Flight 253 changes everything

29 December 2009 |permalink | email article

THE health care debate has portrayed President Obama, much to dismay of his party’s left wing, as someone who plays by Washington’s rules. He has come under fire for escalating the war and sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan while appearing to shift more to the center on issues of national security.

After 9/11 the Bush administration proclaimed Iraq as the center of the global war on terrorism when it was always clear that Afghanistan was at its epicenter with Osama bin Laden’s elusive presence. But the failed effort to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day by a trained operative has opened up what has been until now a covert U.S. front against Al Qaeda in Yemen, long a terrorist haven.

Obama, vacationing in Hawaii, did not speak out on the foiled attack for almost three days before addressing the airline security issue in a bland, low-key fashion, calling the incident “a serious reminder of the dangers we face,” while assuring Americans that they are safe.

But there is a slowly growing consensus, from the likes of Patrick Buchanan on the right, and Eugene Robinson on the left, that the war in Afghanistan, primarily against the Taliban, pales in comparison to the real and direct threat posed by Qaeda against the American homeland from in its stronghold in Yemen.

No one knows how many Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab-like Qaeda martyrs are being trained for U.S. attacks. But one thing is clear – keeping American troops in Afghanistan for up to 15 years and losing thousands of troops in the process, or containing resurgent Islamist extremism in Yemen and nearby Somalia or East Africa – the choice should be obvious.

The Republicans have initially seized the terror issue from the Democrats on intelligence and screening failures. But their amnesia about the failures of the Bush administration leading up to 9/11 remain indelible.   

 

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