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In his report about the attempted Christmas Day airliner bombing, President Obama said “we are at war against al Qaeda.” The unclassified summary stated that US intelligence officials had received unspecified “discrete pieces of intelligence” to identify Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an al Qaeda operative and keep him off the flight from Amsterdam. The World’s Matthew Bell explores what the President means by being “at war”.
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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World. The Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner made his first appearance in a US court today. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was formally charged with attempted murder and the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. His lawyer entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. The foiled attack prompted President Obama to order a sweeping review of security measures, and to state publicly yesterday that the country is “at war with al Qaeda.” As The World’s Matthew Bell reports, the president’s words were reassuring to some, and troubling to others.
MATTHEW BELL: In the aftermath of the failed airline attack outside of Detroit, President Obama has faced no small amount of criticism for not acting, or speaking, like a wartime president. Conservatives say he doesn’t use the word terrorism enough. He doesn’t talk about the enemy. He likes to pretend we’re not at war. Mr. Obama might have been trying to take these criticisms head on when he said this last night.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We are at war. We are at war against al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.
BELL: In an appearance on C-SPAN this morning, terrorism expert Juan Zarate said he welcomed the President’s comments. Zarate served as deputy national security advisor under George W. Bush.
JUAN ZARATE: We’ve got to remember who the enemy here is. We’ve got a transnational movement trying to radicalize people around the world, including American citizens, and they continue to try to attack us, in big ways and small ways. And so we’ve got to keep our eye on the ball, and I think that’s something that President Obama I think reasserted yesterday, which was healthy and good.
BELL: Zarate’s former boss often reasserted that the nation was at war against a terrorist enemy. And here’s a sampling.
GEORGE W. BUSH: This is long term battle, war… different kind of enemy than we’re used to, but we’re going to smoke them out… a war against all those who seek to export terror… and we’re adjusting our thinking… and a war against those governments that support or shelter them. Terrorists know that Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. This is a long war against terrorist activity.
BELL: Intelligence expert James Carafano at the Heritage Foundation has been critical of what he sees as reluctance on the part of President Obama to talk about the nation being at war against al Qaeda.
JAMES CARAFANO: And the reason for the reluctance I think is purely political, is a lot of people on the left who didn’t like the Bush approach. They didn’t want to hear him say that, and they’re just disappointed.
BELL: Carafano welcomed President Obama’s blunt acknowledgement that the country is fighting a war.
CARAFANO: It’s important to acknowledge it for a couple of reasons. It’s the justification for military detention. It’s the justification for military operations worldwide, and it’s a statement that we’re powerful and we’re going to defend ourselves. So there’s lot of reasons why it’s important to do that. And to be reluctant to do that, just because people on the left don’t like that, to hear those words, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
BELL: Carafano says president Obama should have gone even further in his remarks yesterday.
CARAFANO: I thought it was very disappointing last night. The President didn’t link the military operations in Afghanistan to winning the war on terror. It was a perfect opportunity to kind of reinforce the importance of his decision, but rather than remind people of that, he didn’t even mention it.
BELL: That phrase, “war on terror,” though is something this President has mostly stayed away from. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t take the threat seriously, says Middle East expert Marc Lynch at George Washington University.
MARC LYNCH: What he has done though in the past has been quite appropriately to have a much more subdued and matter of fact, pragmatic kind of rhetorical approach to al Qaeda, which I think is the right way to weaken that organization.
BELL: Lynch says presidential rhetoric about the grave threat posed by al Qaeda are counterproductive. It only serves to exaggerate the group’s importance. He says it also undermines one of President Obama’s stated goals of re-making America’s relationship with the Muslim world.
LYNCH: For example the response to Captain Underpants, the failed bomber. The original response in most of the Arab media was complete and total indifference. It was just not seen as a major issue. Obama’s response and the American media frenzy around it has become a major story. And now they’re much more focused on it. And so, in a sense, what I think the American political debate has done is to transform what was one in a long series of al Qaeda failures into what can only be characterized as a success for them.
BELL: Lynch says President Obama’s talk about waging war on al Qaeda marks a rhetorical return to the Bush era, and he says that’s a mistake. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.
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