12-Jul-15: What exactly happened over Independence Day?

Source: CNN, June 26, 2015

The FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned local law enforcement agencies ahead of time [see this June CNN story for instance] to be alert for attacks around the July 4 holiday.

No such attacks happened. But Reuters, in a vaguely worded report quoted "a national security source" saying

multiple overseas plots by Islamic State sympathizers had also been halted in recent days. [Reuters, July 10, 2015]

We might find that details get released over the coming weeks and months:

FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that the FBI was able to thwart attacks tied to July Fourth, CBS News confirmed. Comey would not give details on attacks or arrests but did say in the last four weeks the FBI arrested more than 10 people who are products of the Islamic State’s online recruiting. Some were focused on the Fourth of July. Not all are charged with terror offenses, the FBI director said. “I do believe we disrupted efforts to kill people in connection to the Fourth,” Comey said. He said he believes their work saved American lives. “They’re averaging 50 people a day internationally that ISIL, through their mass media campaign, is successfully recruiting people,” former FBI agent Manny Gomez told CBS2’s Dick Brennan. “And it sounds like they have successfully once again recruited individuals that were planning to launch attacks during the Fourth of July in random places in the U.S.”... Comey said the ISIS’ online message and social media is so unpredictable that it can be hard for federal authorities to ever be sure of their plans and it’s difficult to track the lone wolf. “We have limited resources to identify, investigate and stop all of them,” Gomez said.[Source: "CBS News: FBI Thwarts Terror Attacks Tied To 4th Of July", July 9, 2015]

How often have words like those ("we don't have enough resources") been sounded by public officials responsible for blunting the penetration of Islamist groups into mainstream society?

And how involved are Americans in the workings of the Islamists? Here's one stab at quantifying:

“I have been doing this for 45 years,” said Francis Taylor, the undersecretary of intelligence and analysis for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “I’ve never seen a terrorist organization with a kind of public relations savvy as ISIL.” ISIL is the government’s preferred acronym for the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS... [T]he Islamic State’s public relations savvy has drawn 180 Americans to join the group, Taylor said in his prepared remarks. ["Islamic State’s command of social media called unprecedented", McClatchy Group, June 3, 2015]

10-Jun-15: Taking counter-terrorism measures seriously: are we all on the same page?

PreCheck program probably makes sense if it's done right, but
is it? [Click to visit TSA site]

As the summer travel season gets into full-swing, millions of passengers passing through airports are going to encounter security officials and the counter-terror processes they administer. Most of us, one way or another, justify the inconvenience, and often the indignity, of the experience with the thought that, on the whole, it contributes to our personal security. And it stops the terrorists.

But it's far from being that simple. A syndicated Agence France-Presse report, datelined Washington DC and published in the early hours of this morning, includes revelations that ought to stop travelers in their tracks:

Dozens of US airport workers linked to terror: official | AFP | June 10, 2015
Last week, Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson announced new measures to improve security screenings at American airports after investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives and weapons through checkpoints dozens of times.... [A] report revealed that American airports had hired dozens of people with terror links. The Transportation Security Agency is already reeling after a recent Department of Homeland Security report found that investigators could sneak fake bombs and weaponry through security with a 95 percent success rate... [T]he TSA failed to detect at least 73 people with links to terrorism who were hired by US airports... Becky Roering, an assistant security director at the Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport, told the hearing that former "badged" employees had even gone to Syria to join the Islamic State group... More than a million people have signed up for the TSA's PreCheck program, and another seven million have been randomly chosen for expedited boarding checks. In one case, a former member of an extremist organization found himself randomly given access to the PreCheck line but a TSA worker recognized him and alerted his superior... "TSA is handing out 'PreCheck' status like Halloween candy in an effort to expedite passengers as quickly as possible," Roering said... Roering also said TSA staff have low morale and work in a climate of fear and distrust.

