Threats

by Steve Coll
January 18, 2010
The New Yorker

An underwear bomber who attempts mass murder on Christmas Day is bound to leave many people upset and a few unhinged. The days since the events aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 have felt like an induced flashback to that dislocating season when the country lost its innocence about the dot-connecting skills of its government. In particular, the tragicomic announcements and rescinding of announcements by the Transportation Security Administration — concerning, for example, when airline passengers might be permitted to read books while in flight — raised the possibility that, more than eight years after September 11th, the United States, like some synthetic organism immune to the laws of evolution, had failed to adapt to the challenges of Al Qaeda.

Compounding this impression, at least on the cable news channels, has been the resurrection — as predictable as the penultimate scene in a slasher movie — of the Cheney World View. Its principal proponent took time off from composing his memoir to issue a statement to Politico that was so lacking in dignity and restraint that it hinted at the presence of a sinister franking machine. On President Obama:

He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. . . . But we are at war.

(Read more here.)