Megan McArdle makes an important point after listing a number of possible explanations for we haven’t seen a successful terrorist attack here in quite a while:
But while this sort of answers the question, it doesn’t tell us why Al-Qaeda, or domestic kooks, don’t mount the sort of attack that doesn’t need an elaborate support network. The DC sniper attack, for example, which was basically impossible to defend against. There are probably some creative ways to derail trains in the countryside, or sabotage traffic lights to cause multi-car crashes. You could do some pretty serious damage at high school football games in the South, which regularly attract thousands of people. So why doesn’t Al Qaeda hit those targets?
In part, I expect, because they don’t really know that much about America. (I assume the domestic brand of kooks are interested mostly in more specific terror: government buildings, animal testing facilities, weapons manufacture, the media). As we noted above, they don’t have a rich, deep, angry community into which they can embed and gather intelligence on soft targets.
But still, Al Qaeda knows about our malls and sporting events. Why not hit there?
The best answer I’ve heard is that they don’t because it doesn’t actually serve their ends. Their purpose is only partly to instill public terror in Americans. They also need to raise money, and recruit more terrorists. Those people don’t want to hear that you really scared the hell out of Plano, Texas. They want to hear that you bombed Times Square. Their target market, in other words, is not just Americans; it’s the folks at home.
I think that doesn’t go quite far enough. To a large degree we are merely props in the drama. The real players and objectives are elsewhere.
Note that I’m not saying that what we do overseas is irrelevant. It isn’t if only for reasons of our own domestic politics. I’m saying it’s not dispositive. As corroboration I’d point out that there are countries that we’ve treated a lot worse than we have any Muslim country, e.g. Japan, and we’re not seeing a lot of Japanese trying to set off bombs or knock down skyscrapers here. For all I know there might be a lot of resentful Japanese people. But engaging in acts of terrorism here doesn’t serve their ends.
It’s something that Americans really need to keep in mind. It is not all about us. Other people in other countries have their own needs, wants, objectives, and politics. And there are no guarantees that changing our behavior will do much about any of those.
The other problem is that a lot of small-scale attacks, like the sniper guy equivalent that McArdle brings up, usually result in hardening the population against the impact of future attacks, which is why these groups usually aim for escalatingly-severe attacks. Look at how Israel responded to terrorism from Palestinian groups.
The real players and objectives are elsewhere….recruitment being the object.
Agreed, and your point that it is a smaller world now is a good one “It is not all about us. Other people in other countries have their own needs, wants, objectives, and politics. And there are no guarantees that changing our behavior will do much about any of those.”
Wasn’t it reported that the bomber was seeking to harm and draw attention to the offices of the television company which produces South Park, due to its recent characterization of the Prophet. aj
So all this money and time and effort spent on security strategies…probably totally wasted. We should stop. Or at least stop trying to “do more”. I know it wont happen; that politicians have to appear to be doing “something” to solve the problem…but what you are saying, is that the problem is largely one that is in our own heads.
Or yet another way to put it, you are probably far, far more likely to die by a lightening strike than by a terrorist attack, so can we stop pissing away money on that and slowly but surely turning the country into a police state?
I know, a crazy radical ass idea…going for freedom and an open society vs. a false sense of security.
I seem to recall reading some jihadist tracts in which the image of Western/American planes penetrating the purity of the Ummah was used to some effect. I’ve read smatterings of jihad preacings, which lead me to three observations:
Jihadism is preached with extensive use of poetic immagery, which weighs against purely utilitarian targets of opportunity that make sense to Megan.
Foreign-based jihadists are obsessed with the visibile evidence of Western culture entering their land, which means ideal targets involve transportation, trade and communications.
Jihadists struggle with scriptural prohibitions on killing civilians. Outright attacks on civilians are difficult to justify. Israel is a controversial outlier.
Richard Pape has constructed/is constructing a database on all terrorist attacks since 1980 around the world. The large, large majority of attacks are politically motivated and usually involve foreign military on someone else’s (perceived) land.
One major reason for AQ to not attack is that they do not need to do so. Their intention was to get us bogged down in a long war in Afghanistan that would hurt us economically like it did the USSR. Iraq was just a bonus. The follow on efforts after 9/11 have been spotty with nothing like the effort or success of bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I also think that AQ’s capabilities have been significantly degraded. The terror attacks are now perceived in a less positive light by most Muslims from surveys I have seen. Recruiting has been adequately augmented by Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, torture, drone killings and probably most importantly, a lot of direct contact with fighters who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan to directly recruit.
Self-radicalized terrorism is an area that needs more study. I am not sure we can stop it. BTW, doesn’t McArdle realize that bin Laden studied here?
http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2010/03/the_strategic_logic_of_terrori.html
Link takes you to links to Pape’s lecture and a link to his database.
Steve
Source? My understanding is that all of his education was in the KSA and that prior to 9/11 at least he’d never lived anywhere but in the Muslim world.
Source? My understanding was that they thought we wouldn’t react at all, it would prove we were a paper tiger, and the Muslim Middle East would rise up and throw us out.
AQ has stated their objectives quite clearly, which is to reform the Caliphate, the intermediate objective being forcing the U.S. out of the Middle East and the initial objective to inspire other like-minded jihadists to press attacks all over.
