The centerpiece of Al Qaeda and other jihadist propaganda is always the struggle against "foreign occupation" of Muslim lands, with Afghanistan now front and center as the battleground. If you'll pardon the cliché, there's a perfect storm of terror brewing on the horizon, and if it does hit the West, it's going to be hell to ride out.įirst, consider the question of motive. In a sense, the State Department's hurricane analogy is apt. The broader threat now and for the immediate future comes from several different factors converging to provide the motive, the means, and the moment for another major attack in the West. But, in fact, the danger is not limited to a single plot being hatched in the Hindu Kush, even if bin Laden himself has a hand in it. One thing is clear: terror is back on everyone's mind. French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, grilled by skeptical parliamentarians, insisted, "There is currently a terrorist threat in Europe and in France," but then added, "It shouldn't be overestimated or underestimated." The French government, almost petulantly, warned against travel to Britain. The British and the Japanese, meanwhile, warned of the risks of travel to France. But the alert was so vague that even State Department officials drew a comparison with cautions about the hurricane season. citizens that Europe has often been the scene of terrorist attacks and could be again. State Department, exercising what former CIA official Rolf Mowatt-Larssen calls its "duty to warn," issued a " travel alert" informing U.S. How far advanced was the plot? How many people were involved? Were they all still training in the remote mountains of Pakistan's Waziristan tribal areas? Or had some returned to Europe-where many of them had grown up, and where many were citizens-to set in motion their stratagems for slaughter? These are places where innocent people congregate by the hundreds or by the thousands, places where a few men with guns, swarming onto the scene like the attackers who hit hotels in Mumbai in November 2008, could wreak carnage and hold the world's rapt attention.īut, as so often happens in the shadowy world of terror and counterterror, the vital specifics were unclear. The most likely targets, as always, are symbols of Western faith, freedom, wealth, and power-the great tourist destinations of Europe. How do you calibrate fear? that was the challenge that faced leaders on both sides of the Atlantic last week as they faced a flood of intelligence from human and electronic sources that told them Osama bin Laden is plotting a comeback, and may even have set the plan in motion.
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