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Passengers seeking to board Northwest flight 253 might want to ask for a different flight number, given yet another incident today. This one seems to be far less serious, with a Nigerian passenger who experienced stomach sickness and locked himself in the toilet. In response, the TSA has banned all stomach sickness from every international flight.
Only slightly more reactionary than the responses to the thwarted attack by the underwear bomber is the predictable war fever from the likes of Joe Lieberman today from his favorite perch, Fox News Sunday:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) Sunday said that Yemen could be the ground of America’s next overseas war if Washington does not take preemptive action to root out al-Qaeda interests there.
Lieberman, who helms the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday” that the U.S. will have to take an active approach in Yemen after multiple recent terrorist attacks on the U.S. were linked back to the Middle Eastern nation.
The Connecticut senator said that an administration official told him that “Iraq was yesterday’s war, Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.”
First, note Lieberman hiding behind an “Administration official” as cover for his warmongering. Second, note the neglect of the fact that the US has been pre-emptively striking Yemen and killing the expected “30 Al Qaeda suspects”. Third, note the continued reliance on military solutions to non-military problems. Spencer sez:
Is it a mistake to respond to this with more than ridicule? Maybe, but if not: it’s a ludicrously blithe and cost-free assertion to say that we need to take preemptive action in Yemen. What the fuck does Joe Lieberman know about Yemen? What does anyone in the Washington policy community know about Yemen? Fucking nothing except that (a) there is an apparently growing al-Qaeda presence there; Abdulmutallab told investigators that he got hooked up with his botched explosive there; the USS Cole was bombed there; there’s an important port there; and… that’s it. What are the local dynamics in Yemen that a military strike would impact? What would the goals of such strikes be? What are the underlying political effects that have allowed al-Qaeda to establish itself in Yemen? What measures short of war might be better targeted to addressing those conditions? These are just a few of the many prior questions that have to be answered before such a thing is considered. Instead, Lieberman just gets to go on Fox and monger away, unchallenged. Such is life.
The suspect in the underwear bombing may have asserted a Yemeni connection, but that’s a thin reed on which to balance a series of military strikes. A better question than “how many sorties?” would be to consider why some wealthy Muslim scions educated abroad are turning to radicalism, or how to best sort out the fire hose through which intelligence information streams, or why impoverished nations are such fertile ground for extremist activities. But such analytical reactions aren’t a part of our politics so much as the exploitation of fear and the armchair glory of neoconservatives unconcerned with the impact of their policy preferences on human lives.
Meanwhile, Politico actually gets this right. The largest number of remaining Guantanamo detainees come from Yemen, about 80-90 of the 200 left. A pilot program aimed at releasing these detainees, the vast majority of them seen as innocent, to their home country, just started a couple weeks ago. But the conservative loudmouths exploiting this event will surely complicate efforts to return the rest of them.
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Well, we all know Lieberman is fighting a religious war so I tend to discount his opinions out of hand(even if he attributes them to a non-existent anonymous administration source). But I also read recently that the more belligerent we are, the less likely it is that foreign creditors will call in their loans or demand higher interest rates. It actually saves us money. We bad!!!
Yemen Hey!
Gee! We were told that al Quada needed Afghanistan to launch attacks on us.
We are still fighting in Afghanistan while all hell seems to be breaking loose in Yemen.
That’s not to mention Pakistan and the fact Bin Laden is supposed to be glued there.
We all fail to see that our Government has to be filled with the most ignorant people on the planet.
We spend billions on fifteen intelligence services.
We spend hundreds of billions on our Defense Dept.
We spend more billions on Homeland Security.
We spend billions on airport security.
Americans have to go through hell to fly, yet some Boso can just get on a plane and try to blow it up with little or no attention being paid to Him.
Our Government probably gave Him a Visa, and allowed Him to board on His english passport.
There biggest worry is whether to raise the color code, and how to make Americans go through more to fly.
The problem is our Governemnt is just a hair above brain dead.
They are still letting people into this Country in the same way they let the 911 terrorists in. They actually have made it easier to come here from many countries than it was before 911.
We find their no fly watch lists are filled with little children, people in our media, and even some of our Congressmen, yet guys like this one are overlooked.
They are now talking about their investigation of how this guy was able to get on the plane.
There needs to be no millions of dollars in investigation, but the realisation that our Government is incapable of doing anything right.
Kiss this one off, and use the time and money to fix the problems of just letting anyone in that wants to come.
We would probably be alot safer, if we had alot less Government, because what we have is a disgrace to this Country and all of us.
Are they going to clarify for the American people that there are at present at least three separate conflicts raging within Yemen? Or will they fudge reality in order to promote intervention, much as the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia was (falsely) tarred as an al-Qaida front in order to activate AFRICOM-organized Ethoipian intervention and occupation. While the ICU was smashed, the puppet regime set up by the invaders was so thoroughly discredited that after repeated changes of leadership it is now led by…the former head of the Islamic Courts Union, who has himself been discredited now by his affiliation with the “transitional government”. Tragically, the social and political space that the ICU once occupied has been filled by far more radical Islamist groups like al-Shabab that likely DO have ties to al-Qaida.