In another news source today, the same TSA official is quoted offering some background for the bizarre state of affairs:

Roering said enrollment in the program had fallen short, with only about a million people signed up. So the TSA had started letting unapproved passengers go through the quicker PreCheck screening lines despite the risks. ["TSA Whistleblower Says PreCheck Is Weak Point in U.S. Airport Security", Reuters, today]

The report criticizing the US Transport Safety Authority happens to have been the subject of an interrupted Senate discussion yesterday (Tuesday) in Washington.

...U.S. Capitol Police received a bomb threat that forced the evacuation of a hearing on the TSA in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Secret Service officers covered up the press cameras in the briefing room during the evacuation to protect methods and practices used by the agency to investigate bomb threats... [T]he first bomb threat was made targeting a specific location, which is what caused the USCP to take the threat more seriously. The aide said the caller described a device that had been placed in the Homeland Security Committee offices on the third floor of the Dirksen building. [CNN, June 10, 2015]

Then just a couple of hours later, 

In the middle of White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest's daily briefing, officials told all reporters to evacuate the briefing room. The North Lawn of the White House was also cleared. The Secret Service said a bomb threat had been called in at 1:53 p.m. to the DC Metropolitan Police Department targeting the briefing room specifically... Secret Service officials said they couldn't discuss any potential connection between the White House and Capitol Hill threats. [CNN, June 10, 2015]

In slightly bizarre White House briefing yesterday right after the bomb threat [check the first two minutes of the video clip], it's made clear that only a single chamber in the entire White House complex was evacuated. That was the room in which the news people had been assembled for the briefing. Make of it what you will.

Fourteen years after the events of 9/11, how seriously are the dangers posed by terrorism taken in the US? Leaving the ongoing fiasco at the TSA aside, it's interesting to note how the White House, where the second of the two threatening phone calls was directed yesterday, reacted:

Earnest said President Barack Obama, who was in the Oval Office at the time, was not moved during the evacuation. First lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia, who were in the residence at the time, also were not moved. "I have complete confidence in the professionalism of the men and women of the secret service to make judgments about what's necessary to keep all of us safe," Earnest told reporters during the briefing after it resumed, though it remained unclear why only part of the complex had been evacuated. [CNN, June 10, 2015]

Israel police unit checks suspicious object (which did indeed
turn out to be an explosive device) in Petach Tikva,
near Tel Aviv, April 27, 2014 [Image Source]

Daily life in Israel is frequently interrupted by events we call "Hefetz Hashud", literally "suspect object" and meaning something has been found that might possibly be a security risk to people in the area and we're going to check it but meanwhile this bus is being stopped and you should get off, or this road is being blocked, and you will have to wait where you are while the sappers are called to the scene. And so on.

The overwhelming majority of those incidents, once carefully checked, turn out to be nothing, usually a forgotten shopping bag. But not always. In a hyper-critical society, Israelis rarely complain when this happens to them. Living in a terror-rich environment eventually brings you to take such things in your stride.

28-Dec-10: How the militants, fighters, insurgents and freedom fighters turn into terrorists

The Guardian, one of the world's towering superpowers of political correctness, carried a little-noticed story this past Sunday about a disturbing turn of events emanating from our neighbourhood:

"Intelligence services throughout the Middle East and Europe are scrambling to track down more than two dozen fighters linked to al-Qaida who have recently left their base in southern Lebanon. The missing men are thought to have gone to Europe by a newly established route through Syria, Turkey and the Balkans, and multiple intelligence sources in Lebanon warn that the group appears to be operational and could be planning attacks in Europe in the holiday season... "We have received warnings of a significant militant plot in Europe during the holidays and we have been warned about these missing fighters from Lebanon"...

If you follow the link and view the article as published, you may notice that the word terror appears exactly once - in the headline: European terror attack feared as al-Qaeda fighters disappear from base in Lebanon.

In the body of the article, these Al Qaeda individuals are called "fighters", "missing men", "group", "militants" and even "a disparate group of freelance fighters and jihadists" which comes close to the heart of the matter. Not once are they called terrorists.

