We attack al Qaeda and the Taliban with Predator drones. They send us a hapless Shoe Bomber, a Christmas plane passenger with underwear that doesn’t explode and now the Times Square terrorist who parks a used car full of jerry-rigged junk and leaves a trail of bread crumbs that results in his capture 53 hour later.
Yet, lopsided as this War on and of Terror may be technologically, the score has to be reckoned not only by body counts, which we have mercifully been spared, but the anxiety created in a post-9/11 America.
As Attorney General Eric Holder and a panel of homeland protectors congratulate themselves on camera today for the capture of Faisal Shahzad, the unspoken question that can’t be asked or answered is:
If it takes all these resources to deal with what one terrorism expert delicately calls a lack of “tradecraft,” how safe are we if and when the enemy sends in an A-Team?
The politicizing of this unanswerable question has yet to start, although John McCain, former opponent of torture, now in full campaign mode, has jumped in to warn against Mirandizing the suspect. (Interrogators actually delayed reading him his rights with a “public safety” exception to the law, although Shahzad has apparently been blabbing before and after.)
Americans must know instinctively that no amount of posturing about toughness can alleviate the knowledge that they have to live with an exposure that can’t be demagogued away.