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Go Home Al Qaeda Loses Again

JONATHAN CHAIT MAY 2, 2010

Al Qaeda Loses Again

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

They say victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. Somebody should tell that to al Qaeda:

A top Pakistani Taliban commander took credit for yesterday's failed car bomb attack in New York City.

Qari Hussain Mehsud, the top bomb maker for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, said he takes "fully responsibility for the recent attack in the USA." Qari Hussain made the claim on an audiotape accompanied by images that was released on a YouTube website that calls itself the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel.

Rushing to take credit for a bungled attack is fairly pathetic. It's another piece of evidence of al Qaeda's severely degraded capability of launching attacks on American soil, where leaving a smoke-filled car in Manhattan is an operation worth boasting about. The Christmas bombing likewise failed on account of miserably low quality.

I'm not making an argument for complacency. It's obvious that al Qaeda wants to kill as many Americans as possible. But it's equally obvious that our counter-terrorism strategy is actually working. We should not feel hesitant to celebrate success.

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18 comments

Jonathan, you didn't mention that a significant slab of our success derives from the strategy of our foreign-born, half-black president, the one without the birth certificate. We aren't creating more jihadists by our insane policies, the way we were under Bush the Ignorant and Dick the Lesser.

- liberal reformer

May 2, 2010 at 3:59pm

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Yes and no. Or more precisely, yes your overall point is correct, but with some important qualifications. First, the organization Mehsud belongs to is the TTP, not Al Qaeda. Do they have related aims? Do they work together? Do they share some common infrastructure? Certainly. But they are different groups. Conflating them is sloppy, like confusing the Heritage Foundation with the RNC. Or maybe more like confusing the RNC with Likud. Second, as far as I know there was no advance warning of or intelligence about this attack. Assuming Mehsud is telling the truth (which is a significant assumption; Jihadist organizations use disinformation all the time), he was able to coordinate an attack on US soil without alerting US intelligence services. This is quite different from putting a man with some explosives on a plane from an overseas airport. Someone crossed into the US (or resides here normally), gathered equipment, constructed a bomb, and put it in place. Presumably he or she had funding of some sort, and there may have been on-going communication. This is the sort of thing we should have some indications and warnings about. The fact that we don't illustrates the real problem we have in penetrating Islamic terrorist organizations. All that said: yes, this was an amateurish attempt, and we can likely attribute it's failure to our successes in disrupting Taliban operations in Pakistan.

- ratnerstar

May 2, 2010 at 4:48pm

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And, of course, this may have just been probing operation to watch NYC security in action.

- ratnerstar

May 2, 2010 at 4:52pm

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Just as a cautionary note: it can't be excluded that we are dealing here with something a lot closer to Oklahoma City than to the mountains of Pakistan.

- ironyroad

May 2, 2010 at 5:09pm

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- Sounds like they're watching too much FOX and Rush. It's become a race to see who can be first with a threat, taking credit and conflating. Rush beat them to the Gulf spill (could Obama be involved?). The only difference is AQ is non partisan but even the rim on the right is hardly loyal to organization. Promotion, fear and deductive closure - justificatory closure are not only techniques both groups share, it's evidence their ideals are limited to self absorption. Notice, I'm not reducing either club to fascism and I'm not flinging Stalinist or Nazi to describe them. Elements of the far right and disaffected believers in Islam only wish to roll back history to some place to be determined. And neither the loose confederation on the right or wacky Muslims mind if they take out the larger group they claim to champion. And it may be a coincidence or not true that desperate people get bitter, cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them. But it's not a bad target market when a niche is sufficient and critical thinking isn't required in the transaction.

- michael

May 2, 2010 at 5:30pm

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- ratnerstar wrote, "All that said: yes, this was an amateurish attempt...". We've heard that before. Asymmetrical advantage never relied on the sophistication of The Manhattan Project. It was the professionals who failed to grasp for years that a new manual and new methods for dealing with amateurs would be more decisive in Iraq than more armor. I think 911 or McVeigh proved that refinement or elegance matter less than results. Training or experience isn't worthless but fanatics accept some risks, like getting caught or suicide. Crazy, stupid, wrong or naive are insults that can be flung, they don't necessarily get us closer to what it takes to win.

