Republican Lugar Rejects Cheneyâs Obama Criticism Viola Gienger Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defended President Barack Obamaâs handling of recent terrorism threats, taking issue with former Vice President Dick Cheneyâs criticism. âItâs unfair,â Lugar said in an interview for Bloomberg Televisionâs âPolitical Capital with Al Hunt,â airing this weekend. âI think the president is focused.â Cheney, who frequently has led Republican attacks on the Democratic president since leaving office a year ago, told Politico on Dec. 29 that Obama âis trying to pretend we are not at warâ with a âlow-key responseâ to the Dec. 25 attempt to ignite a bomb aboard a flight to Detroit. To the contrary, Obama has demonstrated âfirmnessâ and âdecisiveness,â Lugar, who represents Indiana, said. âThatâs been the antidote to the criticism.â Still, the U.S. may be focusing too much on Afghanistan at a time when al-Qaeda is finding havens in other hot spots such as Yemen and Somalia, Lugar said. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian indicted in the Detroit plane plot, allegedly received his training in Yemen. âI suspect that we will have to try to think through why we went to Afghanistan,â Lugar, 77, said. âNation-Buildingâ After eliminating the al-Qaeda training camps there, the U.S. undertook ânation-buildingâ beyond traditional development aid, he said. Projects such as advancing democracy, ensuring girls can attend school and promoting agriculture to replace poppy cultivation, while laudable, have cost âtens of thousands of people, hundreds of billions of dollars,â he said. âAnd now we find even Afghanistan is not exactly making the progress we hoped,â Lugar said. U.S. intelligence agencies have heeded the potential threats from unstable states such as Yemen and Somalia, and will have to do more to understand the origins of terrorist attacks and why young Muslims get involved, Lugar said. âWe have to see the comprehensive nature of this, how many countries have potentially failing governments or very weak governments in which al-Qaeda couldâ have some influence, Lugar said. As airline security improves, al-Qaeda and other terrorists targeting the U.S. will seek other ways to attack, Lugar said. Americans âmay be inclined to feel that once you solve the aircraft problem, somehow or other youâre in better shape,â Lugar said. Opposition in Iran The administration has properly calibrated its support for the opposition in Iran, verbally and through activities such as ensuring they have access to telecommunications that allow them to maintain contact. âWe ought to indicate that, as a matter of fact, that we support liberty,â Lugar said. âWe support the building of institutions.â One pivot point in countries such as Iran or Yemen or Pakistan has been the young people, Lugar said. While some are leading the way in challenging autocratic regimes such as the one in Iran, others are susceptible to the lures of extremist ideology, he said. âOur intelligence focus has got to be very comprehensively on why young people would go in this direction, and if they do, who they are,â Lugar said. By contrast, in Iran, âthe young people are well ahead of usâ and taking charge of the situation, Lugar said. âWith the young people, the promise is the best, I think.â Violent Young Men Two researchers at the government-chartered U.S. Institute of Peace agree that the understanding of why and how young men turn violent or become extremists is limited. Policies or programs focused solely on providing jobs or education may miss the point, they say. âThe dynamics of this are more complicated,â said Marc Sommers, a senior fellow at the institute in Washington and an associate research professor at Tufts Universityâs Fletcher School in Medford, Massachusetts. Factors may include what society demands for a young man to be recognized as a successful adult, such as land or housing to provide for a family, Sommers said. âThey have a term for this in West Africa: Itâs a youth man,â said Sommers, who will present his findings later this month with another fellow, U.S. Army Colonel Matt Venhaus, who is conducting related research for the Defense Department. âThere is an assumption that young men are inherently dangerous in places that are volatile,â Sommers said. âItâs not true.â The question sometimes boils down to âwhat must they do to avoid a situation where theyâre looked on as a failure.â