scary terrorist plots

* glenn:

"Amidst the celebrations, though, one can't help but marvel at just how ridiculous and inane these scary terrorist plots appear to be even when they are deliberately depicted so as to achieve the maximum possible scare value.
snip
And then there were the geniuses who planned to "blow up" the Brooklyn Bridge using blow torches (only to be miraculously thwarted by our warrantless eavesdropping program), a plot which Bob Barr described thusly: " this so-called plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was bogus because it had to do with a group of idiots who were planning to dismantle it with blow torches." The more we hear about these scary terrorist plots, the more Al Qaeda resembles The Three Stooges rather than, say, Lex Luthor.
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The orange alerts aren't really that effective any more. Orange is so un-scary. But tales of thwarted terrorist attacks on our cities always give rise to the same set of images and warnings which keeps the fear level nice and fresh and edgy. It's only February -- I have no doubt we will be treated to many, many more episodes like this. The question is, with 9/11 now more than 4 years away, is there some limit to the water in this well?"

it's really quite remarkable - it literally doesnt matter how transparent this stuff is. as glenn notes, the Liberty Tower thing "is so absurd that even the journalists who cover The White House noticed it and objected"

and while i'm being cynical (who me?) - especially in light of the 'oops - i left the mike on' - does anyone really think that it was a mistake that Blinky referred to the USBank Tower as "Liberty Tower"? freudian? nonsense.

glenn continues:

"Unleashing all of those images over and over triggers, as intended, fresh waves of fear that we are all about to be blown up or zapped with radiation. How absurd the underlying facts are is irrelevant; anything that serves as a pretext for new waves of frightening images does the trick just fine.

This is really the aim and the work of the terrorists -- to keep the targeted population in the grip of fear.

{snip}

Terrorists don't expect to achieve their goals through the physical destruction of a society using violence, the way a nation at war attempts with its military. The violence inflicted by terrorists is simply a tool for ratcheting up the fear level, and the fear of the violence, rather than the violence itself, is the primary tool of the terrorist. The greater the fear of the targeted population, the closer the terrorists are to achieving their goals.

When it comes to Al Qaeda's targeting of the U.S. in this manner, nobody helps the terrorists achieve those objectives more than the Bush Administration, which (like Al Qaeda) really does have as its principal goal -- particularly in an election year, and particularly when it faces all sorts of political difficulties on an array of fronts -- keeping the fear level as high as possible. The more frightened people are, they believe, the more likely they are to support the President and his party. And so fear-mongering becomes the first and really only political weapon they have."

i'm not sure he realises how close he is to the truth here. he kinda dances around the point - he says "(Fear) is really the aim and the work of the terrorists" and "nobody helps the terrorists achieve those objectives more than the Bush Administration" - he doesn't quite say it, and it's kinda 'irresponsible' for 'reasonable' bloggers to draw the direct inference - but by the very definition he espouses, the radministration ARE terrorists.

let me use a different example - the State Department defines terrorism as:

"the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."

After the London bombings, i postulated that if 'AlQaeda' really wanted to continue to terrorize the city, and/or cause economic harm, the smartest thing they could do (assuming that they had limited resources, and/or that they didnt wanna kill a whole bunch of innocent civilians), the 'smartest' thing they could do was to intermittently leave a bunch of benign backpacks around the transport infrastructure - buses and train stations and what have you.

they could have brought london to a terrified standstill - without hurting anyone, without sacrificing any resources, without even risking arrest. they could still do it - drop a few bags once a week and cost the city billions in lost productivity AND scared the shit out of everyone - at near zero-cost. why didnt 'they' do it?