Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, al Qaeda member (click here)
...Mr Obama had called for an immediate study of what he termed 'human and systemic failures' that allowed 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to get on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on 25 December allegedly with explosives in his clothes....
Let's realize first this is a human being of a person within the community of 'men with prestige' inside of Islam. The young man is important and may very well be a target of al Qaeda itself. What would be more demoralizing to 'the establishment' within Islam but to have their young men drop dead in one murderous bombing after another. Let's start there.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has issues because no different than the 'glamourous' of al Qaeda is well educated, prayed to by his family and is seeking 'purpose' to his faith, life while attending to 'individuation issues.'
We know for a fact the murderous bombers of Islam are primarily young men and that the demographics of Islam takes a downward swing when it comes to 'aged' members in a very dramatic way. Therefore and for quite some time the 'place' where this 'conversation' happens is in years where young men are seeking to 'differentiate' themselves from their fathers.
That has to enter the formula if an intelligence operation is ever to succeed. We were lucky in that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had a father with a conscience and a love for his son that transcended any 'ideal' thoughts of their relationship. But, what if that didn't happen? What if Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab was not reported by his father, but, still radicalized. How do you stop that?
The point is there is a lot of work to be done and while there are OBVIOUS 'triggers' that were to 'set off' all kinds of warnings, the USA didn't pick up on it. This is a case of corruption and that has to be said. Something really outrageous occurred in Amsterdam and no matter the 'system' failures, which were significant, this was ALLOWED to occur and with PREMEDITATED intent.
There is much work to be done and Islam has all that much more work to be done for its young men. The intelligence agencies of The West and ultimately every nation on Earth has to 'share' a known data bank on these folks and it has to be 'uniform' in its decision making. There are some 'fail safes' that have to be included and 'yes' some profiling if we are to stop this mess among the young men of Islam. It is just the way it is. It is NOT hatred, not by a long shot, it is seeking to stop this radicalization at a tender time in their lives to prevent them from death and to deliver them to purpose for their families and their nations.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a handsome young man. He is glamourous beyond any imagination. Yet, in his mind he is a murderous instrument by a deranged group of men that seek to destroy and kill civilization and for what reason? For what deranged reason?
Beside the 'shared infrastructure' that will streamline all the information about potential and actual murderers the 'profile' of the 'converted' has to be established. Years of vulnerability, length of time to conversion, potential to violence beyond any depersonalization disorder that exists today. The conversion is murderous and suicidal at the same time and it is inherent to some religious perversion of Islam. This is possible. The intelligence agencies need to 'hunker down' and find the 'instrument' of mind control that these 'radicalized clerics and holy men' use to twist the love of their family and this nation and their religion into a weapon.
Securing the USA is not a unilateral act. It is a large measure acts of compassion to stop this idiocy and stop the loss of Islamic young men cause by alienation from the very families that have nurtured them to lead their nations and not destroy them.
You know, perhaps Peter Bergen would be a good resource to the journalism community, too.
I sincerely believe the safeguards to stopping this young man were SABOTAGED. That being said, there is no defense from sabotage unless the entire system is re-secured from any further possibility of same. I find it very odd, the sophistication to this attempt was so poor. All the OBVIOUS signs were in place and yet the precautions failed as if they were designed to fail to sincerely rattle the civilized society of The West.
It is so maniacal. Either it was completely brilliant in its deployment or there was never any real safeguards in place by the USA. The truth is more than likely a complete and abject failure by the previous administration to stop this heinous methodology and standing in testament to that reality and FACT is the one aspect of this that no one can deny, THE BRITS HAD IT RIGHT. If the Brits had it right, we should have had it right. That is why it is either sincere sabotage 'at the gate' that was brilliantly deployed or simply stupidity of a system that needs to be desperately smart. I don't see that having a system that works in cooperation with another democratic country as Britain is ever a bad thing.
This gets real, real simple from here. If any ally of the USA has placed barriers to travel on any member of any country anywhere in the world that holds true for every other ally country. End of discussion. THAT will prevent such sabotage if there are multiple layers of security a person has to work through in order to gain access to planes and otherwise. Redundancy of sovereign authority will end any attempts at sabotage and that should have been in place following September 11, 2001.
Additionally and MOST important is accountability of all nations regarding the 'status' of their people. If a person as important as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is literally brainwashed by a maniacal Islamic underground what then will happen to the sovereign authority of these countries over time? They will lose the very 'brain trust' they need to continue the benevolence of their borders and the protections of the people within them.
It is all too easy for the USA and the West to simply 'recline' in a posture that in the future if countries fall into adverse authority 'the bombs' are the answer. The bombs are not the answer, they are the last resource that should be used to stop trends that could have been prevented years and decades before. In taking such a posture, the USA is not a benevolent country, but, simply an opportunistic country waiting for the other shoe to drop. That isn't having a foreign policy directive with other nations that works.
The USA has a President that seeks answers and wants a world safe for every nation. A President that wants economies to be strong and supportive of 'worker classes' that expand the consumer base of any product. He is a willing participant to bring about the security of nations in a way that improves quality of life for its people. If now is not the time for nations to 'gather' and instill protections for their populous then the global community will have lost 'a sincere chance' in building a better and safer world for its children.
Islam's practice is in every nation on Earth. Its 'power' has to be realized and channeled in ways that protects its young men from exploitation. Nations have to resolve to protections of its Islamic populations from 'free lancing' extremists that would seek to kill them, contort their minds and sacrifice the sanctity of their God for purpose that is deranged.
There has to be a MODEL of the 'persona' most 'at risk' and it has to be placed in priority of protections from extremism. If we don't address, in compassion, the ending of this methodology will we have ever served our children well?
