I’m sure you saw the various developments in the war on terror this weekend – some dramatic, some disturbing.
The dramatic:
The 12 men charged in Friday’s massive police operation range in age from 19 to 43 and are residents of Toronto, Mississauga and Markham, Ont., while the five youths cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act…
Police allege the 17 were involved in a plot to stage a massive terrorist attack by fashioning explosives out of three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer — three times the quantity used in the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people in 1995.
The arrests were made after suspects tried to purchase the fertilizer from undercover investigators who were mounting a sting operation, the Toronto Star reported.
The
disturbing:
British anti-terrorist police are hunting for a "dirty" chemical bomb that could be used in an attack in Britain after a major raid failed to uncover a device they believe exists, newspapers reported on Saturday.
More than 250 officers, some wearing chemical, biological and radiological protection suits, shot one man and arrested another during a dawn raid on an east London house on Friday…
Some newspapers, citing unnamed security sources, said police believed suspected militants had made a "dirty" chemical device — a conventional bomb surrounded by toxic material that could be set off by a bomber wearing a suicide jacket.
"We are absolutely certain this device exists and could be used either by a suicide bomber or in a remote-controlled explosion," one source told the Sun newspaper.
Newspapers quoted security chiefs who they said believed an attack was imminent, with possible targets including the underground train network or pubs crowded with fans watching the soccer World Cup tournament which starts next week.
My first thoughtful and insightful bit of analysis: AIIEEEEEEGH!!!!
My second thoughtful and insightful bit of analysis...
I had thought about writing something a bit controversial and speculative recently – something in the vein of, “we’re winning the war on terror.”
Not that it has been completely won, but that nearly five years on from 9/11, al-Qaeda is a nearly impotent operation, a shadow of its former self. Its leaders are in hiding; thousands of their members have been rolled up and arrested, or whacked by our guys and predator drones. Bin Laden and Zawahiri are more active as media pundits than as murderous masterminds.
There are those who like to cite the State Department figures and say, “ah-ha, there are more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in 2003! We’re losing the war!” Human Quote Machine Larry Johnson is a regular source of this perspective.
But if you think about what our fears were on Sept. 12, 2001 – that the hijackings were just the first wave, that many more deadly attacks were on the way — we’ve seen nothing like that. (I recall sleeping in front of the television with it on, afraid that if I slept in the televisionless bedroom, I would miss something.)
Yes, there have been terrorist attacks since then, many truly horrific. Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, London, Amman.
But al-Qaeda has failed, for four years and counting, to pull off anything approaching the death toll of 9/11. I’m looking through recent attacks - Bali killed 202; the Moscow theater attack killed 120 (er, a significant number of those were from the Russian authorities’ knockout gas); the Beslan school attack left 330 dead. The Istanbul bombings killed 57, but wounded 700. The Madrid attacks killed 191 people and injured more than 1,500. The London attacks killed 56 people and injured more than 700. The Amman suicide bombings left at least 60 dead and 120 wounded.
The goal is to disrupt, intercept, and stop all terrorist attacks, of course. But a world in which al-Qaeda’s efforts kill dozens per attack, and we witness one or two major attacks per year, is exponentially better than one in which they kill thousands in each attack and can organize and execute many attacks.
All over the blogosphere this weekend, bloggers mocked the
press accounts suggesting the suspects covered a ‘broad strata’ of Canadian society.
The names of the suspects that have been released: Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid.
Well, that’s some diversity there. It’s a regular Benetton ad!
By the way, when the press insists upon saying that the suspects represent a “broad strata” when 4 out of the 11 of the released names have “abdul/abdel/abdi” in them, 2 Ahmads, 2 Saads, and 3 Mohammeds, it sends one of two messages to readers. The first is “we think you’re stupid and can’t figure out the common thread these suspects have in common”; the second is that “we in the media are stupid and can’t figure out the common thread these suspects have in common.”
So the lesson of recent years – and oh, how I pray some London cops catch the chemical vest guy if he’s out there – has been that we’re on our own in this. I don’t mean that the U.S. is alone; I mean those of us who want to follow the war on terror. To be well-informed about progress in the war on terror, you need the blogs and specialty publications. The mainstream media has lost interest in the war on terror.
Ace and Seixon laid out how our friends on the left side of the blogosphere had nothing to say about the Canadian terror arrests. Other bloggers have noted that the Canadian terror arrests got surprisingly brief, cursory coverage in their local papers, and I've seen next to nothing about the "chemical vest" guy anywhere besides the British papers and Drudge.
The mainstream media spent a lot of time berating itself after 9/11 for ignoring international news, closing foreign bureaus, and focusing more on celebrity and tabloid stories than something hugely important, like the rise of al-Qaeda and Islamist fundamentalism around the globe. Well, today they're demonstrating that they haven't improved much. Sure, there's a lot of coverage of Haditha, and a decent amount of focus on Iran (if a bit of soft-pedalling about Ahmedinijad). And yes, a completed terrorist attack is bigger news than a foiled terror attack. But the developments in Canada and the UK are being just short of ignored; and it's tough to conclude that it's for any reason beyond it doesn't fit an agenda. (I notice that one of my favorites, Tim Russert, did not ask about either Canada or the UK with his guests Joe Biden or Hans Blix.)
The news of the Canadian arrests reinforces certain conclusions and a certain worldview:
The view that al-Qaeda and its like-minded adherents are not motivated by any political cause that a Westerner could understand - gripes about Israel, or "economic exploitation", or foreign troops on Saudi soil, or Iraq. They just want to kill people who are different from them.
It reinforces the worldview that a lenient asylum program for foreigners is a massive security risk. That minorities need to be assimilated into the society as a whole.
The list of names reaffirms the argument that the threat of Islamist terrorism comes primarily from one group of people.
The use of electronic and e-mail monitoring by Canadian authorities reinforces the argument that extensive electronic eavesdropping programs are necessary to intercept threats.
Of course, if you don't agree with those arguments, you won't want to spend a lot of time discussing the Canadian arrests. They challenge the other view.
UPDATE: Forgot to mention this a few days ago - I had a column in the New Hampshire Union Leader examining how each party prefers to fight terrorists around the globe. The Democrats are objecting to a new non-nuclear version of the Trident II missile that could hit anywhere in the globe within an hour; basically a mega-Tomahawk, or an ICBM without all that pesky radioactive fallout. Their view of opposition would ensure that in a future crisis, a commander in chief will have fewer options for dealing with potential threats.
I do recall that former President Bill Clinton wanted "black ninjas" to go after al-Qaeda.
