Miniter: US Muslims, Vigilance, Top Brits

Multiple attempted vehicle bombings conducted by radical Islamic terrorists in London and Glasgow on Friday and Saturday raise the all-important question for Americans: why have such attacks been attempted in Britain, but not in the U.S.? This was the topic of a “Fox and Friends” interview with Richard Miniter of the Hudson Institute this morning, and Miniter offered some interesting possible answers to the question.

According to Miniter, there are three primary reasons that al Qaeda is actively targeting Britain but has thus far not struck within the U.S. with car bombs or suicide bombers:

1. U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of al Qaeda leaders and high level operatives, and this has caused a scarcity of resources, including knowledgeable, trained leaders to plan and carry out attacks. Miniter opined that the failed weekend bombings had the appearance of an operation that lacked the professionalism and technical expertise commonly associated with al Qaeda IEDs and VBIEDs. The failure of three bombs to detonate properly indicated to Miniter that the cell did not include a master bomb manufacturer.

2. U.S. officials are more vigilant than their British counterparts. According to Miniter, communication and intelligence flow between federal, state, and local law enforcement in the United States is superior to information sharing and investigative cooperation in Britain.

3. American Muslims are more assimilated into American culture than British Muslims are to British society, and thus American Muslims provide more tips and investigative assistance to U.S. law enforcement than British Muslims. Miniter commented that the increased likelihood of tip-offs from American Muslims to law enforcement made it more difficult for radicals to operate anonymously or without drawing attention to themselves.

While all of these are interesting hypotheses for why the U.S. has not yet been victimized by subway bombings, VBIEDs, or suicide bombers (individual, of the type seen in Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan), in many ways they miss the mark. While I tend to agree with Miniter’s first point about our military weakening al Qaeda’s infrastructure and leadership, his second and third points deserve critical scrutiny.

My experiences lead me to an opposite conclusion regarding Miniter’s second point that America is more vigilant and intelligence flow in the U.S. is superior to that found in Britain. The Patriot Act and other post-9/11 legislation may have removed many of the formal barriers between America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies, but little has been done to address the informal barriers. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security, containing as it does a mixture of agencies with legitimate national security duties and others who have no role whatsoever in homeland security, was a mere political gesture. If the Bush administration and Congress truly had been seeking to establish a department capable of securing the homeland to the best of its ability in “the terrorists’ war on us,” as Rudy Giuliani calls it, the department would also contain the FBI, the federal agency designated to investigate potential terrorism on U.S. soil. Information sharing has certainly improved between the federal agencies and state/local departments, but information sharing between federal agencies remains a significant problem that may not be resolved until future terrorist strikes in America force more drastic cooperation requirements on the federal intelligence and law enforcement communities in the name of survival.

Our vigilance dwindles depending on what else catches our interest: far more media attention was given over the past month to Paris Hilton than Muslim unrest in Paris, France; we complain about airport passenger screening inconveniences; we spend millions to support Hollywood movies depicting our own government as the true enemy we should fear most; we narrowly pass Patriot Act legislation each time it comes up for renewal, and the margin decreases with each passing year without a terrorist attack on U.S. soil; our major newspapers and news networks leak information about secret government programs designed to identify terrorists and prevent future attacks in the planning stages; we openly declare that enforcement of our illegal-immigration laws is unrealistic, thus encouraging more illegal immigration which surely includes terrorists cloaked within groups of laborers; we pay sub-standard wages to airport screeners directly responsible for preventing bombs, firearms, chemicals, and other deadly items from making onto our passenger aircraft. To claim that America is more vigilant than Britain is surely Miniter’s sincere wish, but there is precious little evidence to support the assertion.

It is ironic that Miniter made the claim to superiority of American information sharing over that of Britain in the wake of a massive and rapidly successful anti-terror investigation related to the linked incidents in London and Glasgow. Some unconfirmed reports indicated that U.S. intelligence received warning of a future attack in Glasgow two weeks ago but never shared that information with British officials. By this morning, less than 48 hours after the Glasgow incident, seven individuals apparently affiliated in an al Qaeda influenced cell had been arrested in Britain. There did not seem to be any shortage of intelligence flow or information sharing between Britain’s foreign and domestic intelligence and law enforcement services, and local police were actively involved throughout the continued investigation. Rolling up seven members of a terrorist cell within 48 hours of an attack is efficient police work by any standard, providing an object lesson disproving Miniter’s apparently low expectations of Britain’s internal cooperation. By comparison, how long did it take for U.S. authorities to identify and arrest the DC snipers? How about Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? The rapid execution of warrants and arrests in Britain has been impressive in all respects.

