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Today's Top News
Times Square Bomber Popped a Bubble
Not surprisingly, since we are conducting a virtual war inside their country, 64 percent of Pakistanis view the United States as an enemy.
The bubble is bursting.
I'm not talking about the Greek economy, the collapse of which has bankers and finance ministers trembling from Athens to Antarctica. Nor am I talking about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which reminds us once again that our current energy security rests on shaky foundations.
I'm talking about the Times Square bomber. U.S. citizen Faisal Shahzad tried, quite ineptly, to blow up an SUV in midtown Manhattan and was apprehended aboard a plane as he attempted to flee the country. Initially tagged as a lone wolf, Shahzad has now been linked to the Pakistani Taliban.
Bubbles are built on illusions. We believed that our high-tech companies and, after that, our houses would continue to rise in value and then...pop! We believed that we could continue offshore oil drilling without environmental consequences and then...pop! And we believed that the drone program in Pakistan, which expanded in 2009 and has killed hundreds of civilians, would not generate any blowback and then...Faisal Shahzad.
Not surprisingly, since we are conducting a virtual war inside their country, 64 percent of Pakistanis view the United States as an enemy.
Yet the Obama administration is still invested in drone attacks. It has signed on to a major expansion of drone activities by continuing to give the CIA permission to go after individuals whose identities the agency doesn't even possess. Everyone in Pakistan has become a potential target, not just a narrow list of al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. You might imagine how such a program could raise some eyebrows, even for Pakistanis who despise the extremists.
Moreover, in an interesting causal turnaround, the Obama administration believes that these drone attacks, rather than precipitating terrorism, have prevented it. "Because of our success in degrading the capabilities of these terrorist groups overseas, preventing them from carrying out these attacks, they now are relegated to trying to do these unsophisticated attacks, showing that they have inept capabilities in training," the administration's top counterterrorism advisor John Brennan recently told CNN.
These illusions of omnipotence--how on earth can we "degrade the capabilities" of all groups everywhere at the same time?--blind us to the more important task of addressing the motivations behind the attacks. We're clearly losing the "hearts and minds" campaign in Pakistan. Drones aren't the only reason for militancy in the country. There's the conflict over Kashmir, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the fundamentalist elements within the Pakistani government itself. But drones provoke a heat-seeking anger directed specifically at the United States.
This brings us to the other bubble on the verge of bursting: our conviction that the anger is simply "over there." For years, European governments have faced the challenge of homegrown extremists. Only now is the United States waking up to the reality of this strain of domestic terrorism. Remember that incident at Fort Hood, where Maj. Nidal Hasan is suspected of gunning down 10 fellow soldiers? Or the five youths who left Northern Virginia, allegedly to join a Pakistani militant group? How about Colleen Rose, aka "Jihad Jane," the American woman who reportedly planned to kill a Swedish cartoonist earlier this year?
Viewed in isolation, the Times Square incident is terrorism in a teacup. It was a poorly planned and poorly executed effort that has garnered mass attention and not a small amount of derision (even the Taliban has disowned the "idiot bomber"). But as our drone war in Pakistan escalates, domestic extremism is likely to follow suit.
You don't have to be an expert in ordnance disposal to figure out how to defuse this ticking time bomb. The Obama administration could draw down our foreign wars and redirect that $100 billion toward domestic needs, winning hearts and minds at home and abroad. If it doesn't, a tempest is sure to follow.
- Posted in
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16 Comments so far
Show AllYes ... I'll write a strongly worded "open letter" to Obushma outlining what he should/could/wants to do. That's the ticket. yes
The author's theme of bubbles bursting implies that the Obama administration will soon have to face the reality of failure in the so-called war on terror. I don't think so. The famous Bush era quote about creating their own reality in D.C. has psychological truth to it, and the bubble the PTB inhabit not only extends around the Beltway, it completely encases their minds.
When things get worse, as they will, the ruling elite will only abandon their current bubble by replacing it with a new one. Expecting those in charge to ever see reality as we do is futile. It's not about bursting the bubble of Obama, D.C., the MIC, etc., it's about removing bubble people from positions of power. The necessary changes the world requires are in the hands (and minds) of the people -- not just the American people but the people of the world.
To continue to refer to the Times Square bomber and the crotch bomber incidents as "acts of terrorism", both unable to succeed (neither device was cabable of exploding) and being of uncertain origin, is to continue the atmosphere of phony panic that is abetting the creation of a police state in our nation. We are being played like suckers.
Tony Vodvarka
Right on, Tony. Among other things, the writer repeats a claim that the government has never proven and which the Taliban and many analysts have denied or shown to be baseless; to wit, that "Shahzad has now been linked to the Pakistani Taliban."
All very convenient for "justifying" ex post facto and for future reference the U.S.'s murderous actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
These pathetic charades would be laughable if they weren't carefully planned moves in a global strategy of greater liberticide in both foreign and domestic policy.
And meanwhile the wheels keep turning, the shadow dance keeps playing to a mesmerized public, which would include fools like the writer of this article.
