Via “Atrios”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_02_25_atrios_archive.html#117254677819500755, a quote from Laura Bush:
bq. Many parts of Iraq are stable now. But, uh, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone.
Would this also be the talking point if we had one Iraqi-style car bombing per day anywhere in the entire United States for a month or two? Or indeed a day or two? I’ve sometimes wondered about this question: What level of domestic terrorism woud it would take to send the United States to the point where its citizens would accept a highly repressive domestic government response in order to feel safe? The immediate public reaction after the September 11th attacks was very calm. Of course people were shocked and appalled, but there was virtually nothing in the way of random reprisals or what have you. But thanks to the rhetoric of the GWOT and associated scaremongering in the media, my fear is that the threshold is by now much lower. Substantial numbers of Americans really do seem to believe that Al Qaeda might bomb their local mall.
Ergo, an obvious strategy for any terrorists would be to go and do this a few times, in more or less random locations. Not terribly spectacular, but they’d probably get a hell of a payoff in terms of public hysteria. And shutting down open societies has always been part of Al Qaeda’s agenda. We’ve seen something like this (though not in a sustained fashion) with the bombings in Madrid and London. The fact that it hasn’t happened in the U.S. suggests either that there aren’t any Al Qaeda cells in the country, or that if they do exist they are fixated on doing something extremely big, and presumably extremely difficult. Perhaps they have bought into the “24 Mindset”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/02/10/takin-care-of-business/ too.
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Francis 02.27.07 at 6:08 am
car bombs? a few sniper teams — say one each in NY, LA and DC — would have D’Souza among others begging for mercy.
John Quiggin 02.27.07 at 6:18 am
Off the main topic, but of course a much fairer complaint is that the daily Baghdad car bomb story crowds out the dozens of smaller-scale atrocities taking place all around the country, notably including areas like Basra, where stability involves continuous, mostly low-level conflict between competing Shiite militias, tribes, the police and army and the remaining Coalition forces.
Nathaniel 02.27.07 at 6:56 am
I’ve often wondered the same thing about al-qaeda and general terrorist strategies. I’m surprised (and grateful) it hasn’t happened. I mean, the key to effectively terrorizing the populace would be to make the attacks seem so effectively random that Americans are afraid at all times of being in public. I mean, this could extend to setting off car bombs on highways and such things.
I suppose thinking in this mindset shows I spent my teenage years in Jerusalem.
Mike M. 02.27.07 at 8:39 am
I think that by “American public” you mean “the sizable minority of those who already feel civil liberties are a luxury.” Those are the people who would be most vocal for change in government (it is amazing how many of these conservatives are both pro and anti- government concurrently) and would push the rest of the country their way. Americans value the idea of their untouchable homeland- think back to how much emphasis was placed on the fact that only two foreign invasions have occurred in the nations history in your middle school class- and it is always those who are least at risk who are the most paranoid.
I of course hope we can remain a relatively unmolested country (unless you were an Indian or mexican anyway…) but I sometimes think as a nation we could “toughen up.”
abb1 02.27.07 at 8:43 am
And shutting down open societies has always been part of Al Qaeda’s agenda. We’ve seen something like this (though not in a sustained fashion) with the bombings in Madrid and London.
I strongly uspect that Al Qaeda (whatever it is) wouldn’t give a damn about any “open societies”. I bet shutting them down is nowhere on the agenda.
five toed sloth 02.27.07 at 8:52 am
I’m not sure that “shutting down open societies” for its own sake is really part of Al Qaeda’s agenda; it seems their attacks have been much more oriented toward damaging economic activity, hence bombing transit systems when everyone is going to work (and the WTC, of course). It would take a lot more than a few car bombs to convince a significant number of Americans to stay at home and give up their paychecks.
The real prize would be to push the US into severe repression of its domestic Muslim population – but Michelle Malkin aside, there probably wouldn’t be much support for that unless the attacks were carried out by Americans as opposed to radicals from overseas. The fact that we haven’t seen such attacks leads me to conclude that reliable homegrown affiliates are indeed in short supply.
Cain 02.27.07 at 8:52 am
Dude, look at how the Washington sniper(s) frightened people in Virgina and Maryland. Al-Qaeda wouldn’t need lots of explosives to car bomb shopping malls. They could put a sniper in major cities across the country, picking off more or less random targets, effectively terrifying people all over.
wizzen 02.27.07 at 9:02 am
‘Open Societies’? [smiles ruefully]
Chris Bertram 02.27.07 at 9:58 am
Everyone seems to have more or less forgotten the post-9/11 anthrax scare. But a perusal of the blogs of the time (see esp. Reynolds, Lileks) would show how it fuelled an atmosphere of extreme anxiety and paranoia.
merlallen 02.27.07 at 10:10 am
If things are going so well, why doesn’t Rice make an announced trip to Baghdad? Why is she always sneaking in and out?
