Academic liberalism is a danger to life

Telegraph View: Over the past decade, institutes of higher education in London have consistently provided sanctuary for Islamist students who parrot the hate-filled rhetoric of al-Qaeda and its allies.

America now associates London universities with terror plots and Islamic extremists

Democrats see Rep. Lungren as vulnerable in 2010

Party strategists see the former state attorney general as easy prey because he won with less than 50% of the vote in a four-candidate race last year. Lungren vows to run a stronger race next year.

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Rich and privileged - the gilded life of would-be plane bomber

• Banker's son expressed approval of 9/11 to teacher
• MI5 combing databases for alternative identities

Would-be plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father is one of Nigeria's most respected businessmen

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's path towards apparent Islamist militancy took him to University College London and a luxury block just off the city's Oxford Street.

But no part of his life was so seemingly anomalous to a would-be terrorist as the manicured lawns and tennis courts of the British International school in Togo, where he is believed to have first expressed extreme views.

Today, investigators were trying to establish exactly what provoked him to try to detonate an explosive device as a Northwest Airlines jet made its final descent into Detroit airport on Christmas Day.

It certainly wasn't a life of poverty. He was born in extreme privilege, of the sort few Nigerians could ever dream of, and his education reflected this. His father, Umaru Mutallab, 70, is one of the country's most respected businessmen, who retired earlier this month as chairman of Nigeria's FirstBank, the oldest bank in the country, with offices in London, Paris and Beijing.

While the family comes from Katsina state in the Muslim-dominated north of Nigeria, where funding of hardline Islamist schools by Saudi Arabia and Iran has raised concerns of militancy among young people, Abdulmutallab first became noticeably religious while studying abroad at a very different institution.

He undertook his secondary education as a boarder at the British school in Lomé, Togo's capital, which is mostly staffed by teachers from the UK and attracts wealthy students from across west Africa. Set up in 1983, the school gives pupils a decidedly English-style curriculum, taught in air-conditioned classrooms set amid grassy grounds which also feature a swimming pool and tennis courts.

While pursuing his international baccalaureat, with impressive results, Abdulmutallab's preaching to his schoolmates earned him the nickname "Alfa" – a local name for Islamic scholars, according to Nigeria's This Day newspaper.

Michael Rimmer, who taught Abdulmutallab history, and escorted him and other pupils on a school trip to the UK, said the teenager had been a model student who was keen, polite and eager to learn. However, Rimmer recalled a classroom discussion on Afghanistan's then-Taliban leaders following the September 11 attacks in 2001. All the other students, Muslims included, expressed their abhorrence of the regime, he said.

"But [Abdulmutallab], actually, thought that they had it right and he thought their views were acceptable. I thought he was maybe just trying to play devil's advocate ... At the time I just thought, well, when people are young they can have silly views," he told BBC radio.

Rimmer said that on hearing about his former pupil's arrest he was angry both with him and "the nutters who put these silly ideas in his head".

He said: "He's got wonderful parents, he comes from a lovely family, he's got lots of friends, he had everything going for him. He's a fine-looking lad, very bright. I expected great things from him and he's thrown all this away. His parents will be absolutely devastated. He should have thought about this."

According to a series of reports, after attending UCL, which has confirmed that a student of the same name studied mechanical engineering between 2005 and 2008, Abdulmutallab moved on to Egypt and Dubai, from where he severed ties with a family that was becoming increasingly concerned by his views. He also reportedly told US investigators that he was trained by al-Qaida in Yemen before the alleged attack.

Nigeria's government said today that Abdulmutallab had been living outside the country "for a while" and only returned on Thursday, shortly before he left again on his way to Detroit.

This Day quoted unnamed members of Abdulmutallab's family as saying his father was so concerned at the young man's views that six months ago he reported his fears to both the US embassy in Abuja and Nigerian security agencies. Umaru Mutallab, who began his working career as an accountant with Fuller Jenks Beecroft and Co in London in the 1960s and also served as a minister in the Nigerian government for a time, said he was "really disturbed" to learn his son had been arrested and was talking to Nigerian officials about their investigations.

The newspaper spoke to another unnamed relative who said the family had become concerned in recent years that Abdulmutallab was involved with Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group also known as the Nigerian Taliban, which seeks to impose sharia law across the country. Hundreds of people were killed when security forces tried to crack down on the group in July this year.

"We know Farouk's extreme views and were always apprehensive of where it may lead him to," the relative said. "He has maintained his distance from us and we never bothered him much. He wanted to be left alone so we respect his wishes."