- michael

May 2, 2010 at 6:14pm

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You are missing that recent great Al Qaeda victory where they dressed up a lot of goats in American flags, sodomized them, and then killed and ate them. (my gratuitous insult of the day) Look, I am sure these mongrels will next claim credit for the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina. By the way, message to Al Qaeda, if you want a vehicle that will blow up pretty easy, try finding an old 1988 Hyundai Excel. Mine caught fire in 1990 and blew up right before Christmas on Route 80, destroying all of the gifts I bought and causing major gridlock in both directions. (Don't ask my why, but they closed both directions) so I, inadvertently by buying a crummy car, caused a bigger terrorist shutdown than this nimrod did. And then, later on, the class action lawsuit against Hyundai was dismissed because of a pro business Reagan appointee. Santa was really not good to me that year.

- blackton

May 2, 2010 at 6:54pm

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McVeigh is one thing. 9/11 and asymmetric warfare conducted against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is quite another, and "amateur" and "unsophisticated" are decidedly the wrong adjectives to apply. Al Qaeda and the insurgent organizations are quite sophisticated, and the attacks they have carried out have been done with with a great deal of thought, planning, and training. That is why they have been successful. By all appearances, however, this attack was amateurish. Amateurs can sometimes cause a lot of damage (see Tim McVeigh), but in this case even if the bomb had not be detected it likely would not have caused a great deal of damage. To the extent that we reduce Jihadist organizations to conducting amateurish attacks, we are winning.

- ratnerstar

May 2, 2010 at 6:58pm

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No one here in the city believes the Al Qaeda stuff. We're all waiting for what happens with the sighting of the tubby white guy leaving the scene. It seems more Timothy McVeigh-like to me.

- WandreyCer

May 2, 2010 at 8:10pm

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Black - your posts are fab.

- WandreyCer

May 2, 2010 at 8:11pm

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Ah, the social worker's wet dream: a deranged, white, lost soul of a Tea Bagger, attempting to spread the gospel via shrapnel, fails miserably. This means that almost certainly it was the Pakistani Taliban who masterminded this disaster.

- liberal reformer

May 2, 2010 at 8:53pm

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Admittedly, there is that wonderful moment back in 2006 when the Al Qaeda Land Rover got jammed between the security bollards at the Glasgow Airport terminal entrance.

- ironyroad

May 2, 2010 at 8:59pm

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It was two Vietnam War Veterans who alerted the NYFD to the smoking vehicle, illegally parked. Vietam Veterans who make their living as street vendors in Time Square. Story in the NYT. Pakistani Taliban makes total sense to me. Different organization from the Afghan Taliban. Different grievances, against America, for dragging Pakistan into our war.

- K2K

May 2, 2010 at 10:42pm

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- Wandrey - your posts are swell as well. But less frequent than in the past, or so it seems.

- michael

May 3, 2010 at 10:06am

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"a lot closer to Oklahoma City than to the mountains of Pakistan." Al-Qaeda in Oklahoma has a burgeoning membership, I hear. Their favourite recruitment tactic is beating up illegal immigrants from Mexico, or Arkansas, and burning Darwin books; has made them into folk heros, or Volkenhelden in Tornado Alley. Their base is in Ponca City. Apparently, Oral Roberts University was approached for an alliance; the Orals, most of whom hail from the Ozarks, objected to goats (they prefer Canadian geese and siblings). Remember, you heard it here first.

- icarusr

May 3, 2010 at 10:40am

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- Thanks icarusr! I cracked the code. Move the letters around and what do you get? Bad news if they announce the base op is Ponca City: [Copycat in] Well, it could also be Can copy it. Still not good.

- michael

May 3, 2010 at 12:05pm

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Lot of speculation here on responsible party. And of course, over at the Spine, it's cased closed. Why don't we wait until the investigation is concluded. I have 2 cautionary words against jumping to conclusions in terrorist bombing incidents: Richard Jewell.

- dubyadoubte

May 3, 2010 at 12:14pm

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- The Spine? I checked and it confirmed why he'll be the reason I take my business elsewhere. So I'll provide the entire exchange from which Mr. P. harvested his doom. But first, his impression of Napolitano, [She] "calmed New Yorkers with the solace that there wasn’t “evidence right now that this is anything other than a one-off.” Let’s hope. Of course, a series of “one-offs” would be a series of disasters." No, the reply was qualified and it was the only possible answer to the two questions from Gregory. MR. GREGORY: Was it an indication at all of something wider, some kind of wider plot? Can you determine that at this point? SEC'Y NAPOLITANO: You know, at this point I have no information that it's anything other than a one-off. But again, the situation is, is it happened. The forensics are being done. The FBI and, and the Department of Homeland Security, along with the New York City Police, working together to identify whether there are any other acts going on. We don't have any information that there are right now.

- michael

May 3, 2010 at 12:46pm

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