And things are going so well that george bush will be making a state visit soon, right?
Hidari 02.27.07 at 10:30 am
‘Everyone seems to have more or less forgotten the post-9/11 anthrax scare. But a perusal of the blogs of the time (see esp. Reynolds, Lileks) would show how it fuelled an atmosphere of extreme anxiety and paranoia.’
Yeah but Reynolds etc. lost interest pretty quickly when it became clear that it wasn’t Muslims/Arabs behind it, didn’t they?
bad Jim 02.27.07 at 11:50 am
WTF, y’all? New Orleans, anyone?
We lost an entire city to the ultimate terrorist, God (or Thor, depending) and barely a year later it’s forgotten. It might as well have never happened, like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib.
notjonathon 02.27.07 at 12:09 pm
It’s the pact, isn’t it? For the bombings don’t have to be random. I could mention a few highly selective non-military, non-industrial targets not in NYC, but I don’t want to get on anyone’s list. But if Al Qaeda were to go after US targets now, then we might have to pull out of the Middle East to protect ourselves. Our continued presence there is a festering sore that radical Islamists can continue to infect.
Brett Bellmore 02.27.07 at 12:13 pm
Alternatively, it suggests that they took a look at the way we reacted to 9-11, and decided that getting us really riled up probably wasn’t healthy, in a whole countries reduced to glassy plains kind of way.
BTW, it became clear that it wasn’t Muslims/Arabs behind the anthrax attacks? News to me, last I heard the culprit had never been identified.
jon 02.27.07 at 12:38 pm
If the terrorists want to mess with us, they can. We’ve got thousands of miles of rail, highways, telephone and power lines, and enough targets in between to make any terrorist feel like Rush Limbaugh at a pharmaceutical trade show. Really, there’s not much we can do except make them pay for whatever they do after they’ve done it.
The United States military couldn’t even occupy the United States. Our police rely on our cooperation to do their job. If we’re going to stop terrorism, we have to do it ourselves. And as a general rule, we’re not even close to being up to the job. Terrorists with hunting rifles could put major cities on lockdown anytime they want.
It’s the wanting part that they’re lacking, since they do fear reprisal. They may seem like dead-ender nutjobs, but they want a future. Not a good future, but a future.
Evidence: how many of the top al-Qaeda guys were captured somewhere other than a secret headquarters? Were any of them caught in the field? in a fight? I didn’t think so. The guys who plan attacks don’t want to be personally attacked. They want us to attack their people, giving them more power, and justifying their twisted claims about us.
It’s a twisted series of actions and reactions, and we do have to do something to make them uncomfortable (or better: dead), but they do the actions.
As for the First Lady’s comments: idiotic. It’s as stupid as calling your morning radio show to complain about all the unreported traffic that is flowing okay. Bombings are news, dumbass. That it takes away from your husband’s grand achievements and makes it look like things aren’t running absolutely smoothly just might not be a something the media created out of whole cloth.
JRoth 02.27.07 at 1:24 pm
I don’t think that the Katrina comparison is as valid as bad jim thinks, mostly because, it seems to me, people have chosen to focus on Iraq instead of NOLA. Some for ideological reasons, some for practical reasons (Americans continue to die in Iraq, not so in Katrina). Not that Americans wouldn’t be happy to forget about NOLA if there were no Iraq, but fewer would have.
I’ve always wondered if al Qaeda underestimates how hysterical small-bore attacks within the US would make us. “Stay out of malls on Halloween.” Christ, anyone with a beard and a turban could’ve made the entire country wet themselves by going “Boo!” in late 2001.
But I think aQ is more interested in the home audience. And the only things that would play to that audience are spectacular attacks or a truly sustained campaign of bombings. While it would only take a mall bombing a week for 6 weeks or so to radically alter things in this country, I’m not sure it would make such an impression to Muslims who’ve grown up watching Intifadeh and Iraq. And I agree that it’s not feasible for aQ to sustain an ongoing campaign that would be sufficient to impress the rest of the world.
Finally, I suspect that brett is, as usual, trolling, but: no, no one was ever caught, so it could have been Evil Arabs, but none of the evidence points that way, and lots of it points towards the homegrown Radical Right. Other than 9-11, the only terrorist murders in the US in the last 3 decades have been perpetrated by the Radical Right and the insane (with some overlap, to be sure).
abb1 02.27.07 at 1:39 pm
What about John Allen Muhammad, the beltway sniper?