Pape lost credibility for me when his book declared terrorism to be a rational response to democracies, which cateogory he included places like Russia, Turkey and Sri Lanka.
Seems to me that is we withdrew from the Middle East (including Afghanistan, which is more central asia), that would be a possibly fatal blow to AQ. After all there wouldn’t be much good propaganda anymore. Can’t point to the Western Devils as a sign of all that is wrong with the Caliphate and the Middle East. I bet funding would drop, recruitment would drop, and pretty soon, it would devolve into a club for getting together on the weekends and watching beheadings in Saudi Arabia while BBQing some lamb kabobs or something.
Oops, he only visited here. It has been a while since I read Coll’s book on the bin Ladens.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/06/osama-in-america-the-final-answer.html
Will look for the second one later.
Steve
We don’t have troops in the Middle East for fun or because we like the sand. They’re there because the governments are unstable, the countries there keep going to war with one another, and it disrupts the oil trade.
If by “withdraw from the Middle East” we also mean withdraw support for Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, I think it would probably mean major war in the region.
Look at the history of our military commitment to the region. Prior to the 6 Day War we had very, very little. Our low speed invasion of the Middle East is a response and a cause but it’s a response first.
“But still, Al Qaeda knows about our malls and sporting events. Why not hit there?
The best answer I’ve heard is that they don’t because it doesn’t actually serve their ends……………They also need to raise money, and recruit more terrorists. Those people don’t want to hear that you really scared the hell out of Plano, Texas. They want to hear that you bombed Times Square. Their target market, in other words, is not just Americans; it’s the folks at home.”
I guess, as usual, I have a slightly different take. There is so much politically motivated discord in the US over terrorism that bombing Times Square or killing Wall Street execs in tall towers from time to time only temporarily unites the Great Satan. AQ knows that. But AQ also knows that if they start wholesale murdering kids in malls and schools across the US, the united US backlash would result in only one monolithic question from the electorate to US pols: how fast can we incinerate the bastards? Hence the strategy of metered terror.
“We don’t have troops in the Middle East for fun or because we like the sand. They’re there because the governments are unstable, the countries there keep going to war with one another, and it disrupts the oil trade.”
We didnt attack when Iran and Iraq were at war. TBH, I am still not sure why we invaded Iraq. In my heart of hearts, I think it was intended to place us next to Iran for staging, but I doubt that we will ever really know. Oil has been a primary concern for many years.
Best I could find quickly on Osama. Could swear there is something similar in a Coll book, but his are loaned out. Maybe something I read at Exum’s also.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/24/2013753.htm
Steve
Our increased naval presence in the region is a direct consequence of the Tanker War that took place late in the conflict. That was followed if you will recall by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the Gulf War, our troops in Saudi, and our patrolling of Iraqi air space. Consequences of instability and aggression.
steve, you may have been thinking of Sayyid Qutb, of the Muslim Brotherhood. He studied in America, including Stanford, but became the intelectual heavyweight and arguable founder of the radical Islam movement. He’s certainly an example of someone who didn’t learn to appreciate us by getting to know us better.
So, from what I hear oil is under priced as it is and we use too much of it. So we get out, let the price rise, and helps with the AGW problem as well as reducing terrorism.
We keep hearing about this alternative fuel or that alternative fuel, but they always need a subsidy. I submit that putting U.S. troops and taxpayer dollars over in the ME is also a subsidy.
Probably, but staying there strikes me as only delaying the inevitable. I’ve come to the feeling that nobody wants to end any of the conflicts. It provides too easy of a distraction for other problems in the region.
Here is my take, we are going to stay there…eventually all sides will get really nasty weapons then somebody uses one and sets of the powder keg. All so that we can have cheap oil and gasoline, which is environmentally problematic, and according to some we are going to run out of and cause huge problems just due to that. So, we keep throwing good money after bad and sending our young people do die in the vain hopes that what? Everyone suddenly says, “My goodness, this is crazy, lets just all stop the fighting and agree that we disagree on various issues and try to get along like civilized people.”
Steve Verdon, this is probably not the place for grand strategy, but I say:
A. The U.S.A. shouldn’t develop grand strategy by figuring out what al-Qaeda wants and doing the opposite.
B. We should take what al-Qaeda wants and says about itself seriously in ascertaining motive and assessing threat risks. Megan doesn’t understand why al-Qaeda is extremely unlikely to target malls in the U.S. because she has not taken their ideology and goals seriously.
C. Most of the alternatives to continued occupation in the Middle East rely upon forces in neighboring countries or on the sea being available for immediate response. These alternatives wouldn’t satisfy al-Qaeda either.
BTW, Qutb’s account of his stay in Greeley, Colorado, is well worth reading. It’s completely unrecognizeable, supporting one of Megan’s points, that the understanding of the U. S. on the part of many in the Middle East is flawed.
PD-Thanks, you are probably right. A number of the bin Ladens spent time here also if IIRC, though whether for business or study I would need the book back to check. I am pretty sure that a lot of the family studied in the UK.
Dave-Yup, forgot about our increased presence then. We were also indirectly financing Saddam according to Powers.
Steve
I’m not saying that. I’m saying that we’ve been trying for peace in that region for decades and it has failed. We keep trying to do the same thing over and over and it never works. We’ve put more men, money and equipment over there than probably anywhere else in than the world save for maybe WWII and it has gotten us questionable results.