LITTLE ROCK — Sunday’s chilling terror news wasn’t the removal of a Nigerian man from the same Northwest Airlines route targeted by a would-be bomber two days earlier. Sunday’s disruptive passenger just wasn’t feeling well. No, the chilling news came from James Carafano, a defense and homeland security expert at the Heritage Foundation: The foiled Christmas Day plot, he says, is the 28th unsuccessful attempt to bring terror attacks to America since September 11th, 2001.
This attempt, which could have scattered passengers and plane parts across frozen Michigan tundra, may trace to Yemen. That’s where thwarted martyr Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab claims he obtained his military-grade explosive from an al-Qaida associate.
President Barack Obama’s administration has edged away from the phrase “global war on terror.” But we wonder if the White House appreciates how well that Bushian notion of a long and widespread struggle helps to justify Obama’s decision to further escalate U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria-the list of countries where terror planners have furrowed their brows and schemed against the United States is long. During his almost-year in office, Obama seems to have grasped how relentlessly al-Qaida seeks remote and unstable locales in which it safely can dream up new attacks. Twice this month, Yemen’s military struck suspected al-Qaida hideouts there, and Washington sources have said Yemen acted with U.S. intelligence and firepower. Good.
Many Americans want to be done with these terror concerns and overseas engagements. But those who weave plots against this country would love nothing better than an isolationist U.S. that waits, supine and patient, for attempted attacks 29, 30, 31 . . . .
In coming days we’ll all find ourselves buffeted by disagreements over who should have done what to block attempt number 28. Expect finger-pointing over whether U.S., Dutch or Nigerian officials should have prevented Abdulmutallab from flying after his own father reported him as an increasingly radicalized zealot with ties to militants.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano implausibly said on CNN that the failure of the bomber’s plan showed that the system worked. No, what worked was the reactive courage of the passengers and crew.
We don’t yet know enough to offer a verdict on who erred by letting him on that aircraft. We’re curious, though, about how far Napolitano gets with her contention Sunday that, “You need information that is specific and credible if you’re going to bar people from air travel. But there was not the kind of credible information, in the sense derogatory information, that would move [Abdulmutallab] up the list.”
Really?
But we shouldn’t let that debate obscure one lesson from Detroit: Right now, in far-off lands, other plotters scheme to hurt and humiliate America. Whether any of us likes the phrase “global war on terror,” that’s what it is-and how it needs to be fought.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 12/29/2009