IN THE NEWS
There may be some good that has come from this week in the Summer of Panic. If nothing else, the events of the last few days have cast a great deal of illumination on what real counterterrorism looks like. We can also see its shadow, something that has its rough contours, but no real substance.
The federal government continues to heighten "security" in Washington, DC, while New York City and Newark remain on high alert. I put those quotation marks around the word because more fences and checkpoints won't necessarily make anyone more secure. As I said in earlier posts this week (click here and here), the real sign of heightened security would be arrests, not clamorous and clumsy efforts to cordon off high-traffic buildings. The information gleaned from a computer in Pakistan is old, to be sure, but all terrorist operations take considerable time to plan and execute. What's missing is the knowledge of who, where, and when, which would lead to a raid on someone's home or office, not hastily-constructed roadblocks and extra police foot patrols.
That makes the news from Great Britain, where police have arrested Eisa al-Hindi, an accused al Qaeda operative, exceedingly welcome. al-Hindi is accused not only of planning attacks on British and American targets, but also having the very intelligence about US financial centers that caused such a stir in the Bush Administration this week. Of course, Americans would breathe a lot easier if more suspects had been arrested, and if they had been in the United States. We can still cross our fingers and hope that this arrest sets up a chain of further ones. Unfortunately, the strong, persistent impression remains that our ability to identify, track, and arrest terrorists who may be operating in the United States is far from what it should be, as suggested by this week's alert. What then should we make of all the extraordinary measures, such as the PATRIOT Act, that were supposed to make us more safe, in exchange for the lessening of civil liberties?
Actually, authorities did arrest terrorist suspects in the United States this week. The FBI is now holding Mohammed Hossain, the founder of an Albany, NY mosque, and Yassin Aref, its imam. Both men are accused of belonging to Ansar al-Islam, and more importantly, trying to buy surface-to-air missiles.
Given the track record of the Department of Justice on terrorist arrests, it's important to take announcements like these with some skepticism. Usually, the "major terrorist players" turn out to be less villainous than originally advertised. The previous sting operation mentioned in the AP article was itself rather fishy. (Click here and here for details.)
However, let's take the accusation at face value for the moment. Two aspects of the Albany arrests stand out:
- They're not connected to this week's alerts. Perhaps we'll find out some evidentiary web into which they all fit, but as advertised, these arrests were part of a separate investigation.
- Ansar al-Islam, a minor terrorist group previously confined to a corner of northern Iraq, is an even bigger threat than we ever thought. Our own invasion of Iraq made it possible for Ansar al-Islam and its now-infamous leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to operate on a much larger battlefield, provided them with American targets, and make even greater noise on the Middle Eastern political stage than ever before. (Click here and here for earlier discussions of Ansar al-Islam on this blog.)
You can't defeat terrorists through spin. They are dedicated, ruthless, and clever, and groups like al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam do weave terrible plots against us. However, if we take the Bush Administration's own words at face value this week--about the reasons for the alert, or the arrest of Ansar al-Islam agents in the United States--we're losing ground against our adversaries, on the most important "front" in the war against them, the security of US citizens within our own borders.
We need substance, not shadow. This week has indeed illuminated the difference.
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