Drive Americans crazy, they react with force
May 09, 2010
FAISAL Shahzad was no Timothy McVeigh, let alone a Mohamed Atta. McVeigh, who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995 with a massive truck-bomb, took the trouble to learn how to make a bomb that actually works. Atta, who piloted one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11, even le
By Gwynne Dyer
The Eagle-eyed Columnist analyses global issues
FAISAL Shahzad was no Timothy McVeigh, let alone a Mohamed Atta. McVeigh, who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995 with a massive truck-bomb, took the trouble to learn how to make a bomb that actually works. Atta, who piloted one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11, even learned how to fly.
Shahzad, who left a vehicle rigged to explode near New York’s Times Square on Saturday night, was a bumbling amateur.
He might still have killed some people, of course. “(The bomb) certainly could have exploded and had a pretty big fire and a decent amount of explosive impact,†said New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. But the casualties would have been in the dozens, at worst, and more likely only a few. Not enough, in other words, to drive Americans crazy again.
I am choosing my words carefully here. Ever since the 9/11 attacks nine years ago, the US media (with the eager assistance of the Bush administration until the end of 2008) have worked to persuade Americans that terrorism is the greatest threat facing the country.
Quite a few Americans have already died as a result of that belief, not just in the wars overseas that were justified in the name of fighting terrorism but even at home. In the first year after 9/11, for example, many Americans chose to drive long distances rather than risk flying, and highway deaths went up by 1,200 people as a result. Nobody died in the planes.
The enterprise has succeeded, and most Americans actually believe that terrorism poses a serious danger to their personal safety.
Nobody has been killed by terrorists in the US since 9/11, but the fear is so great that just one big attack with lots of casualties would still have disastrous consequences.
There would be huge public pressure for the government to do something very large and violent, in the delusionary belief that that is the way to defeat terrorism. That is what I mean by “driving Americans crazy.â€
The main goal of terrorist attacks anywhere is to drive the victims crazy: to goad them into doing stupid, violent things that ultimately play into the hands of those who planned the attacks. Terrorism is a kind of political jiu-jitsu in which a relatively weak group (like al-Qaeda) attempts to trick a far stronger enemy (like the US government) into a self-defeating response.
The US response to 9/11 was certainly self-defeating. A more intelligent strategy would have been to try to split the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, many of whose leading members were outraged by the threat of an American invasion that the action of their Arab guests had brought down on their heads. A combination of threats and bribes might have persuaded the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden and his whole al-Qaeda crew.
It was certainly worth trying first, but the political pressure on the White House to invade Afghanistan was extreme.
Even though those who knew anything about terrorist strategies understood that that was exactly what bin Laden wanted Washington to do.
Osama bin Laden’s goal was to build support among Muslims for his militant ideology by convincing them that they were under attack by the infidels. The best way to do that was to sucker the infidels (i.e. the Americans) into invading Muslim countries.
The 9/11 attacks succeeded in triggering a US invasion of Afghanistan (and Bush then gave bin Laden even more help by invading Iraq as well). As a result, al-Qaeda has made some progress towards its ultimate goal of sparking Islamist revolutions in the Arab world and even the broader Muslim world, though probably not nearly as much as bin Laden hoped.
Since Washington was already doing what bin Laden wanted, he had no reason to carry out further major terrorist operations in the United States after 9/11, and there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has attempted any.
Faisal Shahzad’s amateurish bomb certainly did not meet that organisation’s highly professional standards.
Would al-Qaeda have gone with a bomb triggered by dozens of firecrackers, which were intended to set two jugs of petrol (gasoline) alight, in turn causing three propane gas cylinders to explode, and finally setting off a much bigger explosion of eight bags of fertilizer (except that it was of the non-explosive kind)? I think not.
But would al-Qaeda now be interested in carrying out a big attack in the US, if it could manage it? Probably yes, for by the middle of next year US troops will be gone from Iraq. There is reason to suspect that Barack Obama’s ultimate goal is to get them out of Afghanistan too, even if he first has to protect his flank politically by reinforcing them.
As long as American troops are occupying Muslim countries, bin Laden’s cause prospers. If they leave, the air goes out of his balloon. He therefore now has a strong motive for mounting a major terrorist operation on American soil.
