Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior consultant for the Gerard Group International, has a piece titled “The Next Big One?” in The Weekly Standard that asks whether it’s time to rethink some of the assumptions still out there about terrorism.
His piece needs to be read in full but here are some key points:
THE SHEER MAGNITUDE of the foiled plot that British authorities announced yesterday was breathtaking. This may well have been “the next big one” that experts have predicted al Qaeda would attempt. As Friday began, British authorities had apprehended 24 suspects alleged to be part of a plot to blow up as many as 10 transatlantic flights with liquid explosives. As a result, some widely-held assumptions among terror analysts may now come crashing down.
One assumption that took root in recent years is that al Qaeda’s central leadership is isolated and incapable of calling the shots for terror attacks of any significant magnitude. In truth, there was good reason to doubt this assumption even before the transatlantic air plot was announced.
He makes a point that the world has been staring at a tip-off that this might not be the case, staring it smack-dab in its face:
Bin Laden’s ability to release an audiotape less than a month after Zarqawi’s death coupled with his demonstrated access to information about current events should have prompted us to reevaluate the view that he was cowering in a cave, isolated from the world. There’s no reason that bin Laden couldn’t use the same courier networks that deliver his tapes to send commands to operatives.
And, indeed, it is common sense — which somehow didn’t filter out to much of the world. Or the media: he notes that the 7/7 attack on London subways sparked media coverage that assumed it was some kind of local group, acting autonomously. Yet, he notes, connections between suspects in the foiled airlines plot and 7/7 are plentiful.
And that’s another tipoff, he notes:
While these connections suggest that the 7/7 attackers were not nearly as segregated from the international jihad network as some observers initially assumed, there is even less of a chance that the plot announced yesterday was conceived by a wholly autonomous, independent group. Estimates of the number of individuals involved in the foiled attack range from 50 up to perhaps as many as 150 people. It’s unlikely that a terror group this large would form organically, without an outside hand. This is especially the case since they had a support network that stretches at least to Pakistan, and perhaps to the United States and Canada as well.
Thus, some analysts may need to rethink their previously-held assumptions about the broader al Qaeda network’s inability to take part in another large-scale terror plot. One critical question concerns the operation’s command and control. Who called the shots for the plot? Who gave it the green light? These answers are not yet known, but may well provide insight into the role al Qaeda’s central leadership now plays in international terror.
The SECOND assumption that needs rethinking, he notes, is one that is particularly compelling:
A SECOND ASSUMPTION that should be reconsidered is the state of our efforts to defend soft targets. Preliminary reports suggest that terrorists involved in this plot took several transatlantic flights between Britain and the United States in order to probe weaknesses in airline security. This suggests an active enemy that is ready to adapt to the defenses we have erected.
In other words: do we have a PROACTIVE policy that attempts to anticipate future threats or a REACTIVE ONE that adjusts after either a near-catastrophe…or a catastrophe? The sad answer:
The problem, though, is that while the enemy adapts to our defenses, our defenses do not adapt to the enemy. Airport security is entirely mechanical. Very little attention is devoted to determining who should be pulled aside for additional screening, and the limited questions asked of passengers serve no real security purpose. Indeed, when two of the 9/11 hijackers had trouble answering the standard security questions, the 9/11 Commission Report states that the ticket agent “had to go over them slowly until [the hijackers] gave the routine, reassuring answers.”
Won’t that make you sleep easier at night?
The irony is that, as Gartenstein-Ross points out, combating terrorism in the Bush administration has come to resemble a police action…the same dreaded phrase used derisively by many in the administration when they refer to the Clinton administration’s approach to terrorism. He asks what would have happened if British policework had NOT discovered this plot?
And a possible solution?
A system of behavioral profiling could move us away from the sorry status quo, where airline screeners have to be considered a virtual nullity with little chance of disrupting an actual terror plot. Certainly, moving toward such a system would cause a firestorm in the current political climate, where major newspapers feel at liberty to divulge national security secrets and the administration is so unpopular that it is publicly crucified even for programs that are minimally invasive of civil liberties. Yet of the two assumptions that may now need to be rethought, this is probably the more important. While the potential consequences of underestimating al Qaeda’s central leadership are significant, the lack of a real last line of defense against terrorism can cause us far more pain.
He’s correct. And you have to sadly conclude that the U.S. (including the Bush administration for all its swaggering talk about how terrific it has been on terrorism and suggestions that Democrats could never do as wonderful a job as it does) could eventually move to something like that….but AFTER a few thousand Americans are wiped out…AFTER a hideous mass murder transforms a politically incorrect idea into a live-or-die necessity.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.