Neither wars nor drones

[StarfarerBill]

By Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst

A young Nigerian from an affluent family, trained in Yemen and reportedly influenced by extremists in the United Kingdom, tried to blow a hole in a plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day and failed.

Instead, he blew a greater hole in the logic of the US Global War On Terror - GWOT.

If he succeeded, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would have cost the lives 300 innocent people and bruised Western economic recovery.

But even though he failed, his journey demonstrated that there is nothing "central" about the ''central front in the war on terror". Nor is it a war in any traditional military sense.

Although the Obama administration inherited the war strategy from its predecessor and has tried to distance itself from the Bush administration's GWOT, it has faced the same dilemma of how to go about preventing a repeat of 9/11.

Thus far the one-year-old administration has tried to be more nuanced, more selective and less rash than its predecessor's disastrous policies.

But it has offered no real alternatives.

More:
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/imperium/2009/12/20091231125821208452.html

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. It is a war unto itself. n/t