Terror threat in Europe

The U.S. State Department warned Americans traveling or working in Europe this week that al Qaida was plotting large-scale attacks there. The U.S. said intelligence sources have indicated that Osama bin Laden has ordered attacks against Britain, France, and Germany, and that a terrorist cell operating in Pakistan’s tribal region, which includes members with European passports, has been preparing for assaults similar to the 2008 commando raids in Mumbai, India, that killed 173 people. The tip is believed to stem from interrogations of an Afghan native with German citizenship who was captured in Afghanistan in July.

In an attempt to head off the attacks, the U.S. ordered a series of drone strikes in Pakistan that killed several militants—including at least two British citizens and five German nationals. The German government said that at least 70 of its citizens have received paramilitary training in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and that a third of the trainees had returned to Germany.

We Americans who live in Europe know exactly what to do when we hear these “enigmatic warnings,” said Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post. “We do nothing.” Frankly, there’s nothing we can do—unless the information gets a lot more specific, like “don’t go to the Eiffel Tower tomorrow.” The only people who profit from such vague warnings are those who issue them.

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This is more than talk, said Marc Ambinder in TheAtlantic.com. A “wave of counterterrorism operations” is under way, with France killing “at least two dozen” suspected terrorists in recent weeks while U.S. drones are hammering militants in Pakistan. As these assaults show, intelligence sharing and international cooperation against threats have come a long way since 9/11.

Yet the threats remain, said Douglas Murray in The Wall Street Journal. Militants already succeeded with train and subway bombings, in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. We’ve avoided others only through “exceptional work by our intelligence and security agencies,” such as the interrogation that exposed the current plot. That’s why the drone attacks on militant camps are absolutely vital. “If death is so attractive” to would-be suicide bombers, “then we should do what we can to bring it to them.”