The Nigerian proved that a complete amateur, with somewhat modified underwear, can get an explosive package on to an airliner. A trifle more cleverness could have brought the plane down.

But if its so easy, why hasn't it happened before in the last eight years? Surely al Qaeda could have rounded up more competent operatives than the Nigerian. I can't recall any incident where airport security actually caught an operative, in possession of an explosive device with intent to use it, about to board an airliner.

Since no bomber was caught (we'd have heard about it) and no plane was blown up, is it possible that no prior attempts were actually made? Maybe blowing up airliners was never a high priority for bin Ladin. He got more than his money's worth out of 9/11.

And he'll get quite a boost from this latest episode – increased paranoia, more political warfare, enhancement of neocon demagogues, and a more clumsy, more expensive, and more ineffective US foreign policy. Obama has just been hogtied.

…and Security Theatre :

“Even before a Nigerian with Al Qaeda links tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet headed to Detroit, travelers could see we had made no progress toward a technologically wondrous Philip K. Dick universe. We seemed to still be behind the curve and reactive, patting down grannies and 5-year-olds, confiscating snow globes and lip glosses. Instead of modernity, we have airports where security is so retro that taking away pillows and blankies and bathroom breaks counts as a great leap forward.

If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants, and a syringe full of acid — a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check any bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in an Al Qaeda sanctuary in Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list: who can we catch?

We are headed toward the moment when screeners will watch watch-listers sashay through the security queue while we have to come to the airport in hospital gowns, flapping open in the back.”

Are Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan "cakewalks"?

As others keep pointing out, we're already in Yemen. Our involvement is not "alleged", it's confirmed. The only question concerns our level of direct involvement or whether this is mainly a war by proxy.

You are probably too late with your warning against getting involved in Yemen.

There is a Ranger battalion in Djibouti who will be romping up and down hills by now.

Yemen's problems are many

Ginny Hill's paper here describes an aging government, a secession movement, a religious factional war, and a capital city that is running out of water.

The Yemen Situation

Deploying US combat troops in the Arabian Peninsula might just be folly.