America Issues Worldwide Travel Alert

Hi, dear readers. I'm back from a week on the beach with two long-time friends and their 10-year-old grandson. It is truly amazing how much energy children have. He kept all of us hopping. But, there was no WiFi or internet or TV where we were, so I had a lot of catching up to do when I got home late last night. The return trip itself was newsworthy because I travelled by train - and there were police and border agents and even a sniff dog on our train, checking passports and opening suitcases and handbags. It was only after I got home and put on my TV that I realized that the United States had issued an extraordinary global travel warning to Americans on Friday about the threat of an al-Qaida attack. America also closed down 22 embassies and consulates across the Moslem world for the weekend. The closings and warning appeared to be the determined effort of the Obama administration to prevent a second Benghazi-type attack such as occurred last September 11 in Libya. The administration's actions have received broad bipartisan support in Congress. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared on ABC News Sunday to say that the threat is "more specific" than previous ones and the "intent is to attack Western, not just US, interests." The US State Department has advised Americans traveling overseas to take precautions, citing potential dangers involved with public transportation systems and other prime sites for tourists and noting that previous terrorist attacks have centered on subway and rail networks as well as airplanes and boats. The alert expires on August 31. The warning emphasized that possible attacks may occur on or come from the Arabian Peninsula. US officials pointed specifically to Yemen, the home of al-Qaida's most dangerous affiliate and the network blamed for several terrorist plots on the United States, including the foiled Christmas Day 2009 plan to bomb an airliner over Detroit to the explosives-laden parcels intercepted the following year aboard cargo flights. The current threat is particularly serious in areas from Yemen to northwest Africa to Afghanistan. Eliot Engel, House member from New York and the House Foreign Affairs Committee's top Democrat, who was briefed on the State Department's decision, said, "I don't know if I can say there is a particular threat...there is concern over the potentiality of violence." The "blinking red intelligence seems to be pointing toward an Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula plot," said Seth Jones, counterterror expert at the Rand Corp. who taljed to AP News, referring to the branch of al-Qaida known as AQAP. Britain also took action Friday, telling British citizens in Yemen to leave and those considering such travel to delay it. Britain, which closely coordinates on intelligence matters with Washington, stopped short of releasing a US-type region-wide alert but added that some embassy staff in Yemen had been withdrawn "due to security concerns." British embassies and consulates elsewhere in the Middle East were to remain open. Germany announced the closure of its Yemen embassy on Saturday. US Representative Ed Royce, a California Republican and the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said the embassy threat was linked to al-Qaida and concerned the Middle East and Central Asia. Royce said the US is doing all it can "...to better protect our personnel and, out of an abundance of caution, we should." He declined to say if the National Security Agency's much-debated surveillance program helped reveal the threat. On Friday night, the New York Times said that American officials said the US had intercepted electronic communications among senior operatives of al-Qaida. US Representative Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel, said the communications picked up is more serious than the usual chatter among militants and would-be terrorists on the Internet and otherwise. ~~~~~ These terrorist threats will continue, dear readers, and while they should not make us change our lives dramatically because that would mean victory for the terrorists, they should remind us that our world is a riskier place today and we should be attuned to its darker aspects. And, for me, the terrorist threat is a constant reminder that people of all religions and political persuasions should work together to build economic and cultural and social bridges that will deprive these faceless terrorists of their prey among poor, uneducated and cast-off young people worldwide.