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All of the recent attempts at terrorism in the US have pointed to one conclusion: they are likely being carried out by “freelance” or copycat terrorists who are trying to enter the “big time” by some sort of strike they have cooked up on their own. They do not appear to have been backed by a large, carefully organized operation and, in a sense, each attempt makes al Queda and other middle-east terrorist organizations look weak and pathetic.
We don’t know yet whether New York over the weekend was the work of some deranged American terrorist or whether it sprang from the roiling anger and resentment of Muslims and middle-easterners in general. We do know that, had a creditable bomb been employed, dozens and perhaps hundreds of people would have been killed. It would have created a scene of carnage not unlike some of the bombs that have gone off in Baghdad. The difference is that there would have been more bodies than buildings damaged, in all likelihood.
Any attempted revolutionary or counter-revolutionary movement hopes to win by inspiring others to follow their lead. The followers inspired by 9-11, 2001, however, don’t seem to be rooted in any kind of organization or planning. If the jumpy guy in the store window video was, in fact, the would be bomber, he seemed highly nervous and more concerned about getting away than he was making a bomb go off.**
It doesn’t take that much to get a crude bomb to explode. Anyone who watches movies can pick up on some ideas. The New York bomber, like the Christmas Day bomber of last year, seems to have been working so hard at being clever that he forgot to be organized.
None of this, however, should make us relaxed or happy. It is vividly apparent that there are enough people out there trying to imitate al Queda that, sooner or later, someone is going to be successful. It is a day that is moving ever closer to reality. That day will be a sad and unfortunate one in our national life, but even more so because, whatever the terrorists think they are trying to accomplish, they will achieve nothing except death and destruction. The US is not going to change its policies in the middle-east, it is not going to withdraw from the world stage and any new attack will serve only to strengthen the response to terrorism.
Why can’t these guys figure this out on their own? It seems very likely that the “brains” of the current wave of terrorism, specifically bin Laden, if he is still alive, has come to understand the futility of their actions, even perhaps coming to terms with the ultimate failure of the 9-11 attacks. Unfortunately, there are many tentacles to the octopus, and one side can keep wiggling, and causing trouble, when the other side is dead or has moved on to new tactics.
WHY NEW YORK?
Why do terrorists keep picking New York? For one thing, the large population of immigrants makes it easier to operate there. For another, they know New York through friends and relatives. They also pick New York because it is one of the world’s biggest media centers.
Another reason is that they, like many foreigners, mistake New York for America. They believe if they can hit New York hard enough, they will strike a blow that could stop the entire country. This is a joke, a sad joke that, ultimately, is on the terrorists more than on us. At its base, the terrorists pick New York because they are uninformed about America and misunderstand its size and distributed power bases.
America is not ancient Rome. There are dozens, hundreds of cities of importance. Regional centers move money, products and markets many times the value of what happens in New York. The stock market? How much money does the market generate on a given month or year that goes into creating new companies, new jobs and opportunities? The market is about profiting on what has already been funded and established.
Make no mistake, there are many places where a body blow against our economy could be struck, but the current round of terrorists, steeped in hatred of the west and largely pushed into a state of forced ignorance by their own propaganda and anger, don’t know where they are or how to carry out an effective attack. Good. They certainly aren’t going to be able to learn if their attacks are being planned by people even more ignorant and less studious than that of the misguided leadership of 9-11.
We should always bear in mind that what we are facing in “the war on terrorism” is something like trying to fight back against a wild animal. It is unpredictable and, to a large extent, unknowable. We should never attribute, as the Bush people did with regularity, any level of intelligence or knowledge that the terrorists have not demonstrated on their own. We need to find ways to anticipate their ignorance and to help them to destroy themselves.
Doug Terry, 5.3.10
**The attempt in New York over the weekend was so loopy, so poorly carried out, that it would not be at all surprising if we learn in the next 24 to 48 hours that it was a domestic would-be-terrorist, perhaps someone inspired by the various ideas floating around under the Tea Party banner. When you start comparing the president of the United States to Hitler, as some have done, it isn’t very far for some people to try to put that anger into action.
The crudeness of the contraption that was supposed to be a bomb (one retired detective told the NY Times that it was a “Rube Goldberg” device, meaning it was fairly fantastic in its sloppy arrangement, which points to the possibility that this was carried out by a mentally deranged person, perhaps someone who did not actually want the bomb to go off and cause harm. This would be in the manner of a person who repeatedly threatens suicide but doesn’t carry out the threat. In this case, the threat might have been taken to the edge, without the intention of going all the way. Only time will tell, of course, whether all these facts add up.
Note: if someone associated with or was inspired by the Tea Party efforts, it does not imply that everyone in that effort is somehow responsible, any more than anyone in the anti-war movement of 30 plus years ago was necessarily responsible for everything that someone chose to do. It would serve as a warning, nonetheless, that facts matter and that reasonable care should be taken with allegations and charges, particularly those that imply horrific motives on the part of America’s top leadership.
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