Sean Smith
Member
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2002
- Messages
- 4,925
What is the terrorist future?
9/11 had the biggest kill count of any single terrorist attack, and inaugurated the innovative technique of the hijacked-airliner-as-kamikaze. A lunatic fringe cult in Japan has already used a binary Sarin nerve gas bomb in a terrorist attack. Anthrax attacks were made on Washington, DC, that have never been traced back to the perpetrators. Put another way, the dire (and largely ignored) warnings by the more forward-thinking intelligence analysts and outside commentators from the 1980s and 1990s have already come true in the 2000s. The lurid stuff of spy fantasies is by and large our current reality. The only difference seems to be that fantasy intelligence agencies are actually good at their jobs.
The logical question is, what next? Even Bush administration opponents are apt to concede that Al-Qaeda has been greatly inconvenienced in the aftermath of 9/11. And even the staunchest American unilateralists are apt to concede that, Iraq aside, international cooperation has played a large role in the punishing losses inflicted on Al-Qaeda. But even if we exterminate Al-Qaeda (an altogether positive goal), the terrorist problem will not be solved.
This is because terrorism is a strategy, not just a group of bad guys. And it is a strategy that will not only remain attractive, but also become more potentially effective, as time passes. The preeminence of U.S. power in the world is not an American destiny, but it certainly looks to be a fixture of global life for the foreseeable future. That being the case, conventional military opposition to the U.S.-sponsored status quo will remain a pipe dream. This leaves enemies of the United Sates, or its allies for that matter, little practical choice but terrorism or surrender to the satanic “McWorld.â€
From a political point of view, many have argued that the United States has brought terrorism on itself, thanks to its addle-brained foreign policy. And it is fair to say that U.S. foreign policy has been shortsighted, illogical, and self-contradictory over the years, though how this justifies mass murder by fruit-loop ideologues remains unclear. Furthermore, no matter what policy we choose, there will be people who oppose it; in a sense, an often unintended but inevitable outcome of any foreign policy is to choose your future enemies.
But for the moment, I’d like to avoid a discourse on U.S. foreign policy, and speculate on the long-term future threat of terrorism… and hopefully, on some apparent solutions.
Terrorism will become a more viable strategy over time. The problem with current terrorism (for the terrorists, not us) is that it doesn’t really hurt the target that much. 2 skyscrapers destroyed, 1 large building damaged, and about 3,000 dead Americans constitute a terrible tragedy for those involved… but to be perfectly frank didn’t mean jack squat to the other 280 million Americans in objective terms. The only important effect was an emotional response, and since the response was to get revenge rather than surrender, it failed in its intended effect.
But this raises the obvious question: at what point can terrorism strike terror in hundreds of millions of people, instead of merely piss them off? That isn’t really knowable, though we can surmise that it would take either a sustained campaign of 9/11-esque attacks, or a small number of attacks with a tremendous overall kill count. This being the case, is such a terrorist campaign possible in the future?
The answer would seem to be yes. 20th century terrorism has been a story of progressively more sophisticated and deadly attacks. Although the chemical and biological terrorism we have been subjected to thus far has been relatively ineffective, we have to assume that they will be come more effective, just as bombing and hijacking techniques have become more refined over time. Hijackings used to merely result in free trips to Cuba; exploiting the full potential of hijacking now kills thousands. The full potential of chemical and biological terror remains to be seen. It probably would not be the nation-depopulating bugbear that some fear, but certainly bad enough to be worthy of national concern. And maybe bad enough to make “winning with terrorism†become dramatically more likely than it is with the intermittent car bombings and so forth that we see now.
9/11 had the biggest kill count of any single terrorist attack, and inaugurated the innovative technique of the hijacked-airliner-as-kamikaze. A lunatic fringe cult in Japan has already used a binary Sarin nerve gas bomb in a terrorist attack. Anthrax attacks were made on Washington, DC, that have never been traced back to the perpetrators. Put another way, the dire (and largely ignored) warnings by the more forward-thinking intelligence analysts and outside commentators from the 1980s and 1990s have already come true in the 2000s. The lurid stuff of spy fantasies is by and large our current reality. The only difference seems to be that fantasy intelligence agencies are actually good at their jobs.
The logical question is, what next? Even Bush administration opponents are apt to concede that Al-Qaeda has been greatly inconvenienced in the aftermath of 9/11. And even the staunchest American unilateralists are apt to concede that, Iraq aside, international cooperation has played a large role in the punishing losses inflicted on Al-Qaeda. But even if we exterminate Al-Qaeda (an altogether positive goal), the terrorist problem will not be solved.
This is because terrorism is a strategy, not just a group of bad guys. And it is a strategy that will not only remain attractive, but also become more potentially effective, as time passes. The preeminence of U.S. power in the world is not an American destiny, but it certainly looks to be a fixture of global life for the foreseeable future. That being the case, conventional military opposition to the U.S.-sponsored status quo will remain a pipe dream. This leaves enemies of the United Sates, or its allies for that matter, little practical choice but terrorism or surrender to the satanic “McWorld.â€
From a political point of view, many have argued that the United States has brought terrorism on itself, thanks to its addle-brained foreign policy. And it is fair to say that U.S. foreign policy has been shortsighted, illogical, and self-contradictory over the years, though how this justifies mass murder by fruit-loop ideologues remains unclear. Furthermore, no matter what policy we choose, there will be people who oppose it; in a sense, an often unintended but inevitable outcome of any foreign policy is to choose your future enemies.
But for the moment, I’d like to avoid a discourse on U.S. foreign policy, and speculate on the long-term future threat of terrorism… and hopefully, on some apparent solutions.
Terrorism will become a more viable strategy over time. The problem with current terrorism (for the terrorists, not us) is that it doesn’t really hurt the target that much. 2 skyscrapers destroyed, 1 large building damaged, and about 3,000 dead Americans constitute a terrible tragedy for those involved… but to be perfectly frank didn’t mean jack squat to the other 280 million Americans in objective terms. The only important effect was an emotional response, and since the response was to get revenge rather than surrender, it failed in its intended effect.
But this raises the obvious question: at what point can terrorism strike terror in hundreds of millions of people, instead of merely piss them off? That isn’t really knowable, though we can surmise that it would take either a sustained campaign of 9/11-esque attacks, or a small number of attacks with a tremendous overall kill count. This being the case, is such a terrorist campaign possible in the future?
The answer would seem to be yes. 20th century terrorism has been a story of progressively more sophisticated and deadly attacks. Although the chemical and biological terrorism we have been subjected to thus far has been relatively ineffective, we have to assume that they will be come more effective, just as bombing and hijacking techniques have become more refined over time. Hijackings used to merely result in free trips to Cuba; exploiting the full potential of hijacking now kills thousands. The full potential of chemical and biological terror remains to be seen. It probably would not be the nation-depopulating bugbear that some fear, but certainly bad enough to be worthy of national concern. And maybe bad enough to make “winning with terrorism†become dramatically more likely than it is with the intermittent car bombings and so forth that we see now.