Any warnings were not, it seems, relayed to the UK. Abdulmutallab tried to return to Britain as a student in May this year and was refused entry, but only because UK Border Agency officials considered the educational institution he applied for to be bogus. His name, or the name he gave, did not appear on MI5 or counter-terrorist radar screens, according to officials.

MI5 is continuing to trawl its databases to see if there is any trace of Abdulmutallab's movements in Britain and communications he had with friends or associates here. The agency's officers have not immediately found any links, the Guardian understands. Counter-terrorist officers said one of the problems was that he may not have used that name either in documents or in conversations. They are looking for what one official called "fragments of information".

MI5 has devoted extra resources to the case to find out as much as they can about the young Nigerian, and are particularly keen to uncover information in two main areas: Abdulmutallab's relations with al-Qaida, if any, and how he managed to avoid security checks before boarding the plane. "The question is, to what extent is he linked to al-Qaida. He says he is but the term can cover a very broad spectrum," said a Whitehall official.

It is not unknown for people from privileged backgrounds to become involved with al-Qaida, for example with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri. However, it seems that Abdulmutallab had no direct links with the al-Qaida core leadership based on the Afghan-Pakistan border, where most of Britain's suicide bombers or convicted terrorists trained.

Abdulmutallab's actions were condemned by Nigeria's government, which has ordered an investigation into the incident. A spokesman for the senate, Ayogu Eze, called it a "strange act of terrorism".

"We are at a loss as to where he got this strange habit, because Nigeria abhors terrorism in all its ramifications," he said.

Nigeria's civil aviation authority said yesterday that Abdulmutallab bought his ticket at the KLM office in Accra, Ghana, just over a week before he travelled and paid the $2,831 (£1,775) fare in cash.

Religious leaders across faiths also added strong criticism. Muslims constitute about half of Nigeria's 155 million people, with Christians slightly fewer. In recent years thousands of people have been killed in Muslim-Christian violence.

One of the most prominent incidents occurred in Abdulmutallab's home state, where a woman was sentenced to death by stoning for alleged adultery in 2002. The decision – which was later overturned – caused several Miss World contestants to withdraw from the beauty pageant, which was being held in Nigeria the same year.

Yemen is the true home of Al-Qaeda

 

The Detroit airline bomb plot was planned in the land of bin Laden's ancestors.

Richard Spencer reports

"The war between al-Qaeda and the United States is a global war," says Riad Kahwaji, director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Analysis in Dubai, who warned in October that President Obama's indecision on issues such as Afghanistan was creating a dangerous vacuum in the region. 

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Al-Qaida's flawed vision

The attempted bombing of the Northwest Airlines flight exposes an unresolved tension at the heart of militant Islam

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Iranian protesters are dying for freedom – where is Barack Obama?

Al-Qaida has changed its face and operates from a different base

Somalia and Yemen have become the hot spots for jihadist activities and recruitment

Detroit terror attack: suspect barred from Britain

 

Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with attempting to blow up a plane carrying 278 passengers, had applied for a bogus college course.

Nigerian plotter used same explosive as shoe bomber

How the 'bomber' tried to blow Flight 253 out of the sky

Michele Bachmann is welcome at tea parties

The Republican congresswoman from Minnesota has become a rare elected official to be embraced by the vocal small-government activists. And the GOP is taking note.

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The decade we didn't see coming

ESSAY 

 From 9/11 to the recession, the '00s smashed our complacency, leaving us guardedly hopeful of better days ahead.  

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 A victory that may come to define the Obama presidency

The deal on US healthcare is a compromise, but still hugely significant

American presidents, it is often said, have about a year to make their mark – enact a major piece of legislation that then shapes and defines the rest of their term in office. Failure to choose the right weapons, or the right turf, can be fatal.

Barack Obama has at times struggled to find a cause he can truly make his own. He seemed to take on too many issues at once, from Middle Eastern peace to climate change, without demonstrating that he had a clear strategy to carry them through. With the Senate's passage of his bitterly contested healthcare bill, the clouds have lifted a little. Just in time for the Christmas break, the President can afford to wipe the sweat from his brow and contemplate his holiday with some satisfaction.

That is almost certainly a lost cause now, a casualty of a savage Senate battle against resurgent Republicans who closed ranks against Obama's supposedly "socialist" health reforms with frantic and, at times, disconcerting zeal.

Nor is the battle over the trimmed-down health reform package finished, even now. What the Senate agreed to on Christmas Eve was not the same package that the House of Representatives nodded through in the autumn. A joint committee will have to meet, therefore, probably within the next few days, to fuse the two bills into one, which will then go back to both houses. Only then will the bill become law, hopefully before the President delivers the State of the Union address next month.