Yeah, I don't see any bubble bursting in the Obama regime. This year in the Af/Pak war is the critical one they say. Obama will say this until next year, when next year will be the critical one to "win" the war. Unfortunately for your young lads, dead or alive, they can't stay and spray bullets forever, while Pakistanis, they live there. Pakistanis must live with whatever mess you make and will make their decisions based on the lay of the land once most of your troops are gone. Too bad for you Bin Laden suckered you into there.
Pat Robertson (of all people) is more direct and clearer, citing more examples about the 'BLOWBACK' of our AfPak tactics, supported by an illegal spy network.
Categories: PJB
Date: May 11, 2010
Title: Is the War Coming Home?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Faisal Shahzad sought to massacre scores of fellow Americans in Times Square with a bomb made of M-88 firecrackers, non-explosive fertilizer, gasoline and alarm clocks.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit with a firebomb concealed in his underpants. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shot dead 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood and wounded 29. Why did these men attempt the mass murder of Americans who did no harm to them? What impelled them to seek martyrdom amid a pile of American corpses?
Though all were Muslims, none seems to have been a longtime America-hater or natural-born killer. Hasan was proud to wear Army fatigues to mosque. Shahzad had become a U.S. citizen. Abdulmutallab was the privileged son of a prominent Nigerian banker.
The New York Times ties all three to the Internet sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemen-based imam born and educated in the United States who inspires Muslims worldwide to jihad against America. But, following Sept. 11, al-Awlaki had been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West.
Now President Obama has authorized his assassination.
What do the four have in common?
All were converted in manhood into haters of America willing to kill and die in a jihad against America. And the probability is high that there are many more like them living amongst us who wish to bring the war in the Af-Pak here to America.
But what radicalized them? And why do they hate us?
Taking a cue from George W. Bush, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of the Times Square bomber, "We will not be intimidated by those who hate the freedoms that make ... this country so great."
This was the mantra after Sept. 11. We are hated not because of what we do in the Middle East, but because of who we are: people who love freedom and stand for women's rights.
And that is why they hate us -- and why they come to kill us.
In a way this is a comforting thought, because it absolves us of the need to think. For no patriotic American is going to demand we surrender our freedom to prevent fanatics from attacking us.
The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens advances a parallel view. We are hated, he says, because of our popular culture.
We are loathed in the Islamic world, Stephens writes, because of "Lady Gaga - or, if you prefer, Madonna, Farrah Fawcett, Marilyn Monroe, Josephine Baker or any other American woman who has ... personified what the Egyptian Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb once called ‘the American Temptress.'"
This hatred is at least 60 years old, says Stephens, for Qutb wrote even before "Elvis, Playboy, the pill, women's lib, acid tabs, gay rights, Studio 54, Jersey shore and ... Lady Gaga."
Qutb's revulsion at American degeneracy is why his legion of Islamic followers hate us.
Again, a comforting thought. For, if Lady Gaga is the problem, there is nothing we Americans can do about it.
Yet, this is as self-delusional as saying the FLN set off bombs in movie theaters and cafes in Algiers to kill the French because of what Brigitte Bardot was doing on screen in "And God Created Woman."
American's toxic culture may be a reason devout Muslims detest us. It is not why they come here to kill us. Mohammed Atta's friends did not target Hollywood, but centers and symbols of U.S. military and political power.
U.S. Marines were not attacked by Hezbollah until we inserted those Marines into Lebanon's civil war. No Iraqi committed an act of terror against us before we invaded Iraq. And if the Sept. 11 killers were motivated by hatred of the immorality of our society, what were they doing getting lap dances in Delray Beach?
Osama bin Laden declared war on us, first and foremost, to end the massive U.S. presence on sacred Saudi soil that is home to Mecca and Medina.
Some may insist this was not his real motive. But, apparently, the Saudis believed him, for they quickly kicked us out of Prince Sultan Air Base.
As for the Taliban, they would surely make short work of Lady Gaga. But their stated grievance is the same as Gen. Washington's in our war with the British: If you want this war to end, get out of our country.
By Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Looking at America's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Maj. Hasan, Abdulmutallab and Shahzad decided that what we call the war on terror was in reality a war on Islam.
All decided to use their access to exact retribution for our killing of their fellow Muslims.
We are being attacked over here because we are over there.
Nor is it a good sign that U.S. intelligence is reporting that rising numbers of U.S. Muslims are making Internet inquiries about how and where to get training to bring the war home to America.
http://www.theamericancause.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=644&cntnt01origid=26&cntnt01returnid=29
"Nor is it a good sign that U.S. intelligence is reporting that rising numbers of U.S. Muslims are making Internet inquiries..."
perfectly predictable. Also, curmudgeon99, someone asked the good question, "why don't the Chechens attack NY?" Obviously, groups, like the Chechens, attack Moscow and not NY for very understandable reasons. To pretend that Al Qaeda is motivated by a hate of "freedoms" is ludicrous.
curmudgeon -
Regardless of whether this essay was authored by Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, yourself, or somebody else, thank you very much for posting it.
