What are people saying about...
Tue, 12-29-09 - 11:59am by reportergary
Forget Afghanistan. The Real Threat May Be Centered In Yemen
Paltalk News Network
The military and intelligence communities, of course, were well aware of this for a long time. But it escaped the radar of the general public. Until now.
That all changed on Christmas Day when a Nigerian national, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly on orders from al Qaeda in Yemen tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight as it approached Detroit Metro Airport.
Since then, the focus has been on what went wrong with security and what's being done now and what should be done in the future.
But there's been some - vital - discourse about Yemen.
One story, in a British tabloid, screams that the suspect, Abdulmutallab, told the FBI that there are 25 Yemen-trained British-born Muslims also prepared to attack Western aircraft.
There are new reports about Guantanamo Bay detainees being sent to Saudi Arabia who then made their way to Yemen for training and orders to carry out Jihad against the West.
And now, the foreign minister of Yemen says that there are hundreds - hundreds! - of militants - trained in his country - planning attacks on the West. Abu Bakr al-Qirbi is appealing for more international help in mitigating that threat. There have been attacks on Yemen militant bases - and casualties inflicted upon their leadership. But the intelligence about the success of those attacks is still coming in. Hopefully the bomb maker who allegedly retrofitted Abdulmutallab is among the dead. Hopefully.
The good news here is that the Yemen government really wants to root this evil out from its nation. So there's hope. But for those of us who have become complacent about the threat of terrorism as the years since the September 11, 2001 attack pass - the Christmas Day attempt, and al-Qiribi's warning - should be a wake up call.
No longer can we pretend that the threat of terrorism doesn't exist. No longer can it be off the public's radar.
3 comments
Tue, 12-29-09 - 03:54 pm by madman44
The Threat of Terrorism
If what you're saying about the Yemeni government is true, it's really interesting that there's such a strong anti-West presence in Yemen. If that's the case, it reminds me a lot of Iran before the shah was ousted in '79. That was the Iran that contained the elites that adored the US and the public that hated it.
In any case, I agree with you somewhat that Yemen was under the radar in the consciousness of the U.S. public (or at least under the radar in the consciousnesses of most Americans. If you just YouTube "Dumb Americans," for instance, you'll find tons of people who don't know where Iraq is located or what a mosque is. Those subjects have been in the news now for YEARS and yet people still don't know shit about them, so I'm pretty sure Yemen is going to be even more hazy. In fact, some of these people probably would think you said "lemon" if you asked them "What do you know about Yemen?").
So for most people, Yemen before this incident seemed to be a little like Kazakhstan before Borat in the sense that most people weren't planning on going there/worrying about it/talking about it because most people didn't know it existed.
But on the other hand, for those who actually did know something about Yemen--even only trivial stuff, like that it's located in the Middle East--before Christmas, I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't have pegged it as a "safe spot" in the Middle East. In any case, it seems like Israel is known as the Middle East "safe spot" to many Westerners, no matter how much Westerners might disagree with Israel's policies.
Also, Yemen wasn't exactly portrayed as sympathetic to Western values in Western media. Watch the movie Rules of Engagement, for instance. Or the Lie to Me episode, "The Best Policy."
I was just having a little fun typing all that stuff, but I think you got my point, which was that most people didn't know about Yemen in the past, but some did, and the latter knew it was dangerous. And I get your point, which is that now people need to be educated about Yemen.
Anyways, I think the U.S. should combat terrorism by focusing its efforts to shrink terrorism where it's most prominent. I'm sure you'd agree with me here, but we might disagree over where terrorism has flourished the most. After all, the U.S. has limited resources, so the problem for the U.S. becomes figuring out what makes one terrorist group more dangerous than another. How does the size of a group in members alter its ability to inflict harm on the U.S., for instance? Is a group that has 1,000 members more dangerous than a group that has 500 but is better funded? What about how many times per sentence a group says that they hate America--what role does this play in deciding which groups are more dangerous than others? I hope our federal government has figured that out, and that will lead nicely into my last point, where I will address your final two sentences about people pretending that terrorism doesn't exist.
I almost want to agree with you that people pretend that the threat of terrorism doesn't exist, but I think I'd rather make a distinction. I'm pretty sure that 9/11 brought to everyone's consciousness that terrorism is a very real thing in the lives of Americans'. Yet because something like 9/11 hasn't happened in almost ten years, I'd say that some people simply don't feel like terrorism is one of those things that can happen to them. Some of my friends have traveled to dangerous countries in recent years, for instance. They've come back okay, but that's not the point. The point is that by traveling to dangerous places, it's almost like they're saying "terrorism is hyped up a bit." I guess they could also be saying "I'm not afraid of dying in a holocaust caused by an exploding bus," but I'm pretty sure people are actually afraid of that, and are just denying the chances that such a thing would happen to them. In reality, terrorism is a threat, and it's probably more of a threat abroad than in America, itself. But I'd also have to say that most people realize that it's a threat, and some people just have a hard time seeing that it can happen to them.
For the ones who do think it could happen to them, they're predictable in certain ways. They might be more conservative about traveling, for example. And that's okay. I guess my question to you is this: when you say that we can't pretend that the threat of terrorism doesn't exist, what exactly do you mean?
If Abdulmutallab had succeeded in blowing up a plane on Christmas, for instance, he would have startled America. But he failed and kind of only hurt himself, yet he STILL shook America and brought back the idea that terrorism is real. So then the question becomes this: if Americans know that terrorism exists, and know it can happen to them, what the hell can they do about it other than doing small, important things, like telling airport security if they see anything suspicious, or doing the stuff I mentioned before (like being cautious about where they travel)?
Tue, 12-29-09 - 03:52 pm by listen2me
Where do you draw the line...
I agree that the public should be more aware. However, is too much information leaking out and actually helping terrorists achieve their goals?
In the past few weeks, the entire world heard of the party crashers at the white house. Now, the focus is on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempts. At what point does national security outweigh public education?
Tue, 12-29-09 - 03:17 pm by legacy624
I think the threat could be from multiple countries
I'm pretty sure that we have to keep an eye out for several countries and now with this attempted terrorist attack we have to keep an eye out more Yemen and put that on our list of countries to look out for. Its such a difficult situation because now Americans are being targeted for actions taken by past administrations.
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