The threat of terrorist revenge

The United States and other Western nations this week heightened security, with officials saying it’s likely that Islamic radicals will try to avenge Osama bin Laden’s killing with a new act of terrorism. Anti-terror networks in the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia were put on high alert as rumors surfaced that the al Qaida founder had recorded a “doomsday” tape encouraging his supporters to retaliate in the event of his death. “Terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge him,” said CIA Director Leon Panetta.

New York City police beefed up patrols at Ground Zero and on the subway, synagogues and mosques got extra coverage in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and federal buildings were put under heightened protection in Washington, D.C.

Terrorists now face a new deterrent, said David Barno in The New York Times. Bin Laden’s killing reminds his disciples that the U.S. is “a power to be reckoned with.” Al Qaida now knows that any attack on U.S. soil will be met with a “ferocious response” that will not end until “justice is served.”

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Shorn of bin Laden’s “grand ambitions,” al Qaida is less apt to mount another “spectacular mass-casualty outrage,” said Julian Borger in the London Guardian. But that hardly means we are safe. The real threat are lone-wolf attacks by angry fanatics seeking to join bin Laden in glorious martyrdom. The “constant menace” of an attack on a café or a plane will be “with us for some time to come.”

That threat is not new, said Juliette Kayyem in The Boston Globe. How we live with it is. Our government’s formerly “excited” posture on terrorism has changed to one of “resolute calmness.” The new watchword: “Secretly, kill. Publicly, chill.” Homeland Security didn’t even issue a new alert this week, because no specifics on future attacks emerged to “warrant freaking everyone out.” We may not be safer, but we’re better at coping with the “nature of the world we live in.” That’s no small victory.