An ill-timed LA Times article
Of course, we’re not sure if it was al-Qaeda who influenced the attack in Boston yesterday, but I can’t think of a more ill-timed article than this one in the LA Times announcing that because of the “decimation” of al Qaeda, we should be shifting our focus of the war against terror;
As Al Qaeda recedes as a direct threat, the CIA and special military forces appear to have throttled back on targeted killings. They have launched 16 drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen this year, according to the Long War Journal, which tracks reports of the attacks. That pace is much slower than in 2012, which saw 88 strikes over the course of the year.
The Obama administration also has begun bringing accused terrorists into civilian courts, rather than before military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. In March, it brought three terrorism suspects into New York courtrooms after they were captured overseas.
“There’s clear recognition, from the White House on down, that as we wind down these wars we need to address the hard question of what does a sustainable counter-terrorism policy look like for the next phase,” said Shawn Brimley, who left the White House last year as director for strategic planning on the National Security Council.
In my humble opinion, the attack yesterday was indeed a terrorist attack of the jihadist type. I find it hard to believe that any Right wing extremists would use a Claymore mine-type bomb. I find it difficult to believe that the bombing was anything besides a jihadist attack, given the number of attempts they’ve made in the last few years. I may be wrong, but I don’t get that feeling. Bombing unprotected Americans with the intent to inflict massive casualties is not the usual right wing target – they seem to target things that represent their nemesis, like government offices and buildings and the Holocaust Museum, not simply people, whereas, jihadists want to kill people and create havoc.
I just find it hard to believe that this was anything besides a jihadist attack. It was inevitable that they were going to finally get one right. And the LA Times was naive to buy the government’s line that al Qaeda was almost dead. That’s probably why the terrorists were finally successful. Someone had to see the terrorist plant his bombs, but we’ve been conditioned to believe that the terror war is part of our past, we’ve become complacent. And we’ve been taught that reporting an Arabic person for suspicious activity is racist, so we ignore things about which we should be alert.
I don’t have anymore information than you have, but, maybe because I spent the 80s in Germany, I’m just a bit more sensitive about these terrorist things and it makes me uncomfortable that Americans are more complacent than they should be.
For more on the Boston Marathon bombing, read what our buddy Kit wrote at the Victory Girls.
Category: Terror War
Liberals are all about making pronouncements and moving on. Like “ObL is dead. GM is alive.”
They’ve not been about “getting the job done” since JFK/RFK/MLK were shot by members of their own constituency…
While deployed to Afghanistan last year, I had to deal with 7 different terrorist organizations just in my Province. (That we knew of) One of the issues going on at the time (reported in the news even) was that all these groups weren’t getting along because they all had different objectives. Further, only one of them was Al Qaeda.
Across the planet, there are hundreds of “terrorist” groups. Claiming victory because the “one” we are most worried about, is “decimated” is short-sided and negligent. Let alone, Decimated means “removal of a tenth” and keeps being used because it sounds like a power word.
“There’s
clear recognitionwishful thinking, from the White House on down, that as we wind down these wars we need to address the hard question of what does a sustainablecounter-terrorismwelfare state policy look like for the next phase,” Fixed it for the LA Times, free of charge.“decimation” means 1 in 10. LA Times editor must have graduated from the Sally Struther’s School of Journalism.
The news report this morning was a statement from the Pakistani Taliban that they had nothing to do with it, so I am going with the ‘lone wolf’ idea, someone like the Unibomber who has a hair up his backside about something — anything — and wants to get back at the largest number of people possible, especially since no one has claimed any responsibility for the act.
I’m thinking along same Ex-PH2. If it were jihadist types I would think they would have bragged about it by now.
If we get some sort of ‘manifesto’ sent to the news media then we know it’s some loony, narcissistic lone wolf.
But we don’t know anything concrete yet.
/fwiw, commenter over at Ace says:
“Warrant served on Ocean Towers Apts. a section 8 hell hole in the hood. Tea Baggers don’t live in the hood. Terror cells might.”
Weren’t there 2 OccuTurds recently arrested for building pipe bombs in their apartment? Can’t recall the article, but they were both well-off professionals or something, professors at some university?
one of the two was a woman
The scary thing about this attack is that based on what some experts are saying, the bombing has signs of both domestic terrorism as well as certain characteristics of jihadist bombers overseas.
