Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt at bombing Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009 certainly rekindled Americans' interest in terrorism and security. Until recently, security issues for many citizens seemed to focus on complaints about the endless lines and burdensome procedures at airports.
Far too many of us presumed that the world's most serious terrorist groups had lost interest in attacking the United States after the post-9/11 changes in security and the bevy of heavy-duty U.S. military operations aimed at destroying terrorist groups worldwide. But now, with Abdulmutallab's one bungled attempt, security has once again captured Americans' attention.
Unsurprisingly, in the aftermath of Abdulmutallab's failure, accusations and finger pointing prevail as well as the usual attempts to identify the relevant security gaps and improvements in security procedures. But since little is known either about why he was selected for the operation or the reasons for the attack, the options reviewed have been largely limited to arguments about the means for plugging the various security holes exploited in the failed attempt. In the end, since the information that has emerged has provided little more than some background accounts on Abdulmutallab, his purported relationships with radical Muslim clerics and an incomplete picture of his possible connections to one or another terrorist group, most of the security recommendations have all the hallmarks of "locking the barn door after the horse has left" or opportunities for showpiece political one-upmanship.
We believe that it is this incomplete information—both in understanding the current wave of Islamist terrorism and our ongoing failure of imagination—that constitutes the crux of the problem that America and Americans are facing with respect to terrorism and security.
While we are chasing after the security gaps that allowed Abdulmutallab to board and potentially destroy an airplane, we still seem to be missing much—if not most—of the critical information necessary to prevent potential future terrorist attacks that can severely damage and disrupt critical U.S. infrastructure and its economy. Even more significant, while we have generally focused on the methods used in past events and the associated preventative measures, there is almost no information on what security measures work, what don't or how to improve the efficiency of security operations.
Regrettably, we may be preparing for the repetition of past attacks and devoting little energy to developing a foundation for making reasonable judgments about the broad range of security policies and operations required to protect the nation.
What's unknown?
A fact of life in U.S. security today is that, while we have developed detailed accounts of virtually every past terrorist action, the central concern of the 9/11 Commission on September 11, 2001, is still on the back burner. Although we have piles of data on just what happened to the USS Cole in the harbor in Aden, Yemen, on October 12, 2000, and are now accumulating equally detailed data about Abdulmutallab's failed attempt, little has been done about the failures of imagination that leave terrorists with misunderstood motivations and open opportunities. And underlying our failure of imagination is a keen sense of denial based on information that has little relevance to their motivations and goals—denying, for example, that there is anything more to Islamist terrorism than frustrations with modernity, poverty, concerns about the influence of the West and potential political power grabs.
For the most part, we have treated Islamists as if they are simply waiting for a relief program from the West that would provide an easy transition to Western culture and Western values. But even with the enormous military efforts devoted to destroying "them" before "they" can attack us and the open-handed support for the current regimes in the Middle East, Islamist terrorist groups have obviously been able to spread, expand their numbers, and continue to operate against the United States and the West.
Since 9/11, the most senior members of Al Qaeda have been the focus of a worldwide manhunt. Yet in these eight plus years, not only has much of the leadership remained at large, but the group has continued not only to be able to operate but also to extend its reach well beyond the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in which it is supposedly contained. Nevertheless, based on what amounts to little more than idiosyncratic information, many counterterrorist organizations and agencies now appear to believe that it is only a matter of time before Al Qaeda is completely destroyed and the terrorism threat is permanently removed.
Unfortunately, Islamists have recognized this failure in the U.S. counterterrorism and security posture and have consistently used it to their advantage. Consider, for example, the possibility that Abdulmutallab does not represent the vanguard of a new wave of terrorism aimed at the United States but, rather, is simply a committed young man who was sent on a disinformation mission aimed at convincing Americans that Al Qaeda no longer has the ability to mount major attacks aimed at Western economies or the U.S. infrastructure.
