The Delta Flight.
Phew! That was close. Outstanding responses by passengers and aircrew were remarkable. A miracle malfunction of the suicide bomb underlined the proximity to disaster that stalks every airplane. What is good is the level of effort that goes into counter terrorist activities by all the security authorities world wide. Focused as we are on wars, we can overlook the real protection provided by the intelligence and protection services. There seems to have been a lapse in this case. There is talk of a journey to Yemen. It has crept into the news in the last few days that Al-Qaeda operations are being prepared in the ungoverned reaches of that country. This is important because it underlines the futility of the war in Afghanistan.
Wars are strategic. Battles are tactical. They work if they are part of a strategic war. Afghanistan is strategic only in the rhetoric of its proponents. The facts are that it is a tactical war which ignores strategic reality. To prepare strategy you have to understand the nature and logistics and mobility of your enemy. In these assessments of Al-Qaeda there is glaring military error.
Al-Qaeda is not a conventional military formation. It has no formal membership. It has no recognisable army. It inhabits no state. It has no government. It wears no uniform. Its home base is in the mind. You cannot fight it, nor defeat it until you resolve the issues that allow young minds across the world to be turned by its doctrine. If you chase it out of Afghanistan as we did, it pops up in the lawless border area of Pakistan. If you chase it from there it will pop up in Yemen, it already has, and if you chase it on it will find somewhere else. The world is a big place.
You can counter it, as we do through security and countermeasures and good intelligence. You can use drones to de-capitate local leadership. You can keep it on the back foot investing more time protecting its own security than in destroying ours. But you need to remember that every time you send your troops into a sovereign country under whatever mandate you give it life. You need also to face that fact from which the West has been running for over sixty years. Until you reign in Israel and bring justice to the Palestinians there will be no end.