[NOTE: Yesterday the United States ordered the evacuation of embassy personnel in Yemen and urged all Americans living there to leave. Never mind that, just as it insists on referring to the coup in Egypt as something Orwellian like an army-assisted move to re-try democracy, the Obama Administration is referring to this evacuation as a reduction in staff contingency maneuver.
The last time American embassy personnel had to hightail it out of a foreign country like this they were dodging Vietcong bullets (with all due respect to the fog of Benghazi).
But all they’re dodging this time are patently hollow al-Qaeda threats to launch 9/11-style attacks against U.S. interests: somewhere — perhaps even in the United States itself; sometime — perhaps today either to mark the end of Ramadan or to commemorate its coordinated embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998.
Frankly, the only thing that is certain is that government reaction to and media hype about these terrorist threats are inflicting almost as much terror as any eventual attack … might.
In “Terror Alert: al-Qaeda Planning Attacks! (Duh…),” The iPINIONS Journal, August 4, 2013, I distilled the national-security and political implications of these al-Qaeda threats, as well as the reaction/panic they triggered. In light of this rather extraordinary order to evacuate (sorry, to take immediate sequester furloughs?), I have decided to reprise this commentary.]
_____________________
U.S. politicians and security analysts have been all over TV in recent days warning about “specific, credible and imminent attacks” al-Qaeda operatives are planning to launch against U.S. interests … worldwide. Which compels one to wonder how this warning would have been designated according to the government’s ill-fated, soon-discarded color-coded threat level advisory system….
But am I the only one who finds these warnings about as specific, credible, and reliable as a carnival soothsayer predicting my future?
Moreover, notwithstanding Tanzania and Benghazi, isn’t reacting to these threats by closing U.S. embassies across the Muslim world rather like putting a Band-Aid on one’s elbow to fight terminal cancer? I mean, given the veritable fortresses most U.S. embassies have become, isn’t it far more likely that terrorists will target softer U.S. interests like hotels, restaurants, or, god forbid, business complexes (a la the World Trade Center)? So why isn’t the U.S. government advising that they should all be closed too?
Frankly, Western governments are terrorizing us far more with their anti-terror warnings, intelligence gathering, and security measures than Muslim terrorists are with their acts of terrorism.
This is not to say, of course, that terrorists aren’t planning every day to mount another 9/11-type attack, or that at some point they’re going to succeed.
I just think it’s far better to “keep calm and carry on” than to cry wolf and take plainly feckless measures every time al-Qaeda issues an amorphous threat.
It must be understood that no matter their collective resolve, there’s absolutely nothing our governments can do to prevent such attacks. Meanwhile, that Americans reacted yesterday as if those explosions went off in Washington or New York should compel Westerners to focus on calming our collective nerves instead of fretting about (or worse, trying to figure out) the motivation for and timing of terrorist attacks by Islamic fanatics.
(“7/7 Terror Attacks in London,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 8, 2005)
In the meantime, if you’re buying government propaganda about winning the “war on terror,” I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. Not to mention how all of this seems a little too much like a manufactured antidote to Edward Snowden’s NSA disclosures. After all, the very spying methods he outed, maligned, and undermined are the ones that have supposedly tipped government officials off about the terrorist attacks that are now afoot … allegedly.
Which compels me to suggest that only after al-Qaeda begins targeting Western news organizations instead of embassies will they stop rushing to disclose all of these methods to intercept and foil terror plots. More to the point, am I the only one who thinks it’s almost complicit for reporters to continually tip off terrorists about all of the covert ways Western governments are trying to combat them…? Friggin’ idiots!
All the same: “If you see something, say something!”
Related commentaries:
7/7 terror attacks…
Terrorists are planning more attacks…?
Snowden’s NSA disclosures…