In the season of jingling of bells and the comforting hustle-bustle of our many holidays and celebrations, the Dec 25th Northwest Airlines bombing attempt appears to be inviting recriminations, condemnations, and even some political hay-making around this almost-tragic event. Our president has labeled it a “systemic failure” – of a system that, despite his year in office, he disclaims all ownership of – and the broader rhetoric seems to be around how we’re just not doing it right. As if only there were a playbook or a Master’s degree that someone could use as a template for managing the assault of a Global Jihad.
Given that nobody died from this, KnowsJack is taking a rare journey into global politics to take a look at the other side of the coin: what Al Qaeda brought us for the holidays, and strange as it may sound, why we should be (very) grateful, in a It’s a Wonderful Life kind of way, for what we have accomplished and also what this event will bring us.
Seeing the other side of seemingly un-hoped-for gifts is a recently acquired skill for KJ, harking back to when the soon-to-be Mrs. KJ and I celebrated our first holiday. I was shocked by the gifts that I received from her, and especially, from her family. Old, time-worn paperbacks wrapped in last year’s wrapping paper, or even worse, newspaper. Re-used greeting cards, and frankly, a bunch of what felt like take-to-your-favorite-charity stuff. My own memories of a barren-wasteland childhood amplified this need to be given to, and the fact that they spent little money nor bought any of the big items that I wanted, led me to feel like they had not given me anything at all.
Years passed, and eventually I got it and learned to laugh at it, even make some good ones myself (my verse below, on a re-wrapped gift box that they had sent us, now containing tangerines).
Knock-knock.
Who’s There?
Orange?
Orange Who?
Orange you glad we came to see you at Christmas?
I learned from them what it is to be given to, regardless of the actual gift itself. Wifey’s family, as it turns out, packs more thoughtfulness, love and caring into their economically insignificant gifts (my parents were economists) than most any other gift-givers in the world. Fun little notes, often riddles about what it inside and how it relates to your life, and frankly, once I realized that size doesn’t matter, their gifts were more reflective and acknowledging of me than most things I had ever received before. Point taken: it’s not the gift itself, but it is the giving.
So let’s see if we can look inside this poorly-wrapped, ineptly-delivered “gift” from Al Qeada, and find the blessings, albeit unintended, and have some thankfulness for what those blessings bring to our lives.
Gift #1: Nobody died.
As menacing as it is to have Global Jihad waged against your country, I think we can all be grateful for the fact that, in this recent case, it was waged so poorly. Al Qaeda does have its moments of competence (human tragedies, all of them), but I find myself grateful that they have such a rag-tag crew, one that falls all over itself, almost Jacques Clouseau style, in trying to do their brand of terror. Not to deprecate the real pain and suffering that they have wrought, but to note that in this case, it could have been far worse.
Think back to the cold-war terror inflicted by the likes of East German Stasi or the Soviet Union’s KGB (okay, you may not have to think back for that one), and the Al Qaeda team is way, way more amateur – less like the ruthless terror of assassination by polonium-90 in one’s tea, and more like some kids trying to make a bomb by taping a bunch of firecrackers together. Thank you for your well-timed incompetence, Al Qaeda. You must have a closet full of these Richard Reid-types of guys — what next, flaming toupees?
Gift #2: Nobody died on Christmas.
I have a friend whose birthday is September 11th, and her birthday will in some ways never be the same as a result of the terror unleashed in 2001 on that date. A small thing, I know, but I have learned to appreciate even the small stocking-stuffer gifts on Christmas. This year, in my stocking (which is a heavily-darned but still pretty worn out wool flight sock from my father-in-law’s long career as an USAF pilot) I got a miniature slinky and some chocolate Santas.
While I find the current news coverage of this event plenty annoying, I am grateful that the event is less newsworthy than touted. And we would hear about it year after year, as my friend does. It would have changed the meaning of Dec 25th. I’m grateful for that, and St. Nick and JC have got to be a little grateful as well.
Gift #3: A reminder that it is not over, and won’t be for a long while.
This was real. The attack, and yes, it was an attack, failed because the terrorist failed, not because we prevented it. KJ would even argue, that in many ways it was a successful terrorist attack. True, it did not result in death, but it did inject terror into our lives. As a nation, we are likely to become more fearful of those we do not know, newcomers to our great land, or even people who just don’t look like us or live as we do. Those are normal human behaviors, of course, but the attack will amplify them and to some degree polarize us as a people.
This is a little like the Starbuck’s instant coffee single-use packets that I got as a gift. I’m legendary when visiting Wifey’s family for my early morning trek to the nearest Starbuck’s — they all drink that thin stuff called “drip”. First reaction upon seeing my gift: “Instant coffee? Me?” Second reaction: “What the hell, give it a try.” Third reaction: “Not bad. Maybe life is possible without a Starbuck’s shop nearby.”
I think it is safe to say that we have been feeling like we have this Al Qaeda terrorist thing licked, right? No large buildings collapsing, no domestic airplanes falling from the sky, no mass bombings in heavily populated public venues – you know, all the stuff that happens to other countries but not ours. Well we don’t have it licked.
And to a large degree, it is un-lickable. I hope that we all understand better from this that freedom, liberty and privacy are often at odds with security and safety. We have been reminded that there is an asymmetric threat called Al Qaeda, that is so wholly committed, yet decentralized, so adaptive it its methods, locations, resources, and so pure to its aims and so well-established, that in the near term we cannot conquer them, but only resist them.
So thanks for the strong black coffee on Christmas morning, Al Qaeda – all the better to see our gifts with our eyes wide open.
Gift #4: Reality-check: We are at War with Al Qaeda.
