The adage, as it pertains to combatting modern day terrorism, goes: The United States has to be successful every time, one-hundred percent of the time. The terrorists only have to be successful once. Thankfully, for those of us in the U.S., the bungled attempts of some of these modern day terrorists, save for Malik Nadal Hasan's shooting rampage at Fort Hood, have not yielded more bloody acts of terrorism.
But the vision of what might have happened - whether it was the Christmas Day attempted bombing of Northwest flight 253 over Detroit, by "Underwear Bomber" Umar Abdulmuttallab, resulting in fiery bodies raining down over the city of Detroit or Time Square bombing suspect, Faisal Shahzad succeeding in igniting a fireball in the heart of downtown New York City that could have caused untold casualties of innocent men, women and children... A different outcome in either of these attempts at terrorism would have changed us. Changed us in the same way were, on that sunny September morning, when the Towers fell. The bad guys got it right on that day. They were successful. We were not.
The suspected Time Square bomber, Shahzad, was apprehended some 53 hours from the time an observant, New York City street vendor alerted a mounted NYPD cop, to his being taken into custody by Customs and Border Patrol agents, from an Emirates flight bound for Dubai. Except for a tiny glitch, here and there...this was a case of great work, investigative and otherwise, from the man on the street, to the highest levels of law enforcement, to the Obama administration, which deserves credit as well. Although they always seem to have to battle through their initial, reflexive tendencies to frame these events as some lone wolf who just happened to feel like blowing stuff up, that day. In spite of themselves, in this latest case, they got it done.
What's left to ponder, though, as some observers like Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard have - is, when can we start realizing more success, by the current administration, in snuffing out these twisted, murderous dreams of these would-be killers, much earlier on in the terrorist planning process?
Picking off Al-Qaeda bad guys, by the use of predator drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a good thing and Obama should be applauded for this low-risk form of reducing the enemy's ranks. But future news stories need to report on how we're 'thwarting' attempts at terrorism against the United States. And I don't mean some dubious prosectution of those nut-jobs from Michigan, the so-called Hutaree group who are accused of, among other things, attempting to overthrow the Government. Don't get me wrong...here's hoping they pin something on these wackos because what they represent is evil and my thought is, justice will be served. The timing may be suspect when it seemed what we needed at the particular time was some good old, home grown right wing hate group to roll out there when the Tea Party movement was gaining even more steam and we were warned how Aunt Tillie, with her "Obama is a Socialist" sign, would ignite the Right's fringe element out there, to horrible acts of violence.
The point being - the good news is that these real acts of attempted terrorism, against this country, within this country were not successful. For us to remain safe as a nation, the Government needs to do more to stop terrorism in the planning stages, so that it need not be left with responding to terrorism and terrorists after they've acted out on there evil plans, unsuccessfully...or not.
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