The Toner Bomb Plot and Al Qaeda's Grand Strategy

By Steve Hynd

What to say about the Toner Bomb Plot? Well, for starters, ignore all the hyperventilating about Yemen being a new Afghanistan and Anwar al-Awlaki being the new Osama. Instead, read an actual expert on Yemen, Gregory D. Johnsen, who blogs at Waq al-Waq.

Not only does AQAP have a durable infrastructure in Yemen, thanks to years of US and Yemeni government neglect, but it was also turning US errors to its advantage in the recruiting wars. And let me be clear, if the US and Yemen can't stop al-Qaeda from recruiting new members this war will never end.

As it is, the US still has not figured out how to fight this new type of war without invading a country, while still being able to protect its own borders from attacks launched from Yemen. It is a serious problem and demands serious attention. Unfortunately, the US seems overburdened in Iraq and Afghanistan and unable to pay enough attention to Yemen. Just look at the resources (particularly diplomatic) that the US is putting into the country. US public diplomacy in Yemen is a joke. The US has ceded the field to al-Qaeda. Is it any wonder that its message is carrying the day?

...I'm not saying that Anwar al-Awlaki isn't a threat, just that he isn't the same level of threat as Nasir al-Wihayshi, Said al-Shihri, Qasim al-Raymi, Adil al-Abab and numerous others. Just because he speaks English and we in the west can understand what he is saying doesn't put him on par with bin Laden. It is discussions and analysis like this that leads to the mistaken belief that assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki will make the US and Europe safer. That is just not true. Killing him would do little to disrupt AQAP activities. He does not have the sway of any of the individuals I mentioned above. Just because he is the only name most people know doesn't make him the most dangerous man. It just makes him the only person you know.

Despite the White House's carefully-weighted hyping of this incident as showing how strong the adminsitration is on security, I don't read this incident as a clear win for the good guys. In return for one woman arrested and some suspects sought (best of luck with that since they're all in the Yemeni wilds), AQAP tried out a new delivery system and a new tactic - sending lots of decoys but few devices, a sort of poor-man's MIRV.

By all accounts the security people screwed up and missed the bombs at first, giving them the all-clear - we've been given the nonsensical line that each device was "so sophisticated an examination by forensics experts initially suggested it did not contain explosives" and that "the sniffer dogs couldn't detect it". I've Twitter friends in the security field who call this unabashed bullshit and photos of the device intercepted in Dubai suggest they're correct. Printer toner isn't usually brilliant white. In fact, the US President himself got to break the story that the devices contained explosives.

We were treated to the security theatre of two F-15 fighters escorting a passenger plane in case it had freight from Yemen on board (it didn't). What were they supposed to do if it blew up - shoot it down?

The President has now promised to do something (anything) about Yemen and to destroy AQAP. No-doubt AQAP is hoping for another stupid military intervention which will bog down America in yet another Muslim nation. His advisor, Brennan, is already talking about how we'll have to be more TSA-style on security screenings for air freight now, including freight loaded on passenger flights. Air freight and air travel in general is about to get a whole lot more expensive and time consuming - again - and offer authorities new opportunities to pry into peoples' belongings - again.

That the bombs didn't go off hardly matters. Let me quote Bin Laden in 2004:

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy...All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations...Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah."

Yup, that's what I saw this last few days. We have to find some way to stop enabling Bin Laden's grand strategy. A start would be to agree that not every failed attack is time for chicken-little antics, to agree that sometimes an attack will get through but that it will be a minor setback compared to the negatives that now always comes with that chicken-little behavior - ever more intrusive surveillance and legislation, sand in the economic gears, yet another round of military drum-banging which AQ can rightly point out is aimed at Muslims in general. You'd think there'd be some Blitz Spirit: a refusal to collapse into the hysteria expected by the enemy, some realisation that if you call it a war then you have to act as if it's a war - especially from the Right, who love the War on Terror way too much. But no, we've nothing of that sort in evidence.

Update: According to the WaPo, Yemeni officials no longer believe the young woman arrested sent the bombs. So there's not even that to show.