Britain’s investigative technologies exceed our own to a high enough degree that Senator Joe Lieberman stepped into his leadership role yesterday to trumpet the need for the U.S. to imitate Britain,” specifically in reference to the widespread use of security cameras throughout London and most major British cities. The ability British authorities have to isolate digital recordings of suspects’ faces, vehicles, license plates, and tactics is far beyond anything currently available to U.S. law enforcement, in large part due to “privacy issues.” British authorities seized upon a point that America’s liberal left refuses to concede: when in public, a person has no expectation of privacy. Thus, the installation of thousands of surveillance cameras on the streets and in the subways of British cities was considered a reasonable method for boosting security with no invasion of privacy for the public in public areas. Lieberman was right to call for similar measures in public areas in the U.S. Information sharing is much more effective when it includes photos of the suspect and his accomplices and transportation. Law enforcement cannot be everywhere at all times, but cameras can.

Miniter’s third point regarding American Muslims being more cooperative with law enforcement than British Muslims is, at a minimum, controversial. It would be helpful if Miniter could provide empirical evidence to support this claim, because such evidence would do much to diffuse the hostility and suspicion many Americans feel towards their Muslim neighbors. In a previous post I recounted my experience at a Muslim cultural sensitivity training course in 2004, hosted in part by CAIR for the law enforcement and intelligence communities. In a separate post regarding American Muslims and their involvement in the War on Terror, I included a marvelous quote from a notable American Muslim that expressed what all non-Muslim Americans wish they heard more of from their Islamic friends and neighbors:

In a similar but even more blunt assessment of what Arab-Americans should be doing to fight terrorism within their own religion, M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, contributed a wonderful articleto National Review Online last week. Jasser defended the plot line of "24" and declared that Muslims need to unite and defeat the true enemy, which he explicitly identified as Islamism. Jasser, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, made the following call to arms to fellow American Muslims:

"It’s time for hundreds of thousands of Muslims to be not only private but public in their outrage — and to commit themselves to specific, verbal engagement of the militants and their Islamism. We, as American Muslims, should be training and encouraging our Muslim-community youth to become the future Jack Bauers of America. What better way to dispel stereotypes than to create hundreds of new, real images of Muslims who are publicly leading this war on the battlefield and in the domestic and foreign media against the militant Islamists. Condemnations by press release and vague fatwas are not enough. We need to create organizations — high-profile, well-funded national organizations and think tanks — which are not afraid to identify al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah by name, and by their mission as the enemies of America. If Muslim organizations and the American Muslim leadership were seen publicly as creating a national, generational plan to fight Islamism — rather than searching for reasons to claim victimhood — then the issues and complaints surrounding such TV shows would disappear. The way to fight the realities of 24 is to create a Muslim CTU, a deep Muslim counterterrorism ideology and a national action plan for our security."[emphasis added]

While American Muslims have cooperated in numerous terrorism investigations, more will be expected and required of them. They could erase most suspicion or bigotry by actively working toward the vision expressed above by Jasser.

The logic behind Miniter’s assessment that British Muslims are less loyal to Britain is questionable. How does one quantitatively determine levels of loyalty among the Muslim populations in two different nations? It is too simplistic to assume that because Britain is experiencing increasing incidents of homegrown Islamic terrorism and America is not, that American Muslims are thus more cooperative with investigations. I would be thrilled to believe that the freedoms and liberties of America had so inspired American Muslims that radical Islam will never find enough fertile ground in American mosques to ever spark domestic jihad here. However, I also know that the 9/11 operatives lived and moved freely among American Muslims for significant amounts of time, planning, plotting, and training for the hijackings, and apparently no one noticed these behaviors or considered them suspicious. Miniter seems to give American Muslims the benefit of a doubt for that but labels British Muslims as less cooperative because they failed to tip-off British authorities to the 7/7 London subway bombing or the failed car bombs this weekend. If Miniter has a comparative statistical analysis that validates his claim that American Muslims are more cooperative than their British counterparts, let him bring it forward for review.

The far more likely and simple answer to the original question posed to Miniter is that we have been lucky but our time will come. The VBIEDs utilized in the failed Glasgow and London bombings this weekend indicate a cell’s over-emphasis on constructing and executing attacks with little prior planning or on short notice. They were crudely designed, simple to construct, and made with readily available materials that would attract no suspicion at the point of purchase. These VBIEDs could be thrown together in a matter of hours in virtually any city in the world upon orders from a controlling leader or by independent target selection of the cell members. In a nation full of stores with shelves lined with propane tanks, gas cans, and limitless electronic gadgetry, rudimentary attacks like the ones in Britain over the weekend may be coming to a city near you, and if these attacks are any indication, there will be no prior warnings identified by our vigilant but over-restricted intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Glasgow car bomb photo courtesy of UK Daily Mail.

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Glasgow Airport, London Car Bomb, Richard Miniter, Information Sharing, Intelligence Agencies, al Qaeda, Terrorist Cells, VBIED