The goal would be to drive Americans crazy enough that they decide to keep fighting the “war on terror†on Arab and Afghan soil. The last thing al-Qaeda wants is for the infidels to go home.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
The Eagle-eyed Columnist analyses global issues
FAISAL Shahzad was no Timothy McVeigh, let alone a Mohamed Atta. McVeigh, who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995 with a massive truck-bomb, took the trouble to learn how to make a bomb that actually works. Atta, who piloted one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11, even learned how to fly.
Shahzad, who left a vehicle rigged to explode near New York’s Times Square on Saturday night, was a bumbling amateur.
He might still have killed some people, of course. “(The bomb) certainly could have exploded and had a pretty big fire and a decent amount of explosive impact,†said New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. But the casualties would have been in the dozens, at worst, and more likely only a few. Not enough, in other words, to drive Americans crazy again.
I am choosing my words carefully here. Ever since the 9/11 attacks nine years ago, the US media (with the eager assistance of the Bush administration until the end of 2008) have worked to persuade Americans that terrorism is the greatest threat facing the country.
Quite a few Americans have already died as a result of that belief, not just in the wars overseas that were justified in the name of fighting terrorism but even at home. In the first year after 9/11, for example, many Americans chose to drive long distances rather than risk flying, and highway deaths went up by 1,200 people as a result. Nobody died in the planes.
The enterprise has succeeded, and most Americans actually believe that terrorism poses a serious danger to their personal safety.
Nobody has been killed by terrorists in the US since 9/11, but the fear is so great that just one big attack with lots of casualties would still have disastrous consequences.
There would be huge public pressure for the government to do something very large and violent, in the delusionary belief that that is the way to defeat terrorism. That is what I mean by “driving Americans crazy.â€
The main goal of terrorist attacks anywhere is to drive the victims crazy: to goad them into doing stupid, violent things that ultimately play into the hands of those who planned the attacks. Terrorism is a kind of political jiu-jitsu in which a relatively weak group (like al-Qaeda) attempts to trick a far stronger enemy (like the US government) into a self-defeating response.
The US response to 9/11 was certainly self-defeating. A more intelligent strategy would have been to try to split the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, many of whose leading members were outraged by the threat of an American invasion that the action of their Arab guests had brought down on their heads. A combination of threats and bribes might have persuaded the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden and his whole al-Qaeda crew.
It was certainly worth trying first, but the political pressure on the White House to invade Afghanistan was extreme.
Even though those who knew anything about terrorist strategies understood that that was exactly what bin Laden wanted Washington to do.
Osama bin Laden’s goal was to build support among Muslims for his militant ideology by convincing them that they were under attack by the infidels. The best way to do that was to sucker the infidels (i.e. the Americans) into invading Muslim countries.
The 9/11 attacks succeeded in triggering a US invasion of Afghanistan (and Bush then gave bin Laden even more help by invading Iraq as well). As a result, al-Qaeda has made some progress towards its ultimate goal of sparking Islamist revolutions in the Arab world and even the broader Muslim world, though probably not nearly as much as bin Laden hoped.
Since Washington was already doing what bin Laden wanted, he had no reason to carry out further major terrorist operations in the United States after 9/11, and there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has attempted any.
Faisal Shahzad’s amateurish bomb certainly did not meet that organisation’s highly professional standards.
Would al-Qaeda have gone with a bomb triggered by dozens of firecrackers, which were intended to set two jugs of petrol (gasoline) alight, in turn causing three propane gas cylinders to explode, and finally setting off a much bigger explosion of eight bags of fertilizer (except that it was of the non-explosive kind)? I think not.
But would al-Qaeda now be interested in carrying out a big attack in the US, if it could manage it? Probably yes, for by the middle of next year US troops will be gone from Iraq. There is reason to suspect that Barack Obama’s ultimate goal is to get them out of Afghanistan too, even if he first has to protect his flank politically by reinforcing them.
As long as American troops are occupying Muslim countries, bin Laden’s cause prospers. If they leave, the air goes out of his balloon. He therefore now has a strong motive for mounting a major terrorist operation on American soil.
The goal would be to drive Americans crazy enough that they decide to keep fighting the “war on terror†on Arab and Afghan soil. The last thing al-Qaeda wants is for the infidels to go home.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.