Nevertheless, we should not lose ourselves in all the details about messy compromises, and so miss the vital significance of what Mr Obama is tantalisingly close to achieving. The President is surely right to assert that most of a loaf is better than no loaf at all, and to describe his health reform package as the most important item of social policy in America since the 1930s.

Tens of millions of poor Americans who have been denied healthcare cover in the past can in all likelihood look forward quite soon to a day when they will be able to face the prospect of illness with a little more equanimity than they do now. Under the new bill, most people who are not currently covered by Medicaid – the existing federal and state-funded insurance scheme for those on low incomes – will either have access to it, or will receive subsidies to obtain health insurance elsewhere. Businesses will be obliged to offer coverage to their employees. The number of potential beneficiaries of these changes is huge, and could affect the lives of more than 30 million people.

Democratic presidents and politicians since the era of Teddy Roosevelt have fought and lost battles to set up a comprehensive national system of health insurance for Americans – a system that would benefit the many, not just the few. The Clintons tried their hand at this and failed. If Mr Obama closes this deal, he has a chance to earn a place in American history as a great reformer.

London home of Detroit terror suspect searched

Passengers and crew foiled an al-Qaeda-inspired attempt to blow up a passenger jet with 289 people on board.

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Elite U.S. Force Expanding Hunt in Afghanistan

American and Afghan troops in Helmand Province. Special Operations units are stepping up attacks on insurgents, officers say.

Democrats should heed Daley's steer-to-the-center advice

By David S. Broder
Sunday, December 27, 2009; A21

On the day before Christmas, President Obama found two presents under his tree. One was the health-care reform bill passed that morning by the Senate, a historic measure so freighted with promise and problems that it could blow up.

The other was an op-ed in The Post by William Daley, his fellow Chicagoan and one of the canniest Democrats I know, warning Obama that he is on the verge of losing his hold on the vital center of politics.

Daley, a former commerce secretary who shares with his brother, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and their late father an iron grip on reality, cited all the signs of defection among swing voters whose support in 2006 and 2008 swelled Democratic ranks in Congress and elected Obama. He ticked off the losses Democrats suffered in the only two gubernatorial elections of 2009, in New Jersey and Virginia; the polls showing independents rejecting Democrats (and such handiwork as the health-care bill); a wave of early retirements by marginal House members; and, last week, the party switch by Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith from Democratic to Republican.

To be sure, there are counter-indicators not mentioned by Daley, including a string of special election congressional victories for the Democrats, culminating in New York's 23rd District. The Republican civil war that enabled this upset is symptomatic of a growing GOP liability that could cripple the party's comeback hopes.

But this does not weaken the thrust of Daley's main argument. His target is the left of his party -- the grass-roots liberal activists who condemn the centrist Democrats sitting in marginal seats for blocking some provisions of health-care reform, for example, and the leaders of organized labor who threaten to retaliate by withholding their support from the moderates.

These groups put heavy pressure on Obama to move his agenda to the left -- even when a Congress with swollen Democratic majorities is balking at the measures that Obama already has endorsed.

The president is surrounded by people who share Daley's grasp on reality, none more important or better placed than Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and a fellow Chicagoan. But the picture is not so clear on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's inner circle is made up of long-standing veterans of gerrymandered House districts, virtually immune from Election Day challenge, just as she is. The wants and needs of "the Democratic base" count heavily for them, and Daley's warnings may be resented or ignored.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's home-state party in Nevada is as closely tied to the unions as Michigan used to be in the days of Walter Reuther, and Reid views the world from that perspective.

As a loyal Democrat, Daley insisted in the closing paragraphs of his op-ed that his party is not doomed to ruin. It can still avoid anything more than a minimal setback in 2010, he said, if it will simply "acknowledge that the agenda of the party's most liberal supporters has not won the support of a majority of Americans -- and, based on that recognition . . . steer a more moderate course on the key issues of the day, from health care to the economy to the environment to Afghanistan."

I am not so certain. It will be up to Obama to steer the Democrats in that direction. No one on Capitol Hill is likely to lead such a change. The first test will come with the revisions of health care in the House-Senate conference and whether the White House insists on strengthening the cost-saving measures in the bills.

The larger tests will lie in Obama's 2010 State of the Union and budget messages -- whether he fulfills his promise to start addressing the runaway budget deficits left in the wake of the recession. A presidential endorsement of the much-discussed commission empowered to slow the hemorrhage of red ink would signal to voters that Daley's message has been heard.

E

Compromising on 2 Issues, Obama Gets Partial Wins

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, likes to say that the only thing that is not negotiable is success. The last 48 hours offered a case study in how the president applies that maxim to governing.

