The plot

I must say, the glee of Bush, Cheney and cohorts about the terrorist plot strikes me as woefully pathetic. These guys are like believers who can hardly convince themselves, let alone anyone else. Empty vessels. There's gonna come a big reckoning this November. Twice as many Democrats than usual came out to vote in the Connecticut primary which threw out the Iraq hawk Lieberman. The Dem base is on fire. I predict a conflagration in November; you'll have to poke through the embers if you want to find traces of many burned Republicans.


1. Six Lessons from the London Airline Bombing Plot -- by John Tirman

What we now know about the London-based plot to destroy ten civilian airplanes points to six conclusions.

First, what stopped this plot was law enforcement. Law enforcement. Not a military invasion of Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, or Iraq. Old-fashioned surveillance, development of human sources, putting pieces together, and cooperation with foreign police and intelligence services.

Second, the conspiracy—if it resembles the London bombings of last summer—will likely be home-grown, another of the growing jihad "fashion" in Europe that comprises the new street gangs of this world. It is not a religious movement, it is not fundamentalism. These are thin veneers. It is at root sheer violence undertaken by young men resentful of many things (not least the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon) and ready to kill in return. Under different cirucmstances, it could be Tamils or Red Brigades or Michigan Militiamen, and has been.

Third, if al Qaeda was involved (allegedly from Pakistan), we can thank the failure of the war in Afghanistan and the cozying up to Musharraf to destroy them.

Fourth, there was no involvement by any American-based “cells,” according the FBI Director Robert Mueller. As many of us have been saying for nearly five years, and as the 9/11 Commission Report showed, there is virtually no plausible American jihad organization at work, and never has been.

Fifth, the plot again reveals how ill-equipped the U.S. Government has been in anticipating plausible attack scenarios and taking steps to prevent them. Liquid bombs were so hard to figure out? Al Qaeda already tried it. DHS has almost completely missed the threat, just as they are missing the vulnerability of cargo holds and God knows what else. Thomas Kean, the former GOP governor and co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, called this liquid bomb error “appalling” and wondered, on an NBC program four months ago, why no progress had been made. What are the tens of billions being spent on? This is Katrina II.

Sixth, and most important, we must end our involvement in Iraq and sharply refocus our presence in the region. The war president’s approach is not working. It’s a diversion from the real threat. It’s a spur to bitter revenge. It’s a big feedback loop that will endanger us for years, if not decades. Our lives are now at stake because the Bush catastrophe has created thousands of new terrorists.

Naturally, the politically expedient are trying to gain an edge. Defeated Senator Joseph Lieberman immediately attacked his victorious primary challenger Ned Lamont, saying that Lamont’s leave Iraq policy is somehow connected to this. It’s the opposite—the war distracts and inflames. We will see the crowing from the Bushies now, when in fact they were again asleep at the wheel, only this time the Brits saved the day. The war v. law enforcement contrast—remember how John Kerry was ridiculed by Cheney for suggesting that aggressive police work and human intelligence were anti-terror linchpins?—is now buried by conflating the “war against terror” in Iraq with this Scotland Yard and MI5 success.

Reversing America’s colossally destructive series of interventions in the Middle East—a cause, a trigger, a recruitment fountain, and a charity for jihad—will require an entirely different mindset, not just an adjustment or a measured retreat. When America responded, after being prodded, to the tsunami victims in Indonesia early last year, it profoundly changed Indonesians’ views of the United States. New attitudes of support and cooperation suddenly sprang forth. This “natural experiment” should be examined to learn from, possibly to emulate, in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere.

We’re now viewed as destroyers, and destruction is the retort. This is the “new Middle East” that is aborning—one of relentless violence—if we do not end our own relentless violence there. The would-be bombers in London are a reminder of how close it is.

(John Tirman has written widely on terrorism, the Middle East, and homeland security, including The Maze of Fear: Security and Migration After 9/11; the forthcoming Terror, Insurgenices, and States; and Spoils of War)


2. Let's wait and see
I flew from Britain to America, with not even a thermos of tea.
By James K Galbraith

Just my luck - I flew from Manchester to Boston on the fateful day, so I witnessed the latest security flare-up first-hand.

The part I observed directly was very well handled. Though the airport was packed, the staff was unflappable, instructions were clear, queues were orderly, and my fellow passengers were admirably patient. The worst part was not being able to take a book, meaning 11 hours with only celebrity trash magazines and three execrable movies. Still, I'm happy to be alive, and if there was any doubt about that, then I'm suitably grateful.