Not Terrorism its gonna be called Recreational Violence, just like it was work place violence. /sarc off
@8 Jose Pimentel, a Dominican-born US citizen, was arrested in New York in November 2011 for attempting to build a pipe bomb in his apartment, but he wasn’t allied with Occupy. He was an al-Qaeda follower. I think he followed al-Awlawki or someone.
One of the dolts who were building a kegger bomb in 2012 during the NATO conference in Chicago was sentenced to four years in jail for his fake ‘Harry Potter’ bomb threat.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-06/news/chi-man-gets-4-years-fake-harry-potter-nato-bomb-threat-20121106_1_brian-church-mark-neiweem-sebastian-senakiewicz
It seems to me that there were two other people in New York last year who were busted for building pipe bombs, but I couldn’t find anything on them.
I think we’re a bit complacent in this country, thinking it simply can’t happen here. There is an entire generation that has no memory of the hijackers flying planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and the Shanksville, PA, pasture in 1991.
We’ve been lucky, because we’re shielded from these things most of the time, but it’s less about luck than it is about random acts getting through. The Tylenol poisonings in Chicago were never actually solved, although the FBI finally arrested James Lewis for his extortion letter to Johnson & Johnson. The Unibomber was a complete loner, but was finally arrested. Nichols and McVeigh basically acted alone. The anthrax killer was a government lab scientist who had access to anthrax spores and acted alone.
For these reasons, I think this is a lone wolf who gets his jollies out of seeing it happen and is planning another one right now.
PH, these people? http://news.yahoo.com/nyc-couple-arrested-explosive-substance-found-155041549.html
Yup, you hit the nail on the head. Complacency does kill. And I knew right away this was Hajji. Just pisses me off how much the apologists fall all over themselves to deny the obvious.
I had a lady at work walk up to me and ask, “So who do you think did this?”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Going from the poor quality of the bomb (seems like one anybody with half a brain can make in their garage) and happening on Tax Day / Patriot’s Day, I just don’t see it being foreign terrorism. If it were, I’d expect it to be better made, more deadly and more expansive.
There’s been a lot of domestic terrorism on Tax Day, this doesn’t look complex enough to be the work of someone who’s trained, dedicated their life to it, and managed to slip past everything. It wouldn’t take a genius to design and build a better bomb using nothing but Home Depot and Walmart available products.hjkl
@16: Then you have to ignore the fact that the shoe bomber failed, the undies bomber burned his junk off, the Colorado plot (which was supposed to use backpack bombs on subways and buses in NYC), the Times Square failed bomb, etc. No, you are off base with your analogy, because the “domestic terrorist/rightwing extremist/militia” meme doesn’t fit this MO. They have made many attempts and the law of averages finally caught up with us.
PH, dead on.
Who did this? We’ve done it to ourselves; the modern Bostonian is not their forefather’s son.
@13 – Yes, that was it.
I see I put the wrong date in my comment @12. The sentence should read thus: There is an entire generation that has no memory of the hijackers flying planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and the Shanksville, PA, pasture in 2001.
My bad. Sorry. 1991 was the truck bomb in the WTC garage.
PN, until there is other evidence, if someone asks me such a very stupid question, my response for now will be “I have no idea. Why are you asking me?”
The conspiracy theories have already gotten underway. I refuse to add fuel to them. And no, I do not consider even remotely possible that this is an act of our government or the goofball in the White House for a very simple reason: he disdains anyone who has or wants to use weapons. His golf game is more important to him than having good national defense.
“Decimate” has more than one meaning, one of which is “to cause great destruction or harm to”. It would be nice if that’s actually what happened to AQ, but I think they (and their fellow travelers) are still capable.
@20 That was pretty much what I told her. I concur about conspiracy theories; they take away from the reality of the situation, and are worse than useless.
@19: 1993, not 91. About 20 days into Clinton’s presidency IIRC.
I am also leaing towards this being domestic, for a number of reasons. The dual explosions were too close together for the classic “two explosion” al Qaeda type bombing (which normally puts the two explosions far enough apart that the second one gets some first responders that are coming to the aid of the victims of the 1st one.) Also the low power of the bombs (did anyone else notice that the window immediately behind the bomb blast wasn’t even completely blown out? It was a double pane window and only the outermost pane was blown away, the inner one was still there.)
