Underwear Bomber implicates Yemen as new front in War on Terror

In the wake of the attempted bombing of a jumbo jet destined for Detroit, Americans will have to decide their national determination to rid the world of terrorists. As we negotiate the complexities of Middle Eastern politics, the nation faces cash-strapped conditions here at home, and support for unending war is waning. As airports struggle to contend with the unattainable quest for guaranteed safety, U.S.-involvement in the Arabian Peninsula heats up. With the epicenter of aggression shifting in recent months, Yemen quickly adds itself to the diverse mixture of American targets, repeatedly implicated as a resurgent hotbed of Islamist extremism. The future of American warfare sits precariously balanced on Obama’s version of the War on Terror in a time of cautious optimism and recession-driven cutbacks.

As a prelude to this year’s adjustments to U.S. foreign policy, President Obama re-packaged the Global War on Terror during his inauguration speech. Obama’s agenda seemed to thoughtfully navigate the waters previously uncharted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, leading us to expand a war that began in Afghanistan, was side-tracked by Iraq, later spread to Pakistan, and now looks to include the increasingly destabilized Yemen.

It was at a Yemeni port that the USS Cole was attacked in 2000, killing seventeen American sailors. Since then, an in-flux of suspected terrorists, many displaced by the Afghanistan war, supplements what was already a powder-keg of Muslim extremism. With the failed terrorist attack of a commercial jetliner on Christmas day, President Obama was reminded that his administration is actively at war with al Qaeda. The source of the bomb in this latest act of psychotic aggression: Yemen, of course.

On their website, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed victorious responsibility for sending Umar Farouk Abdulmutallib stateside with an “underwear bomb” consisting of PETN. One of the ingredients of Semtex, PETN was easily smuggled onto the plane, as three ounces of the powdery substance was sewn into the attacker’s underwear.

With that, Abdulmutallib joins the ranks of dubiously unsuccessful purveyors of terrorism over American soil, a list which includes Richard Reid, whose notorious shoe-bomb also consisted of PETN. The AQAP website informs us, “the martyrdom brother was able to reach his objective with the grace of God but due to a technical fault, the full explosion did not take place.”

Indeed, the 300 passengers aboard Northwest Airlines flight 253 were fortunate the IED failed to detonate. What AQAP was able to prove was the relative ease PETN could once again infiltrate U.S. air-space. Their press release boasted “defying… the legend of the American and international intelligence services, proving their weakness, rubbing their noses in the sand, as if everything they spent on developing the security measures was nothing.”

Whether ironic or coincidental, the underwear bomber may have contacted Anwar al-Awlaki, the same al Qaeda member who counseled Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, responsible for killing 13 soldiers earlier this year. Al-Awlaki was targeted in the Yemen government’s Christmas Eve raids on several al Qaeda targets. Initially reported to have been killed, he’s now determined to be uninjured, and the cat-and-mouse saga continues.

On Monday, President Obama announced a systemic tightening of security restrictions on inbound international flights, attempting to soften the concerns of American air-travelers. He also assured the public that “we will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us,” reminiscent of the numerous threats of the late Bush administration and their open-ended antagonism, pregnant with vigorous rhetoric, but lacking substantive follow-through. Like the Bush administration, Obama now finds himself staring down multiple war fronts in an evolving Middle East, where failed states host droves of displaced Mujahideen in a veritable game of “terrorist whack-a-mole”.

We may be witnessing a slow, tidal shift with the latest skirmishes in Yemen. Compared to the eight unproductive years of the Bush/Cheney war games, where efforts to stamp out al Qaeda failed and attempts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden loomed incomplete.

As Bush prematurely declared Mission Accomplished regarding the Afghanistan conflict, he had succeeded in merely agitating the Taliban into a restructuring campaign which has threatened to destabilize a nuclear-armed Pakistan. The U.S. then proceeded to declare war on Iraq under the vague framework of the ambiguously infinite War on Terror, despite the fact that the Hussein regime was not terrorizing Americans. After bleeding human and financial resources across two expanding battlefronts, those who attacked us on 9/11 continue their violent radicalization of Islamist ideology unimpeded by our seemingly incapable dragnet.

Fulfilling campaign promises to re-focus U.S. forces away from Iraq, the Obama administration had spent most of this year re-asserting American militarism throughout the tribal areas of Afghanistan/Pakistan, or AfPak.

This month, the Yemeni government launched attacks against al Qaeda targets, in conjunction with American intelligence agencies, as well as the possible involvement of U.S. fighter jets allegedly launched from aircraft carriers anchored in the Gulf of Aden. The State Department has been cautious not to deny or confirm any such overt operations, but the UK’s Guardian reports that Obama called Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh to congratulate him on a successful joint operation.

