Flight 253 and Counterterror’s Epic Fail

Front Page Magazine ^ | December 28, 2009 | Robert Spencer

[2ndDivisionVet]

An attempted jihad attack on Christmas Day has revealed that Americans are much more vulnerable to such attacks than most have believed – while government officials whistle in the dark. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old son of a wealthy Nigerian banker, tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 just before it landed in Detroit. In response, Barack Obama chose not to cut short his golfing vacation in Hawaii; the White House announced that he would “likely” have something to say about this latest attempted jihad attack on U.S. soil “in the next few days.” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was ebullient, maintaining that “the system worked” and “everything happened that should have.”

Unless the “system” was consisted of relying on passengers to tackle jihadists (as Jasper Schuringa, the Dutch passenger on Flight 253, subdued Abdulmutallab), and trusting that jihadis’ detonators will malfunction (as did Abdulmutallab’s), Napolitano’s statement couldn’t possibly be farther from the truth. In reality, nothing worked. Nothing at all, both in terms of security procedures for individual air passengers, and in terms of the larger strategy for dealing with jihad terrorism.

All the stupid and humiliating airport security procedures, all the little baggies for toothpaste and shampoo, all the padding through the security scanner in stocking feet, didn’t work. Abdulmutallab was able to board the plane with the makings of a bomb that would have destroyed the aircraft and killed everyone in it. The Transportation Security Administration has scrambled since Christmas Day to stiffen security procedures, but its effort is foredoomed: jihadis study these procedures carefully, always searching for ways to circumvent them. And such ways exist, even if every passenger were subjected to a full body cavity search – bomb ingredients can be separated and combined mid-flight, or spirited onboard in ways as yet unimagined by the most visionary TSA official.

Abdulmutallib was also on a terror watch list, although that fact, and the fact that he had been known to anti-terror officials for several years, did not prevent him from boarding Flight 253 – showing that such lists and even official scrutiny are as useless as taking off your shoes in the airport security line. What’s more, the jihadi’s father warned American officials about his son, who was being watched already. And still nothing was done to keep him from boarding the plane.

Abdulmutallab likewise demonstrates the failure of long-term anti-terror strategies. Educated at the British International School in Lome, Togo, he was a classic recipient of Western largesse designed to win over the loyalties of Muslims. Yet his encounter with kindly non-Muslim Westerners spending their lives to educate him and his peers did not blunt the fervor of his jihadist fanaticism. And as a rich man’s son, he once again gives the lie to the firmly and widely held assumption that poverty causes terrorism. All the aid programs based on the assumption that poverty does cause terrorism and that money for schools and roads and hospitals would win over Muslim hearts and minds have not worked, and will not work.

All the concerted efforts by the State Department and DHS to ignore the jihad doctrine and reach out to people they deemed to be “moderate Muslims” have likewise not worked. According to the Nigerian newspaper This Day, when Abdulmutallab was at the British International School, “he was known for preaching about Islam to his schoolmates and he was popularly called ‘Alfa,’ a local coinage for Islamic scholar.” This illustrates yet again that, contrary to the popular view, Islamic jihadists present themselves among their fellow Muslims as the exponents of authentic Islam, making their case from the Qur’an and Sunnah — and those Muslims who oppose jihadist violence and Islamic supremacism have never successfully refuted their arguments. Outreach to moderate Muslims has not aided in this effort, and has deceived the general public into thinking that the influence of peaceful Muslims over jihadists is much larger than it actually is.

As far as the DHS and Janet Napolitano are concerned, the Flight 253 incident is a massive and unmitigated disaster, showing the complete and abject failure of their anti-terror policies across the board. The Flight 253 attempted jihad attack shows that the American response to jihad terrorism has failed not just in one detail or a single area. Rather, the failure is massive, comprehensive, all-encompassing. The anti-terror approach adopted since 9/11 is not working, and is never going to work. Until it is scrapped, there will be many, many more incidents like the one on Flight 253. But rather than have the decency to admit the truth, the DHS chief is putting on a brave face and pretending that up is down and down is up. And the President keeps golfing.

*******

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, is available now from Regnery Publishing, and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of the forthcoming book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon and Schuster).

[2ndDivisionVet]

What do you want him to do, fight his co-religionists? Isn't that forbidden in the Koran, except in cases of doctrinal disputes?

[amom]

mark

[BIGLOOK]

While the destruction of Flight 253 failed, terroism succeeded....our government has seen to that.

[230FMJ]

mark II

[purplelobster]

Napolitano and Barry have instituted a new rule for airlines since yesterday to confound terrorist acts like this. Now passengers cannot go to the bathroom during the final hour of the flight. Somehow this will fool terrorists who would not think to detonate their underpants prior to the one hour curfew.

[highlander_UW]

Obama made a point to rush out and condemn some campus police (when they were in the right), but he's too busy to bother to make a statement on the 2nd act of terrorism since his inauguration?! The Joker Obama poster really is a true photo of him.

[nathanbedford]

The author is correct, the television appearance by Homeland security czarina Napolitano was pathetic and terribly revealing of her inverted ideology.

