Now They Tell Us... al Qaeda Is NOT the Threat We've Been Told it is

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

This recent article in the Air Force Times quotes Ambassador Sheehan, the new Assisitant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, and the former head of NYPD's Counter-terrorism Division, as saying: " Al-Qaida wasn’t as good as we thought they were on 9/11.  Quite frankly, we, the American people, were asleep at the switch, the U.S. government, prior to 9/11. So an organization that wasn’t that good looked really great on 9/11,” Sheehan told a room full of special operators in Washington who were attending an annual Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict Planning Conference.  “Everyone looked to the skies every day after 9/11 and said, ‘When is the next attack?’ And it didn’t come, partly because al-Qaida wasn’t that capable. They didn’t have other units here in the U.S. … Really, they didn’t have the capability to conduct a second attack.”

It is good that a high ranking American official has finally come out and made this statement publicly.  It would have been better if it had been done sooner and had not had to wait for Ambassador Sheehan to return to Federal service.

* Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College (USAWC).  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of USAWC and/or the US Army.

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This has been Sheehan's position for a long time.  He and and I have discussed it quite a lot.  pl

Comments

[505thPIR]

Keep pressing them and whatch em step up their game!

[mbrenner]

One cannot make sense of the sustained exaggeration of the al Qaeda threat without probing the nation's collective psychology. That is always a risky business but necessary in this case to understand what's happened. Here are a few reference points for what would make a valuable study.

1. The American experience: sense of invulnerability, its Providential meaning and mission, post-Cold War celebration that the world was going our way largely because of US.

2. The traumatic shock due to the above plus vivid imagery, symbolism of targets. Images associated with what happens in less blessed countries

3. Fear of the unknown - who are these guys anyway? They do wear turbans, they are A-rabs, etc

4. I need a protector. And I'll pay for one with my tax dollars, a portion of my freedom, my suspended critical intelligence, my country's principles.

5. Being scared means I/we are being vigilant

6. From now I'll only be comfortable with absolute, zero threat security

5. The 'leaders' prepared to take up the offer and explot it for their own self-serving ends. No complex psychology here.

[J]

Colonel, Adam,

I wonder how his comments were received by the attendees at D.C.'s annual Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict Planning Conference? And what were [probably] their comments of it made to their folks back home about it?

[Fred]

I believe Colin Powell pointed this out prior to changing tune to support the war in Iraq. Didn't he also say most of the high jackers had no idea that they were on a suicide mission?

[turcopolier]

Fred

No. Powell is a fraud in this as in most things. They knew they were headed for "martyrdom." What they did not know were the particulars of the mission until they got close to the end. Powell's statememt was just more BS propaganda. Don't denigrate the enemy. That is a big mistake. pl

[Fred]

Thanks PL. I lost all respect for Powell with his conduct at the UN. I wasn't entirely certain if my memory were correct about the initial comments he made in 2001. Isn't your last comment: "Don't denigrate the enemy. That is a big mistake. " something both our political and military leaders have done rather consistently for ten years?