Bergen: Missed warning signs of terror attacks?

CNN's Peter Bergen analyzed why the Boston bombings -- and 9/11, for that matter -- weren't prevented, but it's the very end of his story that caught my eye:

The problem is that, as Roberta Wohlstetter pointed out half a century ago in her study of Pearl Harbor, separating out the really important signals from all the "noise" in the system is only easy to do after the fact, particularly when the U.S. government has now assembled a database of an astonishing number of 700,000 individuals it suspects of ties to terrorism.

Bergen is trying to compare the Pearl Harbor surprise attack to terrorist attacks. But there's a big difference: there weren't 700,000 Japans to keep track of in 1941. Presumably, any one of these suspects could carry out an terror attack today... or somebody who is not on the list at all.

Still, it's hard to believe there are 700,000 people in the world with ties to terrorism. Shouldn't there be way more terrorist attacks if there are so many of them?

More likely, this data base of suspects is another out-of-control government program.  Maybe we missed the Boston bombers because we were too busy following around 700,000 other people, many of whom didn't deserve to be on that list?

UPDATE (05.06.2013): Here's another article about America's bloated terrorist data bases: "Terror database too unwieldy to flag Boston suspect, critics say." The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) list, with 875,000 records, is the big daddy from which all other government data bases draw, such as the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database, which in turn feeds the State Department's watch list, which is supposed to prevent terrorist suspects from getting U.S. visas.

Agencies often miss warning signs of attacks

By Peter Bergen

April 27, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/27/opinion/bergen-warning-signs-terrorism/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

What really motivated Boston bombers?

No comment. Just read it!

What Motivated the Boston Bombers

By Gary Leupp

April 25, 2013 | CounterPunch

URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/25/what-motivated-the-boston-bombers/

Re-post: What makes - and un-makes - young jihadists?

I want to re-post this article from 2009 about what made -- and un-made -- young British jihadists: "What Makes a Young Person Embrace Death and Murder? Former Jihadists Speak Out."

Here's what I had to say then:

It's not really that complicated. If white Western societies can successfully integrate Muslims, they will not feel alienated and look for a radical identity. (I cannot fail to mention that, for whatever reason, I haven't yet figured it out, the USA is light years ahead of Britain in this regard.) And if white Christians would be, well, more Christian, and embrace Muslims with love and acceptance, there would be many fewer terrorist recruits. That is not to say, "It's all our fault," but we do have a role to play, and a responsibility to build tolerant, loving societies -- as saccharine and heretically un-military as that solution may sound in today's post-9/11 world, where violence is always the answer.

From what we know so far about the alleged Boston bombers, they seemed to have been isolated loners who never felt like a part of U.S. society. The older brother said he had never made an American friend; he didn't understand Americans.

It's telling that they didn't have their parents or strong family ties in the U.S. either that could have offered psychological support.

It seems that they sought out a radical Islamist ideology that was ready and waiting for them on the Internet, to fill the void inside themselves, and perhaps to re-make themselves in a heroic image to compensate for their personal failures.

Many people will accuse me of trying to justify the alleged killers with these simple observations. People will accuse me of arguing that Islamist ideology played no role.  I'm not.  Explaining is not the same as justifying. It may make political hay and provocative punditry to paint all U.S. Muslims with the broad brush of "terrorist," but it's a dead-end conclusion. It's not operational. We must be smarter... and more human.

UPDATE (04.21.2013): OK, now a more detailed picture of the younger brother, Dzhokar Tsarnaev, is emerging. Apparently he "partied" in his dorm after the Boston marathon bombings. Maybe he wasn't such a loner after all. 

On the other hand, I know how loosely Americans use the word "friend," and how lonely U.S. life can be even while surrounded by smiling "friends," especially for non-natives.  In the U.S., a "friend" is anybody who says, "hey" to you on the street, shares a table with you in the cafeteria, or once had a drink with you. The American understanding of "friend" really confuses and ultimately disappoints many emigres to America, who after a time tend to seek out other foreigners, especially from their respective home countries, who share a similar understanding of friendship. So how many real friends did Dzhokar have, if any?.... Didn't he confide in a single friend besides his brother? 

