terrorism students are muslims. its a therapy thing.

adam sent me an email :

Grrr....now CNN is on the Faux wagon..

Just watched Miles O'Brien interview a 'terrorist export' from London, and dished out these fine 'questions'
- "So, you being an expert in terrorism, I'm sure you'd agree with the common belief that this was the work of Al Quaeda?"
- "Given that this was more of a "3/11" type attack, that is, an attack on public transportation, vs the spectacular and devastating attack on 9/11, wouldn't you agree that it is a sign that Al Quada is weakening?..."

The guy agreed on the first point, but corrected him on the second - it's more an indication of the 'specialty' of a particular group, than a sign of the overall strength.

(by the way, the guy was actually introduced orginally as a Muslim, and asked what the Muslim reaction was...the guy had to correct O'Brien to say that he wasn't actually a Muslim, but rather a student of terrorism...)

And, while I'm on a rant, what is the Al Qaeda evidence?
1. Multiple attacks at the same time
2. Attacks on heavily traveled areas filled w common folk
3. Attacks using small bombs

Now, ask yourself, if you were a (regular old fashioned) terrorist, and wanted to create some mayhem, wouldn't you adhere to roughly the same game plan? I mean, what's the alternative? Attacks spaced out several days, targeting low traveled locations, using large, cumbersome explosives?...Even if you were a retarded terrorist, how hard would it be to learn from examples?...

grrrr

good points all - although ive been thinking these last days that if the objective of terrorism is to create some, you know, terror, the london attacks kinda largely failed - and there is an inherent design fault in the strategies that we've seen employed

in the purest sense, terrorism is designed to scare people in some *general* , the actual carnage is really just a necessary precursor - collateral damage, if you will - the actual carnage isnt an end in itself.

to that extent, the best way to scare people, presumably, is to promote some sort of generalised anxiety amongst the populous that they never know when or where the next attack might take place, and specifically the idea that it could happen 'here', now. that is, to the extent that there is a pattern, or the perception of a pattern, then the terrorism is sub-optimal.

one interesting thing about the london attacks is that they were so localised, all 4 attacks were within say a 5 mile radius. im sure that most of london was on its toes all day, but id have to imagine that, at the margin, there would have been more terror created if the bombs had been spread out all over town (and to extend the logic, perhaps around the country). if the terrorists are trying to send a message that they can attack anywhere, then it would seem to make more sense to do exactly that.

the other component of the 'it could happen here/now' fear is the simultaneity that we see. its kinda cute having a calling card and all that, but it seems to undermine the desire to create uncertainty. to some extent, once the initial attacks were over, there was the sense that it was all over.

in the US, as horrible as 911 was, and there is/was definitely some residual fear, surely subsequent attacks would increase the fear level exponentially. similarly in madrid, a bunch of bombs went off within a few minutes, and nothing since. again, im sure theres some residual fear in spain, but i imagine that a campaign would be a lot more 'effective' (if we assume that the proximate goal of terrorism is creating terror.)

and again, we seem to be seeing the same thing now in london. the markets hardly blinked, and commuting largely seems to be back to normal (as much as can be expected). this has widely been interpreted as resilience and stiff-upper-lip and we-cant-let-the-terrorists-win and all that stuff, which is possibly somewhat true, but in another sense, i wonder if these attacks are somewhat perceived as past events, or sunk-costs or whatever. perhaps an analogy might be the tsunami - it totally sucked, but theres no real sense that another is imminent, which leads to a totally different mindset.

the london attacks remind us, if we needed reminding, that its impossible to protect people against this sort of attack. simply impossible. there definitely arent any military solutions, and there (virtually) arent any legal/criminal prophylactics. the remarkable thing isnt that it occurs, the remarkable thing is that it isnt endemic. 'the West' has surely upset its fair share of folk around the world - and we know that there isnt any real constraint on this sort of attack - the only (?)reasonable implication is that people really dont like blowing up innocent white people - even when one could argue that they have reasonable 'political' justification. i just dont get it - its totally incongruous to me.

ive heard faux news (and others) ask whether the london bombings are a failure of intelligence - are they fucking kidding? the presumed answer to 'intelligence failure' is more intelligence. wrong. this kinda thing cant be stopped - it doesnt matter how many cctv cameras there are or how many library records they wanna peruse. and, no, national ID cards wont help either, and nor will airport shoe checks.

heres the thing, ive always had my doubts about terrorist attacks, and the threat thereof, absent any political goal. i can definitely understand the logic behind specific cause&effect terror logic like, for example, "get your troops out of iraq or we'll blow up a train" - thats pretty straightforward. and i can even understand more generalised logic that says "we are (ETA or IRA) and we are trying to get you to the negotiating table and guess what, we can blow shit up. watch this!". what i dont understand is terrorism without an apparent purpose. theres simply no fucking point. its not like these people do this shit for fun - otherwise we'd see it every day of the week. its not like theres a resource constraint - it hardly takes any resources. i cant quite get my head beyond the fact that presumed perpetrators of these attacks dont really have anything to gain - which points me in the direction that someone else must be involved.

hell - i can even understand the terror logic which says "hey - we hate you - and we are gonna blow shit up cos its hurts you by hurting your economy and we are gonna blow up your infrastructure and we are gonna scare the shit out of your denizens generally" - that could certainly make some sense - but that brings me back to my earlier point - isolated terrorist attacks simply dont achieve that goal - as we've seen with london commuters resuming their commuting immediately, and the markets barely blinking. as i said earlier, a campaign of terrorist attacks might achieve that goal, but to the extent that folks (sic) think 'phew - i dodged that bullet' then this presumed goal of the perception of the here/now threat are simply invalid.

hopefully, of course, we wont see an ongoing terror campaign in london or anywhere else - but if we dont, we have to assume that 'the terrorists' are either stupid, or simply ineffectual, or that 'the terrorists' arent what/who they seem to be.

ive been composing this post for a couple of days (apologies to adam for the delay in response) and in the meantime we've seen the birmingham evacuation. to some extent, they appear to undermine my core thesis, but at core, i dont really think it does. if 'the terrorists' goal was to truly scare the shit outta people, or if they wanted to have an economic impact, we'll have to wait till next week or next month. of course people are gonna be nervous in these early days, but im pretty sure that 'the terrorists' didnt have a temporary hiccough in mind. if they were serious about creating a sense of panic, (Dog forbid) they'll be setting off similar bombs in the next few weeks. if i was one of said terrorists, id probably leave benign 'suspicious looking' packages around london/england to test the response and causing economic mayhem in the meantime (without putting myself at risk of getting caught, or maybe just to create havoc for fun).

if we dont see any such activity - either real terrorism, or pretend terrorism, then i think we really need to start asking some questions.

(and getting back to adams original point, atrios was also cnn when they again looked ridiculous)