So what is it about the jihadists that causes this odd metamorphosis? So long as they remain in the Middle East - in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and especially in the towns and villages controlled by the Palestinian Authority, by Hamas and by Hezbollah - these men, women and children are routinely described by the kind of circumlocution that is on display in the Guardian.

But once they execute their satanic plans in Europe, North America and elsewhere, or even do no more than threaten, they undergo reclassification - as terrorists.

What is it about otherwise intelligent and sober editors and journalists that prevents them from applying to the executors of acts of terror - the jihadists and the child-killers and the murderous Islamicists and the homicidal/suicidal/genocidal human-bombs - the simple English-language name that most fits them: terrorists?

Could it be that it depends on the religion or nationality of the intended victims?

We are the parents of a fifteen year-old daughter murdered by the terrorists, and we are sickened and alarmed by the repeated use in various news media of circumlocutions and double-speak about the practitioners of terror. Terrorist acts are too often called "revenge bombings" and  "revenge attacks", which is half-way towards explaining and justifying acts of unfathomable hatred. Innocent people murdered by the terrorists are too often said to have been "caught in the crossfire". [This month alone, you can see examples in the Financial Times,  Business Week, NPR, Washington Post and many other places.] But the reality is terrorists fully intend to harm, maim, terrorize and kill - indiscriminately. There is no crossfire with terrorists. There are no innocent victims. The more casualties the better. We are all in their crosshairs.

Not everyone sees it our way. Speaking at a conference in Washington in May 2010, the head of the US National Security Council’s Counterterrorism and Homeland Security adviser said [according to this Arab News report] the Obama Administration will no longer tolerate use of the terms “Islamist” and “jihadist”. “Jihad" he explained, "is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purity oneself or one’s community." His chief executive, President Obama, says he knows America is "at war" but it's a war against "terrorism" and not against any particular religious segment. He feels it is

"absolutely important now for the overwhelming majority of the American people to hang on to that thing that is best in us – a belief in religious tolerance, clarity about who our enemies are... We have to make sure that we don't start turning on each other... If we’re going to successfully reduce the terrorist threat, then we need all the allies we can get."

Not surprising, then, that much of the world is still struggling to understand what motivates "homegrown Muslim plotters who are European citizens" like those arrested this week in the UK (London, Cardiff, Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham - at least five of them of Bangladeshi origin) and accused of "plotting to carry out a terrorist attack" [to quote the Christian Science Monitor].

There are sane voices in the world of ideas - like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy - who argue that, rather than avoid mention of the religious motivation behind the terrorism of al-Qaeda et al, the Obama administration should sharpen the distinction between Islam and the political ideology they call radical Islamism. But they're not being heard.

The religious motivations of Islamic terrorists are clear. To ignore them is not only self-deluding but likely to produce bad outcomes where it counts - in law enforcement, in the courts, in government.

This has real and practical life-and-death importance. There has been a wave of warnings from intelligence agencies since October 2010 about terror attacks that are coming to European cities. A British university graduate called Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly carried out a mostly-ineffective bombing in Stockholm this month - so the Swedes at least know there is some basis to the stories. The Italians too: in Rome, a bomb was found on a train last week. In the Netherlands, the authorities arrested 12 Somali men two days ago on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack on the port of Rotterdam, Europe's largest. The list goes on. It will surely get longer.

Simple good sense dictates that it's time to draw a tight connection between the terrorists and the terrorism. It can't be that these people are militants, fighters and insurgents so long as they operate in the Middle East, but then turn into perpetrators of terror only when they arrive in London or Mumbai. When civilized societies fight them by putting police onto the streets and in the airports and train stations and shopping precincts, it's nice to have "all the allies we can get", as the US president says. But it's even more important to have a clear-eyed, concrete sense of who these terrorists are and what makes them tick, tick, tick.