I know that we have a long history of choosing our wars, both where and when we fight. And thanks to some great neighbors, we rarely have to fight a war on our own soil. We are a little spoiled in this respect. To paraphrase the Las Vegas motto: Whatever happens in war, stays (over there) in war. War happens somewhere else, not here. We come home from war, not to war.
It happens when we choose it to. Or so we have thought. This has been the case since the 1880’s, but it is no longer true. Globalization and modernization make us more interconnected, and they also make a Global Jihad much easier to wage. I saw a report that Al Qaeda had used the comments section on YouTube as a communications tool. This War will come to us on jetliners, trains, and the internet. It will have its visa granted.
You don’t get to choose when someone wages Global Holy War upon you, and once they do, you are at war. We’re just not used to it being that way. If Canada (bless their peace-loving hearts) decided to declare war on the US and started attacking, we would be at war, right? Al Qaeda has been attacking for a while, is a credible antagonist, therefore, We Are At War.
So we may not call it the “War On Terror” anymore, and we may play nice with the enemy combatants by sending them through our court system, but it still is a war. Our government knows it too – they bomb the crap out of Al Qaeda bases in Pakistan, Afganistan and Yemen. Smells like war, looks like war, talks like war…must be war.
One of my nieces just discovered that there is no such thing as Santa Claus – she is the youngest of them and the last to fall, so to speak, into the reality of our consumerism-driven holiday. She was sort of depressed for a half of a day. And then she was fine. Santa Claus doesn’t exist – her new guitar does.
The gift is that we are reminded that there is a war going on. We are good at going to war – some may say too good. I tend to think that we’re pretty thoughtful about it. We try to do what is right and find a balance. We allow, even encourage, debate. We’ll need to debate this one as well, because many of the best protections from asymmetric threats (like Al Qaeda) compromise our purist views of privacy and liberty. Holding these “…truths to be self-evident….”, is probably not the same as saying that they should not be compromised at any price.
The rest of the world knows this.
So, thanks, Al Qaeda, for bringing us a little bit closer to an understanding of what we need to do counter your efforts, and for reminding us how, in the absence of you accepting our friendship, we need to be the most vigilant of enemies.
Gift #5: It is America that is being attacked.
Hey – George W. Bush isn’t even in the US anymore, is he? Or at least I haven’t seen him in a while. And President Obama has demonstrated that he wants dialogue. He writes letters, sends envoys, shuns the Dalai Lama, and he even has a Shiite muslim-ish middle name! Yet we find ourselves still being attacked. What’s up with that? I thought if I voted for Obama that we would just sit down with these scary jihadists and dictators and work it all out.
Not so. Things don’t appear to be getting better. As recently noted by a former RAND colleague, Brian Jenkins, there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001. Brian is a renowned terrorism expert, and unlike the impression that you probably get from 
this picture of him, he is a really nice guy too. He never said, “…but then I would have to kill you.” Not once.
Dear Santa: Next year I want a picture like this of me. Thanks.
Those on the right argue that Obama’s policies are too soft, much as those on the left argued that GW Bush’s policies were too harsh. These folks all miss the main point – America is the target. And America is not about the president or current policy, but it is about a much larger footprint: us, our culture(s), our economic reach, our freedoms, our tolerance, etc. We are under attack not because we are bigots, but because we do not share Al Qaeda’s bigotry! As a nation, we strive to be open and accepting. We allow freedom of speech and thought. They do not.
So thanks, Al Qaeda, for reminding us that whatever differences us Americans may have on the politics of the moment, we are, in fact, very united on our principles. Two hundred-plus years ago we all agreed that bigotry was wrong. We all have a right to be happy, even the infidels. That’s why we’re in this war with you. We didn’t choose it, but it is why we’re here. We’ve fought for this before.
Gift #6: The world changes…and we will survive.
Welcome to the real world, America. We will never be less vulnerable than we are now…at least in our lifetimes. We will increasingly be under attack. It isn’t the end of the world, nor ours beloved American Life, but it is a change.
We survived 9/11. The Spanish survived the Madrid bombing. The Indians survived the Mumbai bombing. The Israelis survive an unimaginable onslaught of neighbor-state terrorism. America is looking more and more like the rest of the world. The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that our broadcast media, lacking ability to gain perspective or actually find news that is not spoon-fed to them, tends to be pretty hyperbolic about events such as this.
The real news today is Iran — that’s where freedom is on the line. News is not, nor is it ever, our own politico’s pleadings about how we, the imperfect humans that we are, while balancing the need for privacy and freedom with the need for security and information, should be able to flawlessly track 550,000 known threats and pick the most miniscule needle out of the most massive of haystacks. Yes, it is obvious the We Are Not Doing It Right. Gimme a break.
No matter what anyone says, America is not going away any time soon. Say what you want about declines in our economic prominence, our culture and values, our quality of government – hell, some of it may even be true, although we tend to over estimate how much things matter – but we still have one of the best countries in the world. FYI, we’ll have good lives even if we aren’t the “best nation” on some lists, and what makes our country great is not really changing much at all.
I got two harmonicas (don’t ask) and a jar of lingonberry sauce. Lingonberries are big in Norway, where as a sauce they are slathered on reindeer meat – pretty tasty. KJ has a bit of a reputation with Wifey’s family as a gourmet cook. The giver (I think she would be called my second-step-aunt) said she didn’t know what you would use lingonberry jam for, but that I would probably know. So true. Now, how to find that reindeer….
So, finally, thank you, Al Qaeda, for this last gift, though boozily-wrapped and missing a card, which reminds us of what we are good at. That we need to do what we do five (or more) out of every seven days for the whole year: keep our great engine of commerce alive, work to make things better, find the strength and compassion to be tolerant and caring of our fellow humans, and to fight the good fight when called upon.