United States: What WeaponsAgainst al-Qaida?

Between continuity and breaking with his predecessor, Barack Obama strives to put his own mark on the war on terror. It’s a delicate task.

On January 7, Barack Obama delayed, by four hours, the speech dedicated to the gigantic gaffe of December 25 – the boarding of Northwest Airlines flight 253 by Nigerian, Umar Farouk Adulmutallab, while he was on file in the potential terrorist lists. The delay gave rise to a media scramble the entire afternoon, sustaining, once again, the cliché of the indecisive Democratic president, timorous in the defense of the nation.

The reality is different. Before speaking and administering a volley of criticism to the American intelligence machine, the president waited for confirmation that the tens of thousands of employees in the 16 agencies responsible for national security had been informed by their superiors of the criticisms and the reforms to be implemented. With this gesture, Obama wanted to avoid upsetting or discouraging the shadowy army of intelligence.

His message was clear: In these dangerous hours, he intends to remain . . . Barack Obama. That is to say, a follower of consensus, coupled with a brain more inclined to streamline and play down crises than to resolve them with an iron fist and with retaliation as a form of release. But is this style of leadership tenable, in a time of terrorism? “This intellectual president could have a problem like that of Jimmy Carter,” affirmed Walter Russel Mead, presidential historian of the Council on Foreign Relations. “He believes in protecting the country by using the measured rhetoric of power and avoiding confrontations. In this game, one can’t help but ask: Will you not be much too weak?”

The irony is sizable, because his actual counter-terrorism policy draws from the policy conducted by Bush, himself, for the last three years of his term, already purified of its most brutal faults. Obama promised to close Guantanamo, but prepares to transfer the detainees to U.S. soil. The use of force, from remote-controlled drones to Blackwater mercenaries, doesn’t put him off either. The number of eliminated al-Qaida leaders has more than doubled over the past year in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

As for the recent confusion, the responsibility falls as much upon the new administration as upon the old. John Brennan, deputy national security adviser to the White House, and Robert Gates, secretary of defense, as well as a swarm of important officials, come from the preceding administration. They work with a bureaucracy that was reorganized in 2004, by George Bush, to avoid conflicts between agencies and the withholding of information – taking a gamble, perhaps too much of one. The tide of information exceeds the capacities of the working analysts. Barack Obama is not unaware of insults in the fight against al-Qaida, but he still must convince his his country that he can resolve them. In his own way.