Assuming it is Buchanan's handiwork, let us all give credit where credit is due. This is a fine piece of cause-and-effect analysis. When Obama's former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright got caught on videotape voicing similar sentiments in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he became a toxic, unpatriotic pariah. Let us see if Patrick B gets similar mainstream media treatment.
Bill from Saginaw
http://www.theamericancause.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=644&cntnt01origi...
curmudgeon99 - Thank you for posting this.
Mohammed Atta's friends did not target Hollywood, but centers and symbols of U.S. military and political power.
If you want this war to end, get out of our country.
We are being attacked over here because we are over there.
I would add only one thing. America's greatest terrorist threat is itself. America would rather destroy all other countries than take any responsibility for anything it does. America is destroying itself with military spending while its own people lose their savings, homes, jobs, infrastructure and safe food & water. America is committing suicide.
Ah, the enduring arrogance of American exceptionalism, the steadfast belief within the leadership of both major political parties that militarism can work - if and only if the nation stays the course, and tinkers with the strategic and tactical warfare mix long enough, creatively making use of all the sophisticated, covert hi tech gadgetry of the Pentagon and the US spy establishment that has been developed to wage and win the Cold War at billions and billions of dollars of unauditable taxpayer expense. Surely there no quick fix. But there's a silver bullet or two out there somewhere nonetheless, a magic war waging doctrine which will make the dream of global Pax Americana finally come true.
The regime change in Washington DC brought about by the 2008 election season has brought change indeed, but certainly not change worth believing in. The hubris of the neocon ideologues has been replaced by hubris of a different sort.
The Bushies did what they did because they knew God was on their side, and the righteous, straight talking good guys would prevail by smiting the swarthy jihadist evil doers wherever they lurked. Obama instead puts his faith in the realpolitik illusions peddled by very mortal men like Robert Gates, John Brennan, Petraeus, and McChrystal, all with the blessings of Hillary Clinton.
But the end results on the ground remain pretty much the same, over there and over here. Facts, after all, are stubborn things.
Stay the course?
Fine tune the Predator drones and Hellfire missles? Coordinate their antiseptic violence better with yet more boots on the ground - cleverer, more culturally sensitive, special operations death squad boots?
Hopefully that should do the trick, at least for purposes of the next election cycle. Surely the brilliant new, improved Petraeus/McChrystal counterinsurgency strategy will turn things around eventually, thus exorcising fovever the ghosts of Vietnam, rewriting revisionist lessons all should learn.
Whether it is the true believer's faith in the cause, or the agnostic's belief in the wisdom of the advisor professionals who are running the system, the bottom line is just more of the same.
More blood. More blowback.
Plenty of bipartisan blame and bipartisan shame to share.
Bill from Saginaw
"Because of our success in degrading the capabilities of these terrorist groups overseas, preventing them from carrying out these attacks, they now are relegated to trying to do these unsophisticated attacks, showing that they have inept capabilities in training,"
All that means is that they learned how important it is to improve their training, which they will. They no doubt also noticed, largely due to the entire population of New York crapping their pants in fear, that the most effective place to fight an invader is in the invader's country.
To borrow from W, they now know that they need to fight us in the US because the people in the US don't care about Pakistani, or Afghani, or Iraqi children dying when we fight them in their countries. As they become more proficient and improve their training (at the above quoted suggestion of the administration), the peace movement will finally pick up steam. Unfortunately, that won't happen based on the average American's sense of morality, it will only happen when Americans go to work in the morning not knowing if they will ever come home.
"The Obama administration could draw down our foreign wars and redirect that $100 billion toward domestic needs, winning hearts and minds at home and abroad."
Sorry, not in the Master Plan. They'll never give up their incorporation of this real estate. Never. Ever. Forward bases, forever moving forward.
Obama, (his) two parties and the major media outlets, NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS and print publishers--along with Wall Street and the MIC--have no interest in helping our own nation.
These fuckers are interested in one thing: Conquest and power.
They are evil and vile.
Its terrifying to see their general ambivalence and disconnect at to what they are doing.
The author blindly accepts, "Shahzad has now been linked to the Pakistani Taliban." By whom? The Pakistanis don't think so. This is a link manufactured by the lying US Federal Government. It has two purposes.
First, it is being used as an excuse to brow-beat the government of Pakistan into being more "cooperative".
The author points us toward the other reason, but doesn't actually go there. By claiming Shahzad was a Taliban operative, Obama can go on to claim that the Taliban capabilities have been "degraded" by the drone strikes over the past year, that successful blowback is unlikely, and that we must keep up the effort.
This "inept" organization is the same bunch that ran a double agent for several months, misdirecting CIA drone attacks while at the same time establishing enough trust that he was able to slip through security in Khost with a suicide vest and kill a dozen or so CIA officers.
We are not degrading their capabilities. We are, however, providing motivation.
William Rood, patriotic citizen of the world
As far as hearts and minds are concerned, I personally believe that the American people have lost theirs!
The Bush/Obama World Terror Tour continues unabated.