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Posted on 05/08/2010 8:53:18 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
The 53 hours from the primed-to-explode Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square to the nick-of-time arrest of Faisal Shahzad underlined the single undeniable truth of 21st-century terrorism. The best defense against a terrorist attack is not the CIA, the FBI, Predator drones or Jack Bauer, but the New York Police Department.
The FBI lost Shahzad on his way to Kennedy International Airport on Monday night and his name on the do-not-fly list failed to prevent him from initially boarding an Emirates jet to Dubai. But from the moment a street vendor alerted a mounted police officer in Times Square about white smoke pouring out of the Pathfinder, the NYPD appears to have done everything right -- from disarming the car bomb to discovering the identity of the alleged terrorist.
Five years ago, when I audited a terrorism course at Harvard's Kennedy School (taught by White House veterans Richard Clarke and Rand Beers), the enduring lesson that I carried away was a New Yorker's pride in the exploits of the NYPD. There is no single explanation for the continuing superiority of the police over the feds.
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Part of it is undoubtedly due to the linguistic talents available in the world's greatest city of immigrants and part of it (my favorite theory) may be freedom from congressional oversight and the bureaucratic defensiveness that comes with it. What remains difficult, even as the immediate threat has passed, is to talk honestly about the threat of terrorist attacks. Without minimizing the risk that the next bomb could go off, it is also easy to give way to panicky clichés about do-it-yourself al-Qaeda acolytes and dirty bombs in New York harbor.
"Being lucky can't be our national security strategy," doomster Peter Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a CNN interview. "We were lucky on Christmas Day. We were lucky last week." A ranking member of the Henny Penny school of terrorism commentary, Hoekstra went on to say that the plot "wasn't foiled by our law enforcement or by our intelligence community. It was foiled because it appears that whatever training [the car bomber] got in Waziristan wasn't very good. Again, we were lucky."
Hoekstra illustrates the way that alarmists dominate the public debates on terrorism. Anyone who has seen the raw intelligence and received classified briefings can easily concoct chilling scenarios, but it takes experience to put these fears and fragments into perspective. The problem is that after 9/11 nobody is rewarded for claiming that "the system worked" or pointing out that the intelligence community has been prone to issuing elevated threat levels regardless of what is actually occurring. Imagine daring to predict in the months after Sept. 11 that al-Qaeda would not be able to launch a single successful major terrorist attack on American soil for, at minimum, eight years. Such optimism would have been a career-ending move for any public official or pundit -- a surefire way to be denounced as dangerously naïve or even an apologist for Islamic fanaticism.
Of course, blessedly in this case, Pollyanna rather than Cassandra turned out to be right. There is something taboo about even acknowledging this eight-year run of good fortune. Far safer to follow the whistling-past-a-graveyard rituals of public debate by demanding eternal vigilance and warning of a dangerous complacency. Discussions of Islamic terrorism are almost inevitably punctuated by someone bellowing, "Don't you understand? They're trying to kill us." This is the moment to acknowledge that both the Bush and Obama administrations do deserve credit for presumably thwarting terrorist assaults that are still shrouded in secrecy.
While terrorism experts probably exaggerated Osama bin Laden's ability to mount a sophisticated follow-up attack after 9/11, U.S. counterterrorism and law enforcement agencies also grew far more adept at playing defense. But sooner or later, America needs to have a robust debate over whether the Islamic terrorist threat should continue to define our approach to national security and foreign policy
In 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the toppling of the Twin Towers, George W. Bush declared in an Oval Office address, "The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, and the calling of our generation. Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not since the start of the Cold War." This was the core of the Bush worldview -- the belief that the battle against al-Qaeda was the equivalent of the Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis all rolled into one. Just six years into the new millennium, the president was warning that defeating the jihadists would represent "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century." No V-J Day, no opening of the gates of the Berlin Wall, no victory parades – just war without end, amen.
Barack Obama's approach to terrorism is surprisingly similar to that of his predecessor. His rhetoric is far less inflammatory, but the military response may be more muscular. Whether it is the expansion of the use of Predator drones to carry out -- no euphemisms, please -- airborne assassinations in Pakistan or the increased military commitment to Afghanistan, the Obama administration has not been shy about testing the limits of the president's Nobel Peace Prize.
