I’m going to disagree here, and not just because I love Helen. What’s ridiculous here is that Brennan has ZERO answer to give her. Is it possible that the chief of counterterrorism has no idea what motivates our enemy? No, it isn’t.

Helen’s question illustrates the way that posturing has overtaken intelligence in the discussion of terrorism. If Brennan had answered, he would have been accused of justifying terrorism, in much the same way that Ron Paul was by Rudy Giuliani at the Republican Presidential debate.

In fact, I was mulling a recap of the briefing, and if I don’t do one, I have to say that Helen and April Ryan were the only reporters who veered away from questions that could have been answered simply by reviewing the report. Really disappointing briefing that I looked forward to all day.

I thought Brennan’s response was spot on!

He’s basically saying “They want to attack us because they want to attack us.” The President laid out a better answer than that when he pegged Gitmo as an explicit reason for the formation of AQAP. Brennan should have been well-versed enough to rattle off a few of those.

The simple fact that he has no answer simply reveals that they (Being the US Intelligence) have no clue what they are up against. Which pretty much diminishes all hope we have for any progress in this “War on terror”. She doesn’t want to know why Al Qaeda hates America, she already knows, she is simply seeing if the intelligence community knows or is willing to answer. Brennan’s response was quite awful.

I believe the “AQAP was formed because of GITMO” has already been proven false. Go read anything on AQAP and you won’t find GITMO as the key reason for formation. The Christmas terrorist attack against the US was in direct response to the UAV attacks in Yemen.

Did you see where the GITMO guys are now saying: Hey leave us here in GITMO, we don’t want to go stateside! LOL. You just can’t make this sh..stuff up.

The big story of today, was Obama quoting Bush “WE are at war with AQ”. Thats a big change for Obama. I bet next we’ll see a reversal on KSM getting tried in NYC.

If she really wants an answer, why doesn’t she just go ask them herself?

Tommy you are suggesting that at a press conference to discuss a particular incident Brennan should offer a primer on what motivates our enemy? Please. A thoughtful paper on the issue would be welcome but a press conference is not the venue. I think it was the sort of question certain journalists ask just so he or she can be seen as asking the “tough” questions even though there is no real hope of getting meaningful answers. If anyone thinks there is a soundbite answer to that question I believe you don’t understand the history of Al Qaeda.

I love Helen! She has more cahones than anyone in that Press Room. She asks the questions that the American people want answered and she doesn’t let up no matter who is in the WH. The rest of them could learn a lot from her. The members of the flacid PC WHPC are way too “polite” to this administration.

Sorry Helen but, that was an embarrassing question. While there are several well known reasons why terrorists hate us it’s not something that is germain to stopping them. Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn why these nuts attack us. I’m more concerned with making sure we do all that we can to stop them. Their motives are irrelevant. It was almost as embarrassing as the Barbara Walters question, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be” Did she ask Clint Eastwood that stupid question? Or was it Katherine Hepburn? Anyway, not good Helen. As for April, another meandering, and incoherant word salad.

Dan,

I think that’s a false choice. Someone in Brennan’s position ought to be able to give a better answer than that, and I think Helen’s question goes to a crucial weakness in our struggle with terrorism. There’s a knee-jerk resistance to getting inside these guys’ heads that leads us to chase superficialities like country of origin. I think Helen just wanted Brennan to let us know the wheels are turning, that we’re not just playing catch-up.

Helen Thomas and Muslims have a rabid anti-Israel bias. If the USA were to allow the Muslims to wipe the infidel Jews off the face of the earth, they both would be happy.

It is a very good question of her to ask, but given that she’s a journalist and we have had years to look into the specifics she should have a notion by now. If she was asking as a challenge to the leadership then she was being ridiculous at best (to expect something comprehensive in a 30 second sound bite) or disingenuous at worst, by not asking in a pointed fashion.

I appreciated the language Brennan used, that al Qaeda is a perversion of the religion. It stifles the charge of accusing all Muslims, which has never been the case. Interesting that we have moved from the initial claims that the Christmas bomber has acted independantly and acknowledged he part of the problem.

Helen Thomas and Cindy Sheehan were media heroes when they were attacking Bush. When they started attacking Obama, they became villains.

Typical Helen Thomas… America MUST have done SOMETHING to make Al Qaeda to want to hurt us…

SHUT UP, TROLL!!! Go back under your bridge! Why didn’t Gibby step up and put her in her place like he would have done other reporters?

roxsteady says:
January 7, 2010 at 7:13 pm

Their motives are irrelevant.

Oh, I very much disagree with that! Their motives are the key to figuring out how to fight them, and how to win the long term. If they hate us just to have a scapegoat for all their societal problems (IMO, the real reason), then that suggests we can win the hearts and minds of those who haven’t been taught to hate us… we can help them solve their societies problems, making recruiting for terrorism more difficult. Their reasons for hating us help us with the long-term strategy… of course it’s a two part strategy -stop or kill the violent extremists, prevent AQ leaders from corrupting the public- but without knowing their motivations, we’ll never be able to achieve anything beyond constant fighting.

______

As for what Helen said… I’ll agree a little with both Dan and Tommy (and maybe a little Colby… although he doesn’t much like me… sad…). The question was valid, although phrased too broadly. The question should have been something more like, “What were the motivations for this attack, and how will our response and future actions take away or impede that motivation?” That’s what she was really getting at… not a history lesson.