Apparently, the Obama administration cannot see a terrorist anywhere except among those who express their constitutional rights at tea party demonstrations. She exhibited a regrettable leftist's tendency to circle the wagons around her bureaucracy. She betrayed herself to be inept even in public-relations. She would have been much better served, and so would the bureaucracy she sought to defend, if she had admitted the obvious that the system broke down. When a father of good reputation tells an American embassy that his son is a dangerous Muslim ideologue, and the system cannot review its visa procedures, or it's fly watch procedures, or alert any other part of the system, the system is clearly broken down. Napolitano saw nothing wrong with this situation but, by God, they were going to investigate it.

It is ironic that the United States government has literally billions of dollars to invest in the propagation of the belief of global warming. It can enlist NASA, universities, think tanks, the media, and interest groups in the crusade against global warming. It is amazing what a few hundred billion dollars can do. Why cannot the government flex its muscles where it might actually do some good? Why cannot the government invest $2 billion in the opinion makers within the Muslim world to create an anti-jihadist atmosphere and make the extremists intellectually and emotionally beyond the pale?

It is not persuasive to say that intellectuals cannot be bought, they certainly can be bought and they have been bought by the bushel full in places like East Anglia. It is not persuasive to say that Muslims cannot be bought because no one is turned in Osama bin Laden. They can be bought just like anyone else, to hold otherwise is to reveal that one has never simply walk through an Arab bizarre. It is not persuasive to say that it is too late because such anti-jihadist opinion would not be received in the Muslim world. If that is so that we are in very deep trouble indeed because the war cannot be won, ultimately, without Muslim allies doing most of the dirty work.

[Atchafalaya]

Bet “Nathan” would have just shot the bastard...he’d been right. Re: Your last paragraph; we can win...nuke’em now, but we won’t.

[nathanbedford]

You are right, of course, we will not nuke them now.

In the years since 9/11 we have lost sight of the fulcrum point in the war against crazed Islam: weapons of mass destruction, especially nukes, being smuggled into and used in the homeland. Perhaps more likely, would be the release of chemical agents and perhaps even more deadly would be the release of biological warfare agents. These latter two, of course, would be far easier to smuggle into America and much easier to maintain in an upgraded condition.

In a way it is reassuring that Al Qaeda is confining itself to mosquito bites like shoe bombs and crotch bombs because it implies that they have no greater ordnance to deploy. On the other hand, although we have attrited the leadership of Al Qaeda significantly, they have also caused systemic change in the way of life as well as in the capitalist system of America. From their point of view, they might be well satisfied with what they have wrought.

If I were the mastermind of Al Qaeda, I would begin mouthing socialist platitudes betting that the left, once convinced that sharia means something akin to socialism, would further undermine resistance in the West.

[homegroan]

Thank God for Jumpin Jasper the Flying Dutchman.

Obama is a muslim first and foremost and he will do all he can to destroy us even if it is a little at a time..policy by policy...idea by idea... taking down a brick at a time...he has NO love for America-none.

[Eye of Unk]

Makes a person wonder just what kind of political binary explosives Obama is planning to mix in the near future.

[NoLibZone]

"An attempted jihad attack on Christmas Day..."

Lyndon Barrack Johnson says Jihadists are just "Fiercely loyal Muslims"

Obama feels it's the passengers that are bitter, gun clinging Bible thumpers.

[homegroan]

It took me a long time to come to the conclusion that he is truly a muslim first-and I don’t say it lightly-but he truly hates this country and is in the process of looting it and destroying it. Even his democrat cohorts-Pelosi etc. don’t see it-they just see the power and glory for their party. They are being used by islam and have no idea.

[bmwcyle]

Just another failed President Obama item.

[backhoe]

...the television appearance by Homeland security czarina Napolitano was pathetic and terribly revealing of her inverted ideology.

“Complete and total beclownment.”

[Abundy]

re: biological weapons and smuggling same into US

how freaking easy would it be to infect 30 or 40 radicals and just send them in the US on vacation?

Seriously, if they can convince them to strap an explosive vest on and detonate it, what’s to stop them from using the same types of people as walking aerosol distribution devices?

They fly into multiple airports and then travel cross-country via plane, bus and train...hitting all the major hubs and infecting as many people as they can...

and there would be no way to stop them from boarding the initial flight into the US if they are not showing any symptoms

[Sarajevo]

Duh................drool

[Nahanni]

Well, we now are all in for a very bumpy ride. I imagine we will see much more of this kind of crap along with all the other "fun" ways the shahids can get their one way tickets punched to their 72 virgins like being a splodydope at a mall somewhere, car bombs, truck bombs along with trying to blow up airplanes. You see, the one major reason why they didn't try too much over the previous seven years is because they knew that if they did president Bush would come after them and open up a Texas sized Can of Whoop Ass(TM) on then and everyone they know. The whole world knows that we have a pantywaist in "mom jeans" and a fool in the White House and the jihadis are going to pimpslap him around just like they do to their wives. In fact they are probably more afraid of their wives because their wives just might drop a cast iron skillet on their heads while they are sleeping. They know that all Obamao will do is apologize to them some more.

[bushpilot1]

the link is dead?

[Joe Boucher]

No, NO.
Janet Napolitano stated that all’s well and that the security system worked just fine.
We waste HOW MUCH MONEY and it take some “guy” jumping in as a hero to prevent something the REAL security should have caught.
Napolitano is on drugs.