So far, the Times Square case confirms what we already knew

I have been struck by how the various sides in the war on terror debate have all found justification for their prior positions in the unfolding drama of the Times Square terrorist. Advocates of treating terrorism primarily as a law enforcement problem praise the rapid forensics that caught the suspect (albeit, just barely). Critics point to the near-misses and other troubling details and renew their complaints about the Obama-Holder approach to terrorism.

So far, everyone seems pretty sure that their prior convictions were sound. Alas, I am no exception. It seems to me that the following four points, all of which I already believed, are supported by this case:

• We are safer but not yet safe. It is much harder today for terrorists to launch the kind of mass-casualty terrorist spectacle they launched on 9/11 — let alone an even more devastating WMD attack — than it was a decade ago. That does not mean the terrorists have given up their desire to kill Americans. There is still a terrorist threat.
• The amateurish nature of recent attacks is not proof that we can relax our guard. On the contrary, the amateurish nature of recent attacks seems rather to confirm the wisdom of many of the counter-terrorism policies the United States has adopted since 9/11. The attacks are amateurish because more devastating options have been made harder to execute.
• We cannot avoid taking action that motivates at least some terrorists. Reportedly, the Times Square terrorist was motivated by the drone strikes, a tactic that was begun under Bush (though had antecedents in the Clinton and even Reagan eras) and substantially ramped up under Obama. While some on the far left have rejected the drone-strike tactic altogether, and many more have raised questions about certain aspects, there is a strong bipartisan consensus that some version of this tactic — killing key terrorist leaders that cannot be captured — is a necessary component of any sound counter-terrorism policy. During the Bush years, many partisan Democrats advanced the theory that terrorists were motivated chiefly by Bush foreign-policy choices, choices the critics thought were foolish anyway like invading Iraq or not coercing Israel into making more concessions to Palestinians in the peace process. Obama’s campaign accepted this premise, and seemed to offer a new era in which America would stop doing things to fuel the terrorists. It is now obvious that even Obama has not avoided actions that motivated someone to become a terrorist. Of course, this does not mean that we should cavalierly ignore Muslim sensibilities or gratuitously insult them. Obama is right to try to calibrate our language and approach to avoid pointless provocations. Likewise, we should debate the wisdom of foreign policy choices like the invasion of Iraq or the proper approach to Middle East peace and in those debates the extent to which terrorists can exploit the issue for propaganda purposes is a relevant, but by no means dispositive, consideration. For a hardened core of would-be terrorists, however, there is nothing we can or should do to fully assuage their hatred.
• Terrorist safe havens still matter, even in the age of al Qaeda 2.0. The terrorist movement may be more decentralized and web-based — a necessary response to our counter-terrorism policies — but terrorists still exploit safe havens if they can get access to them. Al Qaeda’s great innovation was leveraging a vast infrastructure devoted to the weaponization of resentment and targeting it on the United States and our global interests — turning angry individuals into terrorists willing to kill Americans and be killed for their cause. There were many key nodes in this infrastructure, but one of the most important was a safe-haven, a destination where would-be recruits were assembled, winnowed, trained, equipped, and finally commissioned. The invasion of Afghanistan and the denial of safe havens in that country is thus a vital step in the war on terror. Since the success of the initial invasion, however, some have speculated that the terrorist threat has morphed into an entirely web-based phenomenon, where the only "safe-haven" the terrorist needs is a virtual on-line one. If that day ever comes — and I am skeptical — we are certainly not there yet. Even an attack as unsophisticated as the Times Square attack, which in theory could have been hatched entirely through individual web-based research, apparently involved trips to North Waziristan. Control of territory still matters, which means that the Bush-era emphasis on helping responsible regimes establish effective governance is still an important part of the war on terror.

It is possible that these and other similar points are merely evidence that I am a victim of confirmation bias, seeing in a new case only those things that confirm what I already believed. If so, I am probably in very good company. At least I am willing to ask: what in this case disproves these four points?