A Mismatch Between the Will and the Means

• One plan, averted in July 2006, was to flood lower Manhattan. Some stories said the idea was to put bombs in the Holland Tunnel. Others said bombs in the PATH train tunnel under the WTC location would bring down the slurry walls that hold back the river.
• In December, Federal authorities arrested a 22-year old man planning to set off grenades in garbage cans in an Illinois shopping mall during the Christmas holiday rush. The mall was not the only target he discussed with undercover agents; others were local government facilities.
  
  • One plan, averted in July 2006, was to flood lower Manhattan. Some stories said the idea was to put bombs in the Holland Tunnel. Others said bombs in the PATH train tunnel under the WTC location would bring down the slurry walls that hold back the river.
  • In December, Federal authorities arrested a 22-year old man planning to set off grenades in garbage cans in an Illinois shopping mall during the Christmas holiday rush. The mall was not the only target he discussed with undercover agents; others were local government facilities. Officials found Derrick Shareef after he told an FBI source that he wanted to commit acts of “violent jihad.”
  • In June, seven young men were arrested in a plot against the Sears Tower and a federal building in Miami. They were looking for contact with al Qaeda, but found Federal officials instead.
  • Last January, officials detained groups of men (including an Iraqi and a Pakistani) in various places in the Midwest and West Virginia who had purchased more than a thousand disposable cell phones from various stores. Such cell phones can be untraceable and are often used as detonators – as they were in the Madrid train attacks in 2004.

  We are concerned that some American officials and media have denigrated the planners, their plans and intentions. A spate of newspaper stories explained how structurally sound the tunnels were. First reports on the shopping mall called the aspiring terrorist a “misguided teenager.” (Like the misguided teenager who killed five people in a shopping mall this month.) Attorney General Gonzales said there was no “immediate threat” in Miami or Chicago because they didn’t have the means to do the job. The cell phone purchasers were connected to no “known terrorist group.” “Sudden jihad syndrome” has explained why “otherwise reasonable people” burst forth and kill people at a Seattle Jewish Federation, an El Al ticket counter or a Utah shopping mall.

  Large-scale terrorism requires an alliance between sponsors with the means (money, equipment, planning and training capabilities) and actors with the will. The fact that the two haven’t married up in the U.S. since 2001 does not mean they won’t. Investigators on the tunnel case said Iran was targeting American assets. Saudi Arabia funds 80 percent of American mosques – some of which are home to virulently anti-American preachers.

  We are proud of and grateful to the FBI and law enforcement agencies that work diligently to protect us from those who intend to do us harm, and JINSA has been a supporter of the U.S.A Patriot Act and its renewal. But there is a “big picture issue” here. Those who minimize the plotters because they lack capability TODAY should remember that those capabilities are out there. America is at war with people who have attacked our homeland in the past and will do it again if they can. We can be momentarily relieved by the mismatch between means and will, but cannot relax our vigilance.