Another Day, Another Scare

Peter McKay writes:

Another day, another ‘war against terror’ scare. This time it’s printer cartridges rigged up as bombs, sent as air cargo from the Yemen to Chicago, via refuelling stops in Britain and Dubai, where the devices were found. The result: alarming media coverage. Politicians warning that the war on terror is ongoing and we must never drop our guard. Here we go again. After an intelligence tip-off about suspicious objects sent from Yemen, a cargo jet landing at East Midlands airport is searched. A package is found but its significance not realised.

Over-reaction? While the actions of the emergency services during last week's scare were admirable, the response of our politicians has been off key. After a suspicious device is found on another cargo jet at Dubai, Leicester police take another look at the printer cartridge and pronounce it is a ‘bomb’ at East Midlands. Oops!

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, goes public, looking severe. He says he’s talked to the leaders of Saudi Arabia (King Abdullah), the Yemen (President Saleh) and President Obama. He also informs the media: ‘We believe that the device was meant to go off on the aeroplane. (Not the Americanism ‘airplane’, traditionalists will note.) We cannot be sure about the timing. There is no early evidence it was designed to take place over British soil, but of course we cannot rule that out.’ Home Secretary Theresa May announces: ‘I can confirm that the device was viable and could have exploded. The target may have been an aircraft and if detonated the aircraft could have been brought down. But we do not believe the perpetrators of the attack would have known the location of the device when they planned for it to explode.’

Could have exploded. The target may have been an aircraft. The culprits could not have known when or where they’d go off. Why is it that our leaders now react as if a terrorist atrocity has taken place when it appears to have been avoided? Did our wartime leadership go public on every single threat from our German and other enemies? Of course not. So why do they do it now? To ramp up our fear. Do they think this will make us support them and their ‘war on terror’ policies?

To an inexpert eye, the printer cartridge affair looks an attempt to cause panic rather than a plot to murder hundreds. Yemeni student Hanan al-Samawi, 22, has been arrested along with her 45-year-old mother and accused of sending the packages. The U.S. and United Arab Emirates provided intelligence that helped to identify her, says Yemen’s president. But when did the U.S. and Emirates agents find out about the suspicious packages — was it before they left Yemen, or afterwards? We are not told. If it was before, we’re entitled to wonder why those sending them weren’t arrested in possession of incriminating evidence and the whole plot closed down there and then.

The problem with ‘war on terror’ plots is that we’ve learned over the past ten years that the narrative offered by our leaders — that Al Qaeda is an evil force dedicated to ending our freedom and way of life —is simplistic, to put it mildly. When suicidal terrorists took over planes and destroyed real estate in Manhattan and Washington, along with 3,000 innocent souls in 2001, the culprits were said to be Al Qaeda, whom President George W. Bush later, falsely, linked to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Under Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda remained the terrorists du jour until recently, operating in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now we have Yemeni-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, led by American-born Anwar al-Awlaki.

Like Osama bin Laden’s volunteers, they are said to be bent on destroying Western freedom and our way of life. What our leaders never admit — but we can learn for ourselves if we take the trouble — is that the real focus of terrorist rage is what tyrants in Islamic nations are doing, supported by the West, to whom the tyrants supply oil. While our leaders curdle our blood telling us how many might have died if an Al Qaeda bomb had gone off in a cargo plane overflying London, or some other UK city, RAF officers in Arizona are operating unmanned ‘drone’ flights which, on a daily basis, vaporise countless ‘war on terror’ enemies — or any man, woman or child standing near them — in Pakistan and Yemen.

This is real daily carnage, not imagined. So why make such a fuss about an atrocity which didn’t happen? Is it because it helps our leaders establish that they’re in charge, as well as justify dictatorial criminal laws and pointless air transport regulations?