After weeks of frustrating delays and falling poll numbers, Mr. Obama decided to take what he could get, declare victory and claim momentum on some of the administration’s biggest priorities, even if the details did not always match the lofty vision that underlined them.

From Copenhagen to Capitol Hill, the president determined the outer limits of what he could accomplish on climate change and health care and decided that was enough, at least for now. He brokered a nonbinding agreement with other world powers to fight global warming, averting the collapse of an international summit meeting. And he blessed a compromise on health care to guarantee the votes needed to pass the Senate.

Neither deal represented a final victory, and in fact some on the left in his own party argued that both of them amounted to sellouts on principle in favor of expediency. But both agreements served the purpose of keeping the process moving forward, inching ever closer toward Mr. Obama’s goals and providing a jolt of adrenaline for a White House eager to validate its first year in office.

Mr. Obama seemed encouraged by the progress. He had just left Denmark on Air Force One with the climate change agreement in hand when he reached Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and heard of the health care deal. “He was, fair to say, pretty happy,” Mr. Reid later told reporters.

After landing in a Washington-area snowstorm and retiring for a few hours of rest, Mr. Obama appeared in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House on a snowy Saturday. He called the health care deal “a major step forward” and the climate change agreement an “important breakthrough.”

Still, he acknowledged that neither was exactly what he had set out to achieve. On climate change, he said that the Copenhagen pact “is not enough” and that “we have a long way to go.” On health care, he noted that “as with any legislation, compromise is part of the process.”

In an interview, Mr. Emanuel said the developments showed that Mr. Obama “sets out the North Stars for us” in terms of broad and ambitious goals, but is willing to let his staff and allies haggle over the specifics. “He doesn’t negotiate the ends,” Mr. Emanuel said. “He’s very open to discussing alternative routes.”

Critics cautioned against making too much of the agreements. “They are pyrrhic victories,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former Capitol Hill aide. “Neither deal will necessarily improve his poll ratings with swing voters, nor will they energize his base. And neither take the necessary steps to put the American economy back on track, which should be the only thing he is thinking about right now.”

The climate deal in particular may seem more than it is. With the Copenhagen conference unable to agree on binding limits on greenhouse gases linked to climate change, Mr. Obama settled for a three-page agreement with no short or midterm goals but a long-term commitment to prevent world temperatures from rising by more than two degrees by midcentury.

The health care legislation is much further along, and while it compromised on abortion and abandoned a government-run health plan, it still includes many changes long favored by Democrats. If it passes the Senate this week as now appears probable, it stands a much better chance of actually becoming law, culminating decades of largely failed efforts to revamp the nation’s health care system.

Mr. Obama has put a high value on process and keeping things moving, recognizing that history generally does not remember the to and fro, only the big sweep of presidential accomplishments. He may not get the health care plan he envisioned but, if the legislation passes, he will insure 30 million more people, stop insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and at least try to rein in costs. He will not end climate change in his presidency, and may not get the market-based emission caps he wants, but he may move the country, and the world, toward meaningful action.

Of course, to many on both sides of the aisle, there is a less sympathetic narrative. To the left, Mr. Obama seems increasingly to lack the fire to fight on matters of principle. To the right, he appears to be overreaching, saddling the country with debt and the weight of a bloated and overly intrusive government.

Yet whatever their merits, coming at the end of a tough first year, the developments of the past couple of days were something of a balm for the Obama White House. Little this year has come as easily as Mr. Obama and his team once imagined, but as they sort through the balance sheet, they argue that the mediocre poll ratings do not reflect the record.

Mr. Emanuel noted that a year ago, the economy was on the brink of a depression and the financial and auto industries were near collapse. Today, the economy is growing again, and banks and one of the large car companies are repaying government bailouts, although unemployment remains perilously high and the national debt is soaring.

He also ticked off a series of legislative measures that passed with little notice — an expansion of health care for lower-income children, new regulations on the tobacco and credit card industries and an overhaul of military acquisition. With health care now looking closer to passage, Mr. Emanuel called it the “most significant legislative first year of a first-term president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

Even so, White House officials are frustrated at the difficulties they have had. As they talk about their agenda for 2010, some Democrats have suggested looking for a few easy, popular initiatives as sort of a breather between the big-ticket, often polarizing proposals that dominated 2009.

The problem, as they noted, is that they had expected some of this year’s proposals to be more popular, only to discover otherwise in a treacherous political climate.

Drone Breach Stirs Calls to Fill Cyber Post

Getty Images

Staff members at the Oct. 30 opening ceremony of the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team/National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center facility in Arlington, Va. The facility is designed to help protect the country's technological infrastructure.

