Where Are The Attacks?

Capital Games and Gains' Andrew Samwick links to a Wall Street Journal story by Holman Jenkins examining what the recent foiled terrorist attack says about Al Qaeda and our nation's response:

Considering the ease with which a suicide bomber could stroll into a Starbucks in any American city and kill a dozen people, you have to wonder at al Qaeda's obsession with targeting commercial airliners.

If 19 terrorists (the number who carried out the 9/11 attacks) each blew himself up at one- or two-week intervals in a shopping mall or a movie theater, America likely would become a seething nation of paranoid shut-ins. That it hasn't happened tells you something: Al Qaeda doesn't have a ready supply of competent suicide bombers, domestic or imported, to carry off serious attacks. That it continues to pour what little resources it can command into lame airliner attacks, like shoe bomber Richard Reid's failed attempt to blow himself up in 2001 and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt on Christmas Day, tells you something else:

Al Qaeda may be incapacitated, but its leaders aren't dumb. So what if their hapless messengers only embarrass themselves and burn their legs? Al Qaeda can still count on the sizeable damage we will inflict on ourselves through an airport security apparatus that specializes in expensive political displays of barn-door closing that seldom have any real security payoff.

The few people who actually remember the fear created by the anthrax attacks or the D.C.-area sniper cannot doubt the potential effectiveness of the strategy Holman outlines.

I think the conclusions Holman reaches about Al Qaeda, our national battle against it, and our domestic security situation, have significant merit. His article is worth reading.