"Newsweek" on the implications of the airline bomb plot

[man4allcats]

"Britain may have averted a plot to bomb passenger planes, but let’s not imagine that we are safer now than we were before 9/11."

I just came across this Newsweek article that seems to do a pretty good job of putting today's foiled airline bomb plot in perspective in terms of the broader "war on terror." While the author, Christopher Dickey, almost seemed to downplay (though, in fairness, perhaps not entirely) Bush's forays into the illegal; i.e., warrantless surveillance and secret prisons, he nevertheless cuts Bushco no slack in terms of this misadministration's failure to deal with the problem at the source. Bush of course stated thusly this morning:

"On the tarmac of an airport in Wisconsin this morning, Bush sounded the themes that have become so familiar ... . “The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”'

Dickey astutely contrasted Bush's spin as follows:

"There is no excuse for those who would carry out such atrocities, but there are reasons that keep pushing recruits to take up the suicidal cause of attacking the United States. To blame “Islamic fascism” that “wants to destroy those of us who love freedom” dodges responsibility for making those reasons more abundant, and making them worse, over the last five years. What’s at work in the heads of those who would kill themselves to slaughter Americans is less Al Qaeda’s ideology, such as it is, than a pervasive sense that Muslims are under attack: their lands occupied; their men, women and children victimized around the world. The Iraqi slaughterhouse, besieged Gaza, wasted Lebanon are all examples in the minds of those who convince themselves that suicidal terror is the only way to fight back. While partly blaming Israel, their frantic logic finds easier targets among the people who elected the invaders of Iraq, the backers of Israel, George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The American failure to limit these scenes of carnage in the Muslim world, or even to understand them, has combined with shortsighted military policies to create a kind of breeder reactor for explosive terrorism. Today we are looking at a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, even as Osama bin Laden and his ideologue Ayman Zawahiri remain at large. Iraq is in the midst of an intensifying civil war that will only grow worse after today’s ghastly bombing in Najaf, which killed at least 34 people. Lebanon has become a cause that can cement ties among radical Sunnis and Shias against the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. Iran is cooking up nukes and the inflammatory issue of Palestine is farther than ever from resolution.

So let’s be thankful that the plot in Britain was broken up when it was. But let’s not imagine for a moment that we are safer now than we were in August 2001. We should be. But we are not."

It is worthwhile to compare Dickey's article with today's video on the same subject by Richard Clarke, ABC News consultant and former White House Anti-Terrorism Chief.