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The two big mistakes

Michael Tomasky

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Obama is handcuffed by the political mess at home

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Health-care debate wearing on Democrats' unity, popularity

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 19, 2009

Amidst the spectacle that has become the health care debate, Democrats have taken comfort in the belief that they will be rewarded politically if in the end they pass something -- almost anything. That proposition is being sorely tested in these final days of maneuvering.

For all the talk of the damage President Obama has sustained during this long and difficult year, congressional Democrats have suffered at least as much -- and will have to face the voters far sooner than the president.

Senate Majority Leader Hary Reid announced Saturday he had the 60 votes to pass the bill. The House still must be persuaded to go along but Obama and the Democrats are one step closer to achieving the goal that has eluded so many presidents and Congresses. That in itself is a significant achievement.

The long fight has been costly, however. The health care debate has split the Democratic coalition. Unity has given way to bitter infighting. This has been a moment for individuals to make war on one another.

What good will that existed among Democrats at the start of Obama's presidency has been fractured and will be difficult to put together again. The events of the past week underscore that reality.

Joe Lieberman who bolted the party in 2006 to salvage his Senate seat and then accepted the Democrats' generosity to maintain his committee chairmanship despite having backed John McCain in last year's presidential race, held the party hostage in negotiations, enraging many liberals.

Howard Dean, who has grievances about the way he was discarded by the Obama team after running the Democratic National Committee for four years, has led a vocal guerrilla war against the bill from outside the Congress, enraging the party leadership.

Democratic centrists have extracted costly promises to stay aboard but still fear for their political futures. Bloggers and progressive activists have counterattacked against them vowing retribution. Labor is unenthusiastic to hostile.

Progressives in Congress have swallowed hard over the compromises that have been needed to round up enough votes to beat back a Republican filibuster.

Hard-headed politicians would say there was no way to avoid this kind of squabbling, given the stakes and complexity of health care reform and the rules of the Congress. There are no immaculate legislative struggles on a piece of social legislation of this consequence.

Leading Democrats also believe that, in the end, voters care less about process than about outcomes. If, in the face of united Republican opposition, the Democrats produce historic changes in the availability of health care to millions more citizens and protect against some of the arbitrary practices of the insurance industry, that will override the messy path to success.

But there is something broader for Democrats to worry about as they try to finish their work this year and prepare for 2010 and the midterm elections. What began as an undercurrent of dissatisfaction has grown throughout the year. Disappointment with the president is dwarfed by discontent with the Congress.

No Congress is ever loved, but the assessments of this Congress are striking in their negativity. In the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll only seven percent rated the performance of Congress above average, and 34 percent called it one of the worst.

Two benchmarks put that number into perspective. In October 1994, shortly before Republicans ousted Democrats from power in the House and Senate, 16 percent called that Congress one of the worst. In October 2006, just before Democrats recaptured control, 25 percent called that Congress one of the worst. In the past five months, the percentage who rate this Congress that low has jumped 11 percentage points.

Thirty-five percent gave the Democratic Party a positive rating, still higher than the 28 percent who rated the Republican Party that way. But since February, Democrats have seen their overall image go from net positive to net negative. Republicans, while still living in negative territory, have improved slightly.

A third finding underscores the problem for Democrats: 38 percent said their member of Congress deserves to be reelected, while 49 percent said it is time to give a new person a chance. That is identical to the percentage who said give a new person a chance a month before the 1994 GOP landslide and slightly above the number a month before the 2006 Democratic takeover.

Why won't that anti-Washington sentiment fall equally on Republicans and Democrats? Because it rarely does. Republicans are hardly secure or popular, but Democrats are in control. If the public is ready for change again next November, the Democrats will feel the brunt of that anger.

Many factors contribute to the dissatisfaction with Washington. People are angry about bailouts for bankers. The unemployment rate is at 10 percent. They see the deficit rising and worry about the long-term consequences. Conservatives and liberals question whether their leaders have the right priorities.

Health care has exhausted the Democrats and tested their capacity to govern. Democrats hope that passage of a health care bill will prove to be a political restorative. But the longer the debate has gone on, the less people like what they think they may be getting. Congress may be on the cusp of a historic achievement, but right now the public believes the status quo is preferable to change.

Democrats have a dual problem. They must find the votes to pass a bill to avoid the charge that, even with their big majorities, they are incapable of governing. They also must persuade voters that the policy changes they want to enact include far more plusses than minuses.

That is a big challenge, not only for Obama and Democratic leaders. They are governing in difficult times and and see themselves close to the finish line on health care. But they are nonetheless bracing for a difficult election year in 2010.