Barry 02.27.07 at 1:50 pm
Brett Bellmore: “Alternatively, it suggests that they took a look at the way we reacted to 9-11, and decided that getting us really riled up probably wasn’t healthy, in a whole countries reduced to glassy plains kind of way.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!
(wipe eyes)
Brett, you’re always good for a laugh; good thing that you can’t even lie well, or you might be dangerous.
After 9/11, Bush did sh*t jack sh*t to Saudi Arabia, otherwise known as the fountain of Al Qaida money and theology. He did sh*t jack sh*t to Pakistan, the second-strongest sponsor of Al Qaida, now known as Al Qaida’s home away from home. He slapped at Afghanistan, *let Osama get away*, and then neglected it – the Taliban send their thanks, I’m sure.
Instead, he went after Saddam Hussein, who was an enemy of Al Qaida. And did it so f*cking badly that Iraq has gone from being a black hole for Al Qaida to a place where they can bleed the US, and recruit a new generation of terrorists.
“BTW, it became clear that it wasn’t Muslims/Arabs behind the anthrax attacks? News to me, last I heard the culprit had never been identified.”
If you listen to right-wing pundits, you’d begin to doubt that it actually happened; they don’t like to talk about it much.
mds 02.27.07 at 2:07 pm
a few sniper teams—say one each in NY, LA and DC —would have D’Souza among others begging for mercy.
The thing is, D’Souza is already begging for mercy by apologizing to al Qaeda for how filthy and perverted American culture is.
but of course a much fairer complaint is that the daily Baghdad car bomb story crowds out the dozens of smaller-scale atrocities taking place all around the country
Yeah, how come the liberal media never reports on those other atrocities, huh? They’re objectively on the other side, that’s why!
And Mr. Bellmore, I think people are somewhat skeptical that the anthrax mailings were a daring al Qaeda attack due to the Free Republic over-the-top style of the notes, and the fact that the targets ranged from the parent company of the National Enquirer to Senator Leahy. Of course, if you believe that Senator Leahy is someone that al Qaeda wanted to take out, wouldn’t that require a realignment of some of your opinions?
But if you do suspect that Islamofascist enemies who pose an existential threat to America are behind the anthrax mailings, feel free to write an angry letter to the Justice Department, where the case has grown cold, and they’re refusing to brief Congress further.
norbizness 02.27.07 at 2:20 pm
I want two ounces of whatever Brett is smoking, and I don’t care if it’s highly illegal, because the risk is worth it to achieve great comedy.
Richard 02.27.07 at 2:27 pm
What level of domestic terrorism would it take to send the United States to the point where its citizens would accept a highly repressive domestic government response in order to feel safe?
I’m tempted to say: “the 9/11 attacks.” Habeas Corpus has been rescinded, there have been mass roundups of ‘terrorist suspects’ (shortly after 9/11, numbering over a thousand), regular reports come in of torture farms in secret locations for processing unannounced victims… where’s your threshold for “”highly repressive?”
Meanwhile the domestic response has been close to nothing: for a while BushCo were toying with announcing a state of emergency by alternating between orange and yellow alerts; I didn’t see anything to suggest a public outcry if that meter ever went to red.
I don’t think it’s a question of the kind of attack that would trigger media support: it seems like that can be engineered out of nothing, at least in the short term. I think the apposite question is, what resistance is there to a quiet slide into authoritarian oligarchy? Are there any meaningful ways for large-scale social movements in the US to achieve anything against a determined, belligerent US government? A stern email-writing campaign doesn’t count. How much clout have MoveOn et al actually been shown to possess? Is there any substance behind claims to a ‘revolutionary tradition?’
roger 02.27.07 at 3:47 pm
This may be a naive comment, but: can Laura Bush possibly believe that? And does this really reflect the disconnect of George, Laura, and Barney?
Myself, I believe that Laura is consciously lying, because the alternative is to believe that, after three years of war, George Bush still thinks that it is just a bunch of deadenders and that stuff happens. It is as if LBJ thought that Vietnam was simply about subduing one village in the Delta. One of the problems with having departed so widely from the constitutional system and allowed the executive branch to become as powerful as any 18th century monarchy is that the president can easily be an idiot. While there’s been a lot of retrospective softfocusing of Reagan lately, he was, by all accounts, suffering from intimations of Alzheimers after the attempted assassination. Bush suffers from an almost terminal combination of petulance and vanity, and it is obvious that he surrounds himself with toadies and those who will do their best to keep expectations lowered. This is how court society killed itself in the 18th century, and I guess we are seeing the same thing today – Laura Bush’s remark being logically equivalent to: let them eat cake.
