For almost a week now, the tragic circus known as the mainstream media has been abuzz with reports of a “global terror threat” or “global terror alert” from Al Qaeda – filling their front pages, opening segments of their various broadcasts, and the main screens of their websites. According to these same reports, 22 US diplomatic missions were closed Sunday as a ‘precautionary’ measure, and 19 of those 22 are to remain closed through the end of the week. So what spooked our caring, over-protective Washington nannies this time?

 

            After perusing multiple reports of this in various forms of media, I have come to the conclusion that no one really knows, not even the government itself, and probably not even Al Qaeda. The three most commonly cited rationales are a series of Al-Qaeda orchestrated prison breaks in countries like Iraq and Pakistan, suspiciously vague references to increased communications between members of Al-Qaeda’s network and a specific recording attributed to leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and the first week of August coinciding with a time of religious significance in the Muslim calendar that allegedly heightens the risk of attacks by extremists seeking “martyrdom” . Let’s examine these as grounds for such drastic and unprecedented measures of caution.

 

            Many prison breaks have indeed been attributed to Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and it is reasonable to presume that freed militants will rejoin the cause. However, there is no reason to believe this is an indicator of an imminent terror threat, even though every news outlet cites it without any kind of explanation that gets the reader from A to B. The prison breaks are not that recent of a trend. They have occurred somewhat regularly over the last 2 ½ years as the Arab Spring has politically destabilized many of the countries where domestic militants were being held, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan as the reduction of US presence has left the local authorities incapable of adequately maintaining law and order. There isn’t much to compare to considering that as recently as ten years ago, there were far fewer of Al-Qaeda’s militants in prisons in those countries, and the political landscape was far less conducive to breaking them out. Recent political developments also explain the increased brutality such as fully armed raids on the prisons by Al-Qaeda affiliated militias, and the murder of Shiite prisoners inside the prisons. Al-Qaeda is empowered in its endeavors by a lack of recourse, and the sectarian divide over the Syria-Iraq-Lebanon conflict has either made them more radically hostile to the Shiite than before, or – more likely – merely less restrained in acting on this hostility. Our enemy replenishing its ranks with once-captured fighters is certainly a cause for concern, as is the general political deterioration that is allowing this to happen. But no one has yet adequately explained how it is evidence of an imminent terror threat.

 

            The allusions to increased communications and an Al-Zawahiri recording simply don’t deserve serious consideration. Every politician and security official asked for more details has hidden behind that information being “classified”, and every media outlet has conveniently agreed. When politicians and media agree on THAT, they are almost certainly lying. The last several times politicians and security officials have alluded to “classified” facts to support their claims – the claims turned out to be pure speculation that said classified documents had nothing to do with. This happened during the North Korean “crisis” when House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) vaguely referenced classified intelligence to claim that if we allowed cuts to the military budget, North Korea would nuke us. The cuts went through, so why aren’t I writing this in a fallout shelter? It happened more recently when the same despicable politician along with a number of others as well as security officials like James Clapper cited “classified” data to claim the NSA’s indiscriminate domestic surveillance has stopped upwards of 50 terrorist acts. His Senate counterpart Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) who has clearance to see the data pointed out the evidence to support that claim simply was not present in the documents. Arguably even more telling is the media’s behavior in this particular instance. Complacent and incompetent as the likes of CNN, NBC, and Fox News are; they nevertheless typically dig for details to cherry-pick in support of their propaganda, and rarely respect anyone’s requests about information not being publicized. The fact that they are so sheepishly on board with the information being classified indicates they were asked to report this and don’t necessarily believe in it themselves.

 

            The only somewhat evidence-based cause for caution is the time of year. However, if THAT is grounds for closing 22 diplomatic missions – every security official needs to be fired yesterday and slews of them incarcerated for criminal negligence. Where have they been? The War on Terror has been going on for nearly 12 years, so by the logic this is the 12th time they have had these grounds for caution. Why weren’t the embassies and consulates closed during the first week of August in 2002 – less than a year after 9/11? Why weren’t they closed in 2011 on its 10 year anniversary? Why not in 2012, a month before the Benghazi incident? Seeing as no other evidence corroborates an increased threat, this seems like nothing more than a “good practice” excuse for doing something that no one previously thought necessary.

 

            The bottom line is that guerillas’ and non-State combatants’ key advantage is their stealth. It’s called “terrorism” because most of its effectiveness lies not in immediate physical destruction, but in creating panic and hysteria in the masses. If such attacks could be predicted, mapped, and then prevented by precautions like halting the work of our diplomatic missions – they wouldn’t present any kind of threat whatsoever. It baffles me that no one ever notices that no terrorist attack has happened when it was predicted and security heightened in response – EVER. The thorough absence of evidence for precautions in this case only makes the hysteria even less justified.

The Obama administration, on the other hand, had every reason to compile arbitrary rationales for heightened security measures and an attempt at media-driven hysteria to go with them. Between Edward Snowden getting temporary asylum in Russia, the surfacing of the report of the CIA’s shady activities in Benghazi and their role in that incident, and the continued discrediting of all the pathetic, hastily scrambled justifications for the NSA’s domestic surveillance – Obama’s foreign and security policies are now almost as popular as those of George W. Bush. It’s almost time for this President to declare that he is the decider, and will maintain the same line of thinking even if only he and his daughters’ dog agree. But before doing that, he has little to lose by taking a page out of his predecessor’s book and screaming “Look! Scary Al-Qaeda!” in hopes of creating a distraction.

 

            Terror threat alerts from the government are just about always intentional distractions from its own corruption and incompetence, even when they are made on days when passions are extremely high such as 9/12/2001. However, the good news is that the post-9/11 hysteria has worn off significantly even in contrast to Bush Jr’s second term. That coupled with Republicans’ – who are more prone to being distracted specifically by security threats – general lack of trust for Obama is leading to an overwhelmingly negative and skeptical response to this volley of fear-mongering. Americans are patiently waiting for the government and media to discontinue its tantrum because no one is reacting to it, and then we can get back to forcing this administration to face the music for its multitude of crimes and violations of the Constitution. As Obama’s day of reckoning nears, his defense tactics grow infinitely more desperate – but he has always failed colossally as an organizer, and this time is clearly no different.

 

By: Neurotoxin

 

 

 

About the Editor:

Neurotoxin holds a dual BA in Psychology and Political Science and an MSW with a specialization in Community Organizing. Politically, he is a “structural anarchist”; a school of thought that believes in treating all power structures as facts of nature that should be accounted for but not preserved. This school of thought dictates that policy ought to be driven solely by its empirically calculated outcomes.

Neurotoxin is the co-owner of Edge of Chaos – a political podcast and blog that can be found @ www.edgeofchaospodcast.com and http://www.facebook.com/theedgeofchaos.