Attacks can come anytime
WASHINGTON — Monday’s attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia was a stark reminder that terrorists can strike America anytime, almost anywhere.
The attack came as Congress and President Bush worked to free a stalled bill to upgrade the nation’s intelligence system. But all the intelligence in the world may not be enough to thwart fanatics determined to carry out a suicide mission.
Bush sought to link the attack to a rise of violence in the region ahead of January elections in Iraq, saying it showed terrorists “are still on the move,” trying to get the United States to leave.
The storming of the U.S. consulate in the Red Sea port city of Jiddah — the latest in a series of violent attacks by militants in the kingdom against foreign interests over the past two years — underscored that both the U.S.-led war on terror and Saudi efforts to crack down on the al Qaeda network were far from over.
The militants “want us to grow timid and weary in the face of their willingness to kill randomly and kill innocent people. That’s why these elections in Iraq are very important,” Bush said at the White House after a meeting with interim Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawer.
Many analysts have suggested it was the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq that spawned violence across the region.
“Our intervention in Iraq has fueled the recruiting fires for radical, extremist groups like al Qaeda,” said Michele Flournoy, a former Pentagon official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“What we have to aim for is to minimize the risk of catastrophic or major attacks and prevent the smaller attacks where we can. But it’s impossible to stop them all, or to protect every facility, everywhere, 100 percent of the time,” Flournoy said.
The episode showed — once again — that even a relatively small number of militants are able to carry out sophisticated, lethal strikes against American interests abroad, even in the face of heavy security or local crackdowns.
“When you see a number of these sorts of things happening in many different countries, as we have for the last three years, you realize that you may be winning the war on terror in one sense, but you’re not winning it in another,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst with the Brookings Institution.
“We may have cut off the head of the snake, and made it harder for them to operate as an integrated well-coordinated organization. But they have a lot of global strength, al Qaeda and its affiliates,” O’Hanlon said.