The arrest of 24 young British men in a mass suicide plot is obviously a sensational development. According to the Wall Street Journal, British officials believe this to have been an autonomous plot, "inspired but not guided" by Bin Laden. If the authorities got it right this time, it promises new insight into a phenomenon so far unique in the world: organized self-destruction for no clear purpose.

It's in the nature of a suicide bombing campaign that the objectives have to be compelling and widely-shared in the community from which the bombers come. In just about all known cases, these are territorial. The Tamil Tigers, non-Muslim pioneers of the genre, want independence from Sri Lanka. Al-Fatah and Hamas want Israeli settlers out of the West Bank. Bin Laden wanted US soldiers out of Saudi Arabia (and, by the way, we left). The Iraqi insurgents want us out of Iraq.

But what, exactly, do young British men of Pakistani origin want? Britain left Pakistan in 1947. Iraq is a long way from Pakistan, and anyway the British role there is minimal. It's also in the Shia area, which will never be returned to the Sunnis, whether British troops stay or go.

Well, we do have a video, don't we? Though it's obviously unrelated to this case, perhaps we can learn something from the previous example, the London bombings of July 7, 2005. Here's what the man identified as Mohammed Sidique Khan said, on a tape released by parties unknown, seven weeks after his death:

"I'm sure by now the media's painted a suitable picture of me, this predictable propaganda machine will naturally try to put a spin on things to suit the government and to scare the masses into conforming to their power- and wealth-obsessed agendas. I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe. Our driving motivation doesn't come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer."

Forty years ago, I knew a lot of teenagers who talked like that, but they were all Christians or Jews. And a few of them self-destructed, mainly with drugs. Excuse me for being flip, but here's my point: if the new breed of British bomber has a motive, we don't know what it is. And that's very odd, for it makes no sense to sacrifice your life for a secret cause. But now we have 24 living suspects, allegedly prepared to destroy themselves on 12 separate airplanes. If they have motives, surely now they will declare, in open court, exactly what they are. That would be huge step forward.

A second puzzle emerging from the news today concerns the bombs. As someone who likes to take a sealed thermos of hot tea on board airplanes, I've wondered how the authorities could tell it wasn't (say) gasoline. Obviously, a pint of gas and a match could do a lot of damage on a plane. So it would be foolish to dismiss the security risk that seems to exist, and it would be prudent to start sniffing at sealed containers.

But according to reports today, these bombers were aiming at explosions. And how were they going to get them? It's not yet clear. We're told there are substances, like nitroglycerine, that you can use directly. But nitro is hard to get, and it has a nasty tendency to go off on slight provocation. And there are others, like acetone and peroxide, that can be mixed together - though unreliably, as the July 21, 2005 bombers discovered when none of their supposedly acetone-based bombs went off.

Perhaps there's a reason all this hasn't happened before, and also doesn't seem to happen much on the ground. Perhaps it's not so easy to pull off. So here's the question: Are we dealing with a ring, a network, a global conspiracy of professional terrorists? Or was this a bunch of loud-mouthed amateurs? Here's the problem: if you massively disrupt airline travel every time the police catch amateur loudmouths discussing a plot, you're inviting trouble. As economists say, the supply of amateur loudmouths is infinitely elastic.

Third question: how was this plot discovered? We can, I think, safely discard the possibility that any professional terrorist would openly say words like "acetone bomb" and "attack on airplanes" into a phone or in an email message. (Inference: if it was sigint, these were amateurs.)

The alternative is an informer. But if so, how do you know he's reliable? The answer is, you don't. This is a matter to be tested in court. It's what courts are for, and why British citizens, like Americans, are protected by the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Finally - would the US authorities please not screw this up? This is a British police operation and Blair briefed Bush, so they ought to be singing from the same hymnal. But the British are saying the plot appears home-grown, while the US is saying "Al Qaeda." And the British have said the planes would have been blown up over the Atlantic (destroying all clues), while the US is saying "over American cities."

Does the thought of trying to set off an explosive mixture (say, in the lavatory sink) while over a city make any sense? Last I checked, which was yesterday, airplane lavs don't have windows. And also, did the official who said this realize that you can't tell if you're over a city when there are clouds?

Whatever the underlying facts of this case, clearly some people over here can't stop themselves - it's going to be part of the politics of the "war on terror" this election year. This is something we've seen before, and most of us have wised up. But it's too bad, because by now every political statement is corrupting; each one undermines the credibility of the investigation, and that is something that our British friends cannot afford.

It would be much better to let the facts emerge in court. And meanwhile we would all do well to remain calm - if possible, just like the police, security officers, airline staff, flight crew and passengers I had the privilege to be with in Manchester, and all the way across the Atlantic.