There are, to be sure, significant breaks with the Bush legacy. Particularly with his ballyhooed speech in Egypt last June ("I've come to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect."), Obama has been animated by the faith that his words and his life story can sway the Islamic world. From an explicit ban on torture to the president's sputtering efforts to close Guantánamo, Obama has also tried to eliminate aspects of American policy that inflame the world without enhancing U.S. security.
But what the president has never done (perhaps partly because he does not want to inflame the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party) is to articulate clearly his overall worldwide strategy to counter Islamic terrorism. Sure, there have been pieces, particularly the president's speech at West Point last December that predicated a time-limited troop surge on greater competence and less corruption (ha!) from the Karzai government. But not once since becoming president has Obama tried to ... well ... connect all the dots.
Is the heavy reliance on Predator drones in Pakistan making us safer -- or creating new jihadists even as it disrupts al-Qaeda's leadership? Is there anything U.S. policy can do to stabilize Pakistan and buttress its weak civilian government? Are we pursuing an effective strategy in Afghanistan or just giving a rhetorical gloss to a policy that is, in reality, little more than muddling through? And is there a logic to a $700 billion defense budget when what we seem to fear the most is an SUV loaded with propane gas and fertilizer in Times Square?
These are knotty questions that demand more than glib and ideologically predictable answers. But Obama, despite his speechmaking gifts, has for the most part avoided addressing them in public. In fact, a case can be made that Obama's guiding national security philosophy (such as it is) is to speak softly and carry a big stick. That concept might even be labeled the Obama Doctrine -- if Teddy Roosevelt had not appropriated it more than a century ago.
Label all men as white and make them wear red shirts.
National Security Strategy (or lack thereof) ping.
Obama’s terrorism strategy...
Hope the bombs DON’T GO OFF!
Hell. At this point, I expect Obama to have Napolitano say something like, “If only the next act would remember to prime the fusing device and set the timer and wear THIS disguise and use things that passers-by wouldn’t recognize that are dangerous and........”
He NEEDS our deaths. Like Clinton needed gun violence to push his agenda.
The fact that he’s not doing squat is the evidence.
Scrape. Bow. Rinse. Repeat.
Obama has no strategy—he is a cipher. Nothing more than an empty (headed) suit who can’t throw three words together in intelligent fashion without the use of a teleprompter.
WE need to prepare ourselves.
Now.
“What Is Obama’s Terrorism Strategy?”
Quite simply put “Welcome brothers, your goal is my goal. I am working daily for the destruction of the oppressive, racist, Christian country by woking within the system, and you are working for the very same goals by ‘street action’.”
1. Wait for a major attack.
2. Clamp down on the American people.
“What is 0’s Strategy?”
To keep his left arm straight and work on his short game.
Strategy A: Sit back. Relax. Let someone else worry about it!
Strategy B: No such thing as terrorists! It’s people who facilitate man-made disasters. We’ll get back with you on a strategy when the committee I set-up figures it out!
Strategy C: Arugula anyone?
?
Obamas strategy is blame white males as tea party terrorists. Never mention islam and terrorist in the same sentamce. Praise islam and denounce the USA and Christinatity as a hateful, racist, and bigoted country who, if attacked by islamic terrorists, had it comming.
Haven't you been paying attention?
HOPE!
The deeper question is: Where are the critics on this.
Are we devoid of knowledgeable people willing to speak out on what is going on?
There is more than just one Usurper involved here!
Don’t live in New York.
Yep, depending on luck is the strategy. In this case the bomb didn’t go off. The underwear bomber was having trouble with his bomb, which gave the alert passenger time to subdue him. That alert passenger would be in violation of the new regulations requiring people be seated for an hour before landing. That new policy was the response to the underwear guy.
Try again.
After reading this dreck, I vow never to take Shapiro’s advice for handling terrorism. Bush inflamed the Muslim world, huh? I suppose Bush caused the four or five attacks as well as 9/11 before he was elected president. Shapiro is an ass.
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