Our laws are meant to protect this nation, not our enemies."  In fact, as former Republican Congressman from Oklahoma Mickey Edwards has said, our constitution is one of our best assets for bringing terrorists to justice: "Critics "scowl and declare that our American courts will not, or can not, convict terrorists.  They seem pretty damned certain of that.  Which is weird since nearly 200 terrorists have been convicted in our federal courts in the last nine years (that's 65 times as many as have been convicted by military commissions)." [Scott Brown, via Politico, 1/10/10. Former Congressman Mickey Edwards, 1/05/10]

National security experts agree -- hysteria plays into the hands of Al Qaeda. As foreign policy commentator Fareed Zakaria reminds us, "The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction. Its real aim is not to kill the hundreds of people directly targeted but to sow fear in the rest of the population. Terrorism is an unusual military tactic in that it depends on the response of the onlookers. If we are not terrorized, then the attack didn't work. Alas, this one worked very well....His mission failed entirely, killing not a single person. The suicide bomber was not even able to commit suicide. But al-Qaeda succeeded in its real aim, which was to throw the American system into turmoil. That's why the terror group proudly boasted about the success of its mission." Hunkering down and adopting a siege mentality plays directing into the hands of Al Qaeda. Marc Lynch, senior fellow at CNAS and professor at George Washington University, explains, "In fact, this risks becoming a classic case of massive overreaction playing right into the hands of a terrorist group."

Osama bin Laden himself explains in a 2004 video "We [Al Qaeda] are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah."  In the video bin Laden, referring to the fight against the Soviet Union, said, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers. We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat."  He also said Al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait" the Bush administration. Dana Milbank points out that "the dismay of the past two weeks misses a larger point: that the nature of the attack shows just how lame al-Qaeda really is...In part, we overestimated (or, in the case of the Bush administration, perhaps exaggerated) the threat from al-Qaeda. In part, the post-Sept. 11 efforts to strengthen the borders and disrupt terrorist operations have worked. Whatever the cause, al-Qaeda is now less an organization than a bunch of loosely affiliated cells." By overreacting and crediting Al Qaeda with a victory, we are only adding fuel to the fire and convincing these organizations that their efforts are succeeding. [Fareed Zakaria, 1/11/10. Marc Lynch, 1/2/10. Al Qaeda video via CNN, 11/1/2004. Washington Post, 1/10/10]

The administration and Congress have acted wisely and appropriately to fix problems, support men and women on the front lines of homeland security, and deny Al Qaeda the propaganda victory it seeks. After ordering several reviews, President Obama also told the nation, "the buck stops with me" and took a number of pragmatic steps: 

First, I'm directing that our intelligence community immediately begin assigning specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so that these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively -- not just most of the time, but all of the time. 

Second, I'm directing that intelligence reports, especially those involving potential threats to the United States, be distributed more rapidly and more widely. 

Third, I'm directing that we strengthen the analytical process, how our analysis -- how our analysts process and integrate the intelligence that they receive. 

And finally, I'm ordering an immediate effort to strengthen the criteria used to add individuals to our terrorist watchlists, especially the "no fly" list. 

The practical steps taken by the Obama administration will facilitate a stronger, more cohesive national security strategy. Congress will also be conducting reviews on a range of topics, including what happened to the detainees that were released from Guantanamo Bay by the Bush administration. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, explained on Face the Nation that "the Senate is now engaged in a huge study on the interrogation and detention of the some thirty three high-value detainees. What happen to them? How were they treated? What success did the interrogation have? Were the laws followed? That kind of thing. And we should have the report completed within the next three months or so."

Fareed Zakaria explained the benefits of a more staid, meticulous approach: "the public would know that any attack, successful or not, would trigger an automatic, serious process to analyze the problem and fix it. Politicians might find it harder to use every such event for political advantage. The people on the front lines of homeland security would not get demoralized as they watched politicians and the media bash them and grandstand with little knowledge." [President Obama, 1/7/10. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Face the Nation, 1/10/10. Fareed Zakaria, 1/11/10]

What We're Reading

The latest causalities from Afghanistan include an imbedded British journalist and a US Marine, whose convoy drove over an IED.

Iraqi victims of a 2007 shooting involving a Blackwater (now known as Xe) private security guards claimed they were forced by their attorneys to accept unfavorable settlements instead of suing.

Yemen's president vowed to track down al-Qaeda militants who refuse to renounce terrorism, but also offered to seek dialogue with those members who were willing to lay down their arms. Yemeni Security Forces are also unsure if their bureaucracy can handle the proposed infusion of support from Western governments.

The Air Force and other branches are bracing for the deluge of video intelligence coming from pilotless drones as they are increasingly being used.

The attack on the national soccer team from Togo, as it traveled to a soccer tournament in Angola, stirs concerns about security at the upcoming World Cup in South Africa.

Mexican authorities appear dispirited following a New Years spat of drug violence at the border city of Tijuana. 

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's tinkering with devaluation for his nation's currency, in an attempt to shore up government finances and economic growth before upcoming elections, is causing severe economic anxiety for Venezuelans.

A separation-of-powers political drama is unfolding in Argentina as President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner attempts to pay her government's debt by tapping central bank reserves.

President Obama's Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, Robert R. King, assailed the North Korean government for its "appalling" record on human rights, as Pyongyang continued to detain a U.S. citizen for illegal entry.

An uproar among Muslims in Malaysia over the use of the word Allah by Christians spread over with the firebombing and vandalizing of several churches, increasing tensions at a time of political turmoil.

A nationwide gun ban took effect in the Philippines to stave off political violence as elections draw closer, with several candidates for office already killed since the New Year.

The political compromises made by pro-American, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri show the limits of western influence in that Middle Eastern country.

Commentary of the Day

Rob Hughes explains why soccer players who perform on the international stage will always be targets for terrorism.

The New York Times describes another cost of the increasing privatization of national security is not just a lack of accountability to the victims of contractors, but also for the rights of contractors themselves.

James Carroll reminds us of the waste our military imposes on itself by training elite military officers to maintain a nuclear deterrent that is based on an outdated Cold War security strategy.