The New Yorker's Steve Coll looks at what two book reviewers found and wrote about in the Washington Post and wonders how the threat from Abdulmutallab could have been overlooked by our security guarantors.
The portrait is a too-familiar one from the narratives of Islamist radicalization among privileged Muslim youth seeking to cope simultaneously with extremist teaching, physical and cultural dislocation, and personal struggles. He asks pointedly at one point, after reflecting on the tensions between religious teaching and family imperatives, “How should one put the balance right?”
If two reporters—admittedly exceptionally skilled, at the top of their professions—can so quickly excavate open musings and Abdulmutallab’s travel itineraries to Yemen and London, it does make you wonder exactly what happened inside the Abuja embassy and the wider intelligence bureaucracy after Abdulmutallab’s father called to report his anxieties about his missing son. After all, how often does a prestigious Nigerian banker voluntarily telephone an American embassy to express anxiety about a son’s religious and political leanings? Is there at least a standard protocol in such cases to check the subject’s Facebook profile?
One commenter at Coll's site asks whether "its not more security needed but rather more intelligence." We have "security" but not security. It's like we have a health care policy from United Healthcare, but no guarantee of health care itself. Shall I go on? We have a military-industrial complex but both the military and the industries have gone overseas leaving us with ... the complex. Got another one to add?