At the same time, our control over Afghanistan amounts to control of its capital, Kabul, as our initial shock-and-awe dominance has yielded itself to an untimely diversion of military attention elsewhere, resulting in a recalcitrant and reinvigorated Taliban insurgency. Distracted from what should have been a clear mission from the start, the U.S. remains unsuccessful at destroying the al Qaeda network, as the half-hearted pursuit of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the masterminds of al Qaeda, has faded from our national priority.

A few months back, General David Petraeus introduced the possibility of Yemen being the next target in our nuanced strategy against terror. The highest ranking officer of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East and Central Asia told reporters that Yemen is “where al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has established its headquarters. This is a concern.”

It was about this time that a failed assassination attempt, also involving an underwear bomb packed with PETN, succeeded only in killing the bomber himself. The target was Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Interior Minister (and second to the throne), Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Since then, Saudi Arabia has taken up arms against Houthi rebels in Yemen’s northern border region, where a Shiite uprising threatens national security. Faced with a secessionist movement in the south, Yemen’s President Saleh had his hands full, but was thrust into the fray once his family was threatened by AQAP leadership. The next phase in Bush’s stalled-out Global War on Terror became official after Petraeus’ visit to Yemen, keeping with our usual tenets of classified cooperation and plausible deniability.

Raising the ante on the ‘concern’ described by Petraeus, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) suggests that “if we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war. That’s the danger we face.” Al Qaeda has indicated it views this month’s U.S. involvement in Yemen as “preemptive”, citing the incursions as the catalyst to this latest attempted bombing. Lieberman publicly admitted U.S. assistance to Yemeni military forces, including but not limited to special operations, “green beret” detachments, intelligence gathering, etc. For better or worse, Yemen could easily become tomorrow’s war as Lieberman warns, and a nasty, protracted involvement at that.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Lieberman also lashed out at the entire system-wide security breakdown that led to Abdulmutallib’s ability to board a plane with an explosive device, and rightfully so. Granted, an underwear bomb is difficult to defend against, even in a technological era of 3-D body scanners (especially those with the “crotch blocking” mechanisms, for privacy assurances). The true nature of the security failure has more to do with our many federal “watch lists”, and the bureaucratic technicalities that prevented them from doing what they were supposed to do in this instance.

Abdulmutallib’s own father alerted the U.S. embassy in Nigeria that his son had met with members of a terrorist organization in Yemen, and was plotting an ideological attack on American interests. This nugget of information translated into Abdulmutallib landing upon the Terror Identities Datasmart Environment, or TIDE, list along with half a million other potentially threatening individuals. If an investigation was to confirm his evil alliances, he might have been bumped up to join the 400,000 people on the Terror Screening Database. The next level of ‘security’ is the Selectee List, which contains roughly 14,000 names, then maybe one can ascend to the coveted “No Fly List” (3,400 or so).

It seems reasonable that paying customers preparing to board a flight could safely assume that anyone on any sort of ‘terror watch list’ would be barred from participating in whatever travel plans they’ve made. At the very least, a signed permission slip from each and every other passenger on board might suffice for a temporary over-ride, up to and including mob-style cavity searches. Other than that, Abdulmutallib, minus a passport as he was, should never have been allowed to gain entry to an airbus with hundreds of innocents, hell-bound (with a scheduled layover in Detroit).

Moving headlong into a midterm election year, Obama and his majority ruling democrats scramble to ensure the safety of Americans while countless militants continue their random acts of vengeful aggression on whichever bystanders happen upon the wrong place, wrong time scenario. In continuing the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda in and throughout Afpak and Yemen, Obama’s foreign policy agenda starts to resemble what Americans called for ever since September 11th, 2001: running down those that indiscriminately murdered 3,000 people on U.S. soil.

Inheriting, then improving upon, the war in Afghanistan, Obama may now face serious financial constraints moving forward, as Congress will carefully weigh out the cost/benefit analysis of further expanding U.S. military activities. As local and state election battles begin to heat up with the ushering in of 2010, Obama will struggle to define the necessity of the many entangled conflicts American soldiers are currently engaged in, given the state of an embattled U.S. economy.

With November's election looming on the horizon, voters can spend 2010 weighing in on the national debate. Americans can decide if we want more “boots on the grounds” in “failed states” laden with crazed insurgents determined to do the will of God while meeting Him in the process. The course we find ourselves on deserves limitless consideration, so far resulting in an unsustainable cost in both lives and dollars.

Preventive measures aside, only We the People can mend the moth-eaten blanket of American spirit, the very fabric of our national resolve. Fear is the terrorist’s ammunition. The solution can only presents itself once Americans overcome this one crucial philosophical hurdle: that victory against the tactic of terrorism resides in our collective refusal to be terrorized in the first place.