Certainly, it still could have been an al Qaeda sympathizing loner, seeing as how we’ve killed or captured so many of their top leaders that we are, at this point, fighting against the B or even the C or D team. But it could just as easily be a white supremacist/racist (like Eric Rudolph at the 1996 Olympics) or some radical anti-taxer from an organization like Posse Comitatus.
@23: While I believe it is possible, my own thinking goes to these bombs did exactly what they were designed for; anti-personnel. Lots of shrapnel. Bombs placed by the finish line to guarantee media coverage. Bombs placed against the wall so that the blast will be mostly directed towards all the people standing and walking in front of it. Lots of carnage with as many dead and injured as possible. Portable and easier to conceal in plain site at such an event. Most domestic terrorists of the type that some infer we should be pointing to are more interested in government buildings or other symbols of the government. These were placed to get the most civilian casualties as possible (and they did their job).
NOW HEASR THIS! Let ME make this perfectly clear.
Altough the President refused to call it a terrorist attack and Janet Napalatano called it a horrific event … the event was immediately known to be a terrorist attack. The FBI is lead agancy because it was a terrorist event!
Any questions?
Master Chief, the President did finally call it a terrorist event.
Only two bombs were found. One of them appeared to have been inside a pressure cooker stuffed into a backpack. The people with extremely severe injuries (as in combat-type injuries) is 17.
@23: In addition to the detonations being too close together (in time), they were between 300-550 feet apart (in distance) depending on which sources you read, and more to the point, most first responders would have been located past the finish line, and the second detonation was well before it – they would have rushed to the first, stopping well before they got to blast range.
Picking AQ is always a decent probability in these situations, but I’d give a slight edge to a lone actor theory, maybe along the lines of behavior like that of the various mass shooters (Newtown, Colorado movie theatre, etc.), but this time with home-grown explosives. Time will tell, and hopefully soon.
Seems odd to me that NOBODY has stepped forward to claim it. That’s almost antithetical to terrorist motives. They want you to know who did it, and why, and what will happen if you ignore them/don’t do what they want.
All very interesting, but in the final analysis, I have no need to know exactly which terrorist did what or if that terrorist was acting alone or a a member of a group. Placing a group name on it offers no comfort to me. And, since I am not actively engaged in tracking down terrorists, it serves no useful purpose for me to be kept informed of those details.
Whether AQ has been decimated or not by either the old or new definition of the word is irrelevant. There have always been groups of nuts hanging around the fringes of society who are fanatics to their cause, whatever that cause might be. I just don’t care what the fanatics du jour might be called. What I want is a government displaying sufficient strength to encourage the fanatics of every stripe to play their stupid games somewhere other than in my country.
@28: They didn’t come forward after the shoe bomber, or the undies bomber, or the Ft. Hood shooting. The thing is, when it’s a loner, not part and parcel to any one group, they don’t usually take credit.
@16
Nope, can’t be from the Middle East, cause they’re all sophisticated and such.
http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/12/stories/2006031212200400.htm
Oops…
More info from the AP article, sounds like an Islamist terrorist to me:
These types of pressure cooker explosives have been used in Afghanistan, India, Nepal and Pakistan, according to a July 2010 joint FBI and Homeland Security intelligence report. One of the three devices used in the May 2010 Times Square attempted bombing was a pressure cooker, the intelligence report said.
“Placed carefully, such devices provide little or no indication of an impending attack,” the report said.
@30
Yah, we just don’t know. We may never know.
@28: Nobody claimed responsibility for the OKC bombing or the Olympic Park bombing in 1996 either.
martinjmper- think you’ll find the dual “one for the money, two for who shows” bombs were used by the IRA long before AQ was even thoght of.
Interview with (Saudi) roommate and renter of apartment from search:
http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t2#/video/us/2013/04/16/intvw-boston-revere-roommate.whdh
@36. Thanks. I need a good laugh.
Reporter: What did they do in the apartment?
Saudi Guy: What do you do in yours?
We eating…
Reporter: No. What did the police do?
Saudi Guy: Oh.
Bwahahahahahahahaha.
Still no one claiming responsiblity, just as with the Tylenol murders, Nichols & McVeigh at Oklahoma City, etc.
I think speculation is a waste of time. There were two pressure cooker-shrapnel bombs with timers. That’s all the FBI has. If/when they find the person responsible, we’ll be told. And I would trust the FBI way ahead of Holder or Bodaprez and his sidekick.