Moreover, I think it's telling that Dzhokar Tsarnaev maintained an account on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. The stories I've seen didn't mention his having a Facebook account. Isn't that a bit weird? I don't know a single American teen or 20-something without a Facebook account. This kid emigrated to the U.S. when he was 9 or 10, and yet apparently he felt more connected to people in the former USSR. 

He did have a Twitter feed though, apparently. Here's one of those tweets: "Jahar @J_tsar: a decade in america already, i want out." 

UPDATE (05.02.2013): So it looks like Dzhokar Tsarnaev partly confided in three of his buddies, two of them from the ex-Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, that he knew how to make a bomb; and asked them to take whatever they wanted from his dorm room after his photo appeared as a suspect.

Sirota's prediction coming true as Boston bombers identified

It didn't take long for David Sirota's dire prediction to come true:

It will probably be much different if the bomber ends up being a Muslim and/or a foreigner from the developing world. As we know from our own history, when those kind of individuals break laws in such a high-profile way, America often cites them as both proof that entire demographic groups must be targeted, and that therefore a more systemic response is warranted. At that point, it’s easy to imagine conservatives citing Boston as a reason to block immigration reform defense spending cuts and the Afghan War withdrawal and to further expand surveillance and other encroachments on civil liberties.

Already conservatives are saying there is a larger Muslim (this time Chechen Muslim) jihadi conspiracy at work in the U.S.

Speculated conservative Judicial Watch: "There’s no telling how many of these Chechen terrorists have infiltrated the United States or how many opportunities the government has missed to protect the country by deporting them."

I'm sure Russia's President for Life Vladimir Putin is ROTFLHAO right now....

Actually FOX News published a story that was fairly fair-minded, dismissing a larger conspiracy, albeit with a provocative title as FOX is wont to do, but I'm sure it won't last, FOX and the rest of the conservative media will jump on the jihadi conspiracy wagon soon enough.... 

It's still Dubya's America and we're just living in it... including President Obama.

UPDATE (04.21.2013): Here's another anti-Muslim screed in reaction to the alleged Boston bombers from somebody named Andrew McCarthy at the respected National Review Online: "Jihad Will Not Be Wished Away." I still subscribe to elementary school writing lessons, when they taught us to end an essay with a call to action. Here's McCarthy's:

There are all kinds of Islam, including the supremacist kind that is far more widely held than we’re comfortable acknowledging. Until we get beyond that discomfort, until we are prepared to ask, “What Islam?” — and until we are prepared to treat Islamic supremacism as the pariah it should be — Boston’s hellish week will remain our recurring nightmare.

Everybody got that? Got any idea how to act on that?  Neither do I.  And that's why all such conservative op-eds and diatribes are stupid and ultimately racist and/or anti-Muslim, because all they do is stir up suspicion and hatred for innocent Americans who happen to be Muslim.

And here's another one from NRO by Mark Steyn, an on-air substitute for Rush Limbaugh: "The 'Co-exist' Bombers." Steyn jokes how disappointed David Sirota must be that the bombers were indeed immigrants and Muslims. Besides taking a lot of swipes at Massachusetts liberals, the only sensible thing Steyn wrote was this, again, at the end. (Why do conservative pundits always save their one cogent thought for the end?):

On Monday, [April 15], it didn’t feel Islamic: a small death toll at a popular event but not one with the resonance and iconic quality the big-time jihadists like — like 9/11, the embassy bombings, the U.S.S. Cole. After all, if the jihad crowd wanted to blow up a few people here and there IRA-style they could have been doing it all this last decade.  

Good point! Too bad more blood-and-guts American Islamophobes aren't thinking about this more deeply and honestly. Indeed, how do you draw the connection between the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 and these two kids in Boston in 2013? That's more than six degrees of Bacon, to be sure. 

See, that's a big problem for the neocons and Islamophobes, because it's their task to cast any terrorist attacks as part of a larger conspiracy, a global jihad. So far, it's working for many of them simply to make that bald assertion of jihad; but I think more & more folks are starting to wise up to this con that leads us nowhere... or even worse, leads us to places like Iraq.