But it’s Helen Thomas… she likes the spotlight, and she’s not going to get it without being really really annoying. She should have asked what she really wanted to know, not the more basic question… especially once it was obvious she wasn’t getting the response she wanted.

I think Brennan did well with reciting the conventional wisdom and Helen appeared to want to be Socratic, though to be honest, I couldn’t really tell if her first asking was why, al Qaeda or why, this individual.

With that said, I’m also at a loss to understand why Dan and MartiniShark thinks a print reporter would want a soundbite.

Okay – I’ve listened to it again and it really sounds like she’s asking “why this individual” on both the first and second asking, then Brennan gives the canned answer, though he sticks in there that this individual was “motivated by a sense of religious drive”, so she comes back with “and you’re saying it’s because of religion”.

Obviously Brennan, this post’s author and several commenters heard a generalized question about “why al Qaeda”, but why an educated middle class man, who had been living in London decided to throw it all away for “a sense of religious drive” seems like a valid question, related to the topic and if we had a better understanding rather than rote answers, we’d probably be better off.

“Their motives are irrelevant.

Oh, I very much disagree with that! Their motives are the key to figuring out how to fight them, and how to win the long term. If they hate us just to have a scapegoat for all their societal problems (IMO, the real reason), then that suggests we can win the hearts and minds of those who haven’t been taught to hate us… we can help them solve their societies problems, making recruiting for terrorism more difficult. Their reasons for hating us help us with the long-term strategy… of course it’s a two part strategy -stop or kill the violent extremists, prevent AQ leaders from corrupting the public- but without knowing their motivations, we’ll never be able to achieve anything beyond constant fighting.”

What difference does it make why someone wants to kill you, considering they’re determined to stop at nothing to kill you because your very existence and way of life is what they want to eradicate. What are you going to do, sit down and have a chit chat with them about why they want to kill you? How is knowing that going to make it easier to win in the long term? There’s no negotiating with a blind force like that. They’re wackos. Not too different from sadistic mobsters if you ask me, brain washing not too bright individuals to believe what they do is God’s wish and they will go to heaven for it. I don’t see how we’re going to get non-AQ to think of the US as barney the purple dinosaur.

Helen sounds foolish. Not the place to be bringing this up, obviously they’re not going to spend the entire press conference fluffing Helen’s career. They look like they’re trying to be patient with her annoyance.

I do love that helen seems to be the only one not going super easy on Obama like all the rest.

All these people are idiots including most of the commenters here. Why does Al-Qaida want to attack us? Gee, why don’t they bother to look up the endless list of reason AQ members themselves like to give starting with this summary: http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/pmt/exhibits/2289/Blanchard.pdf It’s only one of thousands of analysis done about the “why”. If it’s not the US they hate, then it’s the Europeans and their drive to take-back Andalusia or the “insults” of Danish cartoons, or French denial of the hijab and the wearing of other religious items in public, or the UK support for the WoT. The list of grievances is endless but the goal is the same. To islamize the world and if they can’t, then destroy their enemies. Anyone asking these kinds of questions this many years into the official “WoT” is either willfully ignorant for political reasons (i.e. Helen Thomas) or just plain old stick-in-a-bucket stupid. What drives AQ? Their ideology based on islam regardless of what you or any other muslim thinks about it being justlified by their scripture or not. Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and other wanna-be’s tell us all the time what their problem is. START PAYING ATTENTION. Just because sick self-loathing leftists may agree with their grievances, doesn’t mean they’ll spare YOU any of their murderous intent. The question is now, do we let them win or not?

I think she’s asking the most important question that can be asked – the one that’s taboo – the one that will not be answered honestly. Brava Helen!

I wasn’t suggesting she wanted a soundbite, I was stating that a press briefing was not the forum to ask for such a complex and lengthy answer — briefings are basically designed to get previously unasked questions a chance at being answered for contextual analysis, but for the type of complex querie like she was offering it would involve a sit-down interview.

I agree that the question could/should have been about this particular individual and what drew him in, but as Brennan went into an Al Qaeda answer she kept asking in the same way.

Helen likes to watch them squirm, knowing they couldn’t possibly honestly answer.

Glenn Greenwald provides some essential cause and effect in a post yesterday, the gist being they hate us not for who we are but what we’ve done and continue to do. Read it and ask yourselves who’d be joining me “on the ramparts” if the tables were turned.

Not that anything that cogent will ever see the light of day in our emasculated public discourse.

raspberry82 says:
January 8, 2010 at 3:38 am

What difference does it make why someone wants to kill you, considering they’re determined to stop at nothing to kill you because your very existence and way of life is what they want to eradicate.

Well, someone who wants to kill you and will stop at nothing, simply needs to be stopped. Their motivations, however, can be applied to people who might POTENTIALLY want to kill you, etc. That’s why the motivations are important… not to stop them… but to stop the people who might follow in their footsteps, but haven’t been completely corrupted.

Not too different from sadistic mobsters if you ask me, brain washing not too bright individuals to believe what they do is God’s wish and they will go to heaven for it.

True… but knowing their motivations will make it more difficult for them to corrupt those “not too bright individuals.” That’s whom the knowledge must be applied to… the “would be-s,” not the “are-s.”