They say victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. Somebody should tell that to al Qaeda:
A top Pakistani Taliban commander took credit for yesterday's failed car bomb attack in New York City.
Qari Hussain Mehsud, the top bomb maker for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, said he takes "fully responsibility for the recent attack in the USA." Qari Hussain made the claim on an audiotape accompanied by images that was released on a YouTube website that calls itself the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel.
Rushing to take credit for a bungled attack is fairly pathetic. It's another piece of evidence of al Qaeda's severely degraded capability of launching attacks on American soil, where leaving a smoke-filled car in Manhattan is an operation worth boasting about. The Christmas bombing likewise failed on account of miserably low quality.
I'm not making an argument for complacency. It's obvious that al Qaeda wants to kill as many Americans as possible. But it's equally obvious that our counter-terrorism strategy is actually working. We should not feel hesitant to celebrate success.