Times Square attack: Don’t let our fear give terrorists a victory
Source: AJCA combination of luck and well-trained public safety officers saved New York City from a potentially devastating terrorist attack on Saturday night. In a scene straight out of the movies, tourists were evacuated from their hotels, Broadway shows were interrupted and blocks around busy Times Square were cordoned off. Police say the crudely-made bomb could nevertheless have made the area a “fireball”:
Raymond W. Kelly, the New York City police commissioner, said on Sunday that the materials found in the Nissan Pathfinder — gasoline, propane, firecrackers and simple alarm clocks — also included eight bags of a granular substance, later determined to be nonexplosive grade of fertilizer, inside a 55-inch-tall metal gun locker.
The bomb, Mr. Kelly said, “would have caused casualties, a significant fireball.”
Had it exploded, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, “It would have been, in all likelihood, a good possibility of people being killed, windows shattered, but not resulting in a building collapse.”
The failed attack is one more reminder — if we needed one — that the Western world is engaged in a ongoing struggle against Islamic fanatics that could well go on for at least a generation. It’s also a reminder that they don’t succeed just by killing scores or hundreds of people. They succeed by provoking fear, anxiety and disproportionate responses that flout the law and forsake our longstanding constitutional principles.
After the failed Christmas Day bombing, President Obama’s critics went into hyperdrive lashing out against the administration and emphasizing the bomber’s capacity to bring down an airliner. That played right into the terrorists’ hands. This time, says The New Yorker’s Steve Coll, Obama should get out in front of that nonsense with a calm and rational response:
No matter who turns out to have been responsible, the Obama Administration has an opportunity to atone here for some of the botched communication that followed the more serious Christmas Day attack. Like the oil spill in the Gulf, this is a teachable moment—but it requires leaders to rise to the occasion.
Anyone who tries to set a vehicle on fire in Times Square on a warm Saturday night is going to make news in a big way. Presumably that was the primary goal of the perpetrators—to attract attention, to spawn fear. The very amateurishness of the attack—unlike the Christmas Day attack, for example, it does not immediately call into question the competence of the government’s defenses—offers President Obama the opportunity to start talking back to terrorists everywhere in a more resilient, sustainable language than he has yet discovered. By which I mean: They intend to frighten us; we are not frightened. They intend to kill and maim; we will bring them to justice. They intend to attract attention for their extremist views; the indiscriminate nature of their violence only discredits and isolates them. They intend to disrupt us and throw us into fits of media-saturated hysteria; we will remain vigilant, but we will also keep their unsuccessful attempted murder in perspective. Something like that.
There will be more of this sort of low-level terrorism in the United States in the years ahead, not only from self-styled jihadis but possibly also from the extreme right. Domestic terrorism constitutes a persistent and serious threat, but not a strategic or existential one. The country’s vulnerability arises not so much from the damage terrorists will cause but from American society’s self-defeating inability to see such violence in perspective and to find leadership and language to define national resilience.
Raymond W. Kelly, the New York City police commissioner, said on Sunday that the materials found in the Nissan Pathfinder — gasoline, propane, firecrackers and simple alarm clocks — also included eight bags of a granular substance, later determined to be nonexplosive grade of fertilizer, inside a 55-inch-tall metal gun locker.
The bomb, Mr. Kelly said, “would have caused casualties, a significant fireball.”
Had it exploded, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, “It would have been, in all likelihood, a good possibility of people being killed, windows shattered, but not resulting in a building collapse.”
The failed attack is one more reminder — if we needed one — that the Western world is engaged in a ongoing struggle against Islamic fanatics that could well go on for at least a generation. It’s also a reminder that they don’t succeed just by killing scores or hundreds of people. They succeed by provoking fear, anxiety and disproportionate responses that flout the law and forsake our longstanding constitutional principles.
After the failed Christmas Day bombing, President Obama’s critics went into hyperdrive lashing out against the administration and emphasizing the bomber’s capacity to bring down an airliner. That played right into the terrorists’ hands. This time, says The New Yorker’s Steve Coll, Obama should get out in front of that nonsense with a calm and rational response:
No matter who turns out to have been responsible, the Obama Administration has an opportunity to atone here for some of the botched communication that followed the more serious Christmas Day attack. Like the oil spill in the Gulf, this is a teachable moment—but it requires leaders to rise to the occasion.
Anyone who tries to set a vehicle on fire in Times Square on a warm Saturday night is going to make news in a big way. Presumably that was the primary goal of the perpetrators—to attract attention, to spawn fear. The very amateurishness of the attack—unlike the Christmas Day attack, for example, it does not immediately call into question the competence of the government’s defenses—offers President Obama the opportunity to start talking back to terrorists everywhere in a more resilient, sustainable language than he has yet discovered. By which I mean: They intend to frighten us; we are not frightened. They intend to kill and maim; we will bring them to justice. They intend to attract attention for their extremist views; the indiscriminate nature of their violence only discredits and isolates them. They intend to disrupt us and throw us into fits of media-saturated hysteria; we will remain vigilant, but we will also keep their unsuccessful attempted murder in perspective. Something like that.
There will be more of this sort of low-level terrorism in the United States in the years ahead, not only from self-styled jihadis but possibly also from the extreme right. Domestic terrorism constitutes a persistent and serious threat, but not a strategic or existential one. The country’s vulnerability arises not so much from the damage terrorists will cause but from American society’s self-defeating inability to see such violence in perspective and to find leadership and language to define national resilience.
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