The Week (
theweekmagazine.com) features a September 15, 2006 article,
Five Years Later, Why no second Attack? We find a conclusion--drawn from a rich collection of neutral sources including John Weisberg in
slate.com, a Los Angeles Times editorial, Youssef Ibrahim in The New York Sun, John Tierney in Jason Blair's New York Times and James Fallows in The Atlantic Monthly--that al Qaida is no threat at all.
"That leaves terrorists with one means of inflicting major damage on the superpower: Baiting us into foolishly damaging our own interests. The Bush administration has fallen into this trap, by invading Iraq, killing Muslim civilians, and playing into al Qaida's narrative."
Our poor, dumb president has done it again. We are safe, you see, if only we recognize al Qaida has been neutered and is left with "a narrative," and only that. I wonder if the collective wisdom of the above sources views last August's
plot to destroy up to 10 American transatlantic aircraft as part of that "narrative" or if al Qaida's strength is seen by these uber-analysts to have weakened significantly in the last 45 days? Denying al Qaida's involvement with the would-be large scale atrocity is at best naive. (And does it matter? Terror is terror.) From the above-linked Wikipedia article...
"Paul Beaver, a British
terrorism expert, has said that it appears possible that the
militant Islamic organisation
al-Qaeda was behind the plot, which comes only weeks after the group threatened to attack British aviation."
Possible indeed. But again, what does it matter whether al Qaida, the organization, has been decimated as suggested
here?
"In recent years, many of the most horrific bombings attributed to al-Qaeda--most notably Bali, Madrid, and London--are believed to have been carried out by terrorist groups linked more in spirit than in substance to al-Qaeda. Al-Zarqawi, the most active terrorist in recent years, for example, only officially joined al-Qaeda in the years after he initiated his reign of terror in Iraq. Al-Qaeda has been more than happy to take credit for the various bombings, but it is thought that it has offered philosophical motivation more than a direct support for the atrocities committed by these splinter groups. While al-Qaeda encourages its reputation as a vast global network, many experts believe that at this stage al-Qaeda itself has just a small core of adherents, but serves as the virulent inspiration to countless violent Islamic extremists." [emphasis, mine]
The logical (and disingenuous) flaw in concluding and expounding that we are safe from terrorism comes from equating "al Qaida" to "terrorism," like "Kleenex" to "tissue," only more serious and less innocently done. Clearly, the authors' purpose is to suggest that "The War on Terrorism" is a silly and unjustified war and that the party of the current president (and of course the president himself) are responsible for the purposeless killing of innocents and the vain sacrifice of American blood in our military. Do you accept their logic? If yes, would you also accept that the world is free of disease because of the invention of penicillin?
We, the American people, have made innumerable mistakes in prosecuting a necessary war, but our having the common sense to fear terrorism, whatever the source, and takes steps to defend ourselves, is not one of them.
