I’d like to tell you about a very unusual company today. Their prospects are looking up. Granted, they had some troubles after 9/11 — they did lose people and facilities — but their finances are in good order. Core management has been reduced by about half since then, and the remaining middle managers have successfully implemented a decentralized management plan, allowing them to quickly move on a regional or local basis without having to get the CEO to sign off on every small detail. They have 18,000 employees and contractors, and recruiting for open positions is going exceptionally well.
Unfortunately, this “company” is Al Qaeda.
Let’s face it, pictures like this are not helping the War on Terror™, and they are not helping America. The idea that the commander who allowed this to occur is shocked, just shocked I tell you that she is being sent elsewhere is, well, just shocking. Alright, I grant you that she should not have found out on the evening news.
But back to the topic of Al Qaeda. We invaded Afghanistan to get them, if you will recall. Then we left the job half finished. Then we got distracted by Iraq, and managed to mess up everything we could think of to mess up in the process. Even our plan for returning Iraqis to self-rule is flawed.
And that brings us to this week’s missive, brought to us jointly from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice: Look Out. Al Qaeda might be planning to attack. They won’t tell us what they plan to do, they won’t tell us where, they won’t tell us when except to say “summer,” but they will at least tell us who might be involved. Maybe they can get these guys to help out. Oh yeah, it’s credible or they wouldn’t bother to mention it. But it isn’t a big enough deal to be worth raising the alert level. If you are skeptical of the whole deal, you aren’t alone.
The War On Terror™ was supposed to make us safer. Instead, it has made the terrorists stronger.