We definitely need to weaken the executive branch.
fred lapides 02.27.07 at 4:08 pm
Baghdad is the capital city. If there is one bombing per day, then what is the average per week that get killed there? Now the average per month? In addition the the anxiety and chaos, there is also a brain drain going on…but only with one bombing per day.
No Longer a Urinated State of America 02.27.07 at 4:42 pm
“I’ve often wondered the same thing about al-qaeda and general terrorist strategies. I’m surprised (and grateful) it hasn’t happened. I mean, the key to effectively terrorizing the populace would be to make the attacks seem so effectively random that Americans are afraid at all times of being in public. I mean, this could extend to setting off car bombs on highways and such things.”
My theory on why this hasn’t happened is the “Fat Elvis” theory [copyright D. Davies]. The small yield from conventional terrorist tactics ala IRA or ETA is gonna look small scale compared to the high yield from the 9/11 attacks. Unlike the King of Rock and Roll, they don’t want to look like they’re past their prime, in the terrorist equivalent of sweating in a white jumpsuit on a Vegas stage. In a way, they’re prisoners of their own previous horrible success.
abb1 02.27.07 at 5:14 pm
I don’t think there is any evidence that they have any kind of vertical organization. I think the fellas in Afghanistan caves, all they do is issuing their proclamations. Once in a while someone somewhere would snap and get ready to become a martyr. Then something may or may not happen, depending on how smart and determined the guy is. More pressure, more bullying – more people are likely to snap. I think that’s, pretty much, all there is to it.
jaywalker 02.27.07 at 5:31 pm
In being married to GWB, Laura Bush has perfected the art of tuning out all uncomfortable information. No “Wargames” Tic-tac-toe moment for her!
JRoth 02.27.07 at 5:39 pm
abb1: My understanding is that, in the aftermath of the fall of the Taliban, your description of aQ was not far off. But clearly aQ had significant organizational capacity prior to 9/11, and reports indicate that they are more or less back to that level. 9/11 was not 19 guys snapping.
As for the previous comment about the Beltway Sniper, regardless of his (alleged) claims about being inspired by 9/11 and aQ, he has been effectively pigeonholed as a traditional, American-style crazy-with-a-gun. If any other quasi-Muslim Americans had followed his path, it might have added up to more, but as an obviously unsound “lone wolf,” he’s easy to ignore (as a phenomenon, not when he was actually out there shooting). Lesson? Mere random shootings are inadequate to terrify Americans. Thanks, NRA.
Stuart 02.27.07 at 6:31 pm
I would suggest the IRA is a good example of why, even if they had the resources, a policy of continual random mall/train bombings dont achieve very much in the end. The first attacks gain attention and spread fear, but a continued series of attacks of similar scales quickly become fairly trivial, and lose their impact.
I guess its the way many people mess up statistics – rare events are seen as more personally threatening that moderately common events, because you hear about the more common events happening on a regular basis (if they are newsworthy) and you still havent been involved, so it becomes obvious you are very unlikely to be the victim of such an attack (which is correct of course), but for very rare attacks you dont have that background of similar events going on and this seems to make some people consider themselves more like.
For example killing 300 people a year in small bunches means people will hear on the news every week or more of a few more people being killed. If you kill 3000 people in one go every 10 years, you kill the same amount overall but you make more impact, it is remembered for much longer, and I am pretty sure the majority of people will consider themselves much more afraid of the single attack, in the long run, although there is no statistical reason to (as both are effectively 1 in a million per year if we were to consider the US as the example population).
Barry 02.27.07 at 6:50 pm
Posted by fred lapides: “Baghdad is the capital city. If there is one bombing per day, then what is the average per week that get killed there? Now the average per month? In addition the the anxiety and chaos, there is also a brain drain going on…but only with one bombing per day.”
It’s one bombing per day that we hear of, and the (seemingly) daily discovery of batches of 20-50 bodies showing signs of savage torture…
Considering that one bombing per day + a few such batches each week would tune out lesser acts, I imagine that individual killings are very, very, *very* frequent in Baghdad.
soru 02.27.07 at 6:52 pm
Canonical example of the above: the front page coverage of the recent rail crash in the UK, in which 1 person died. In the time since the last fatal rail accident, 15,000 died on the roads, and few if any of those deaths were reported outside the local press.
In general, the only thing you can usefully do with terrorism is start a war. If you try to use it for some other purpose, it won’t work, for reasons related to why slapping, spitting and name-calling are not taught in unarmed combat classes.
Peter 02.27.07 at 7:25 pm
I could mention a few highly selective non-military, non-industrial targets not in NYC, but I don’t want to get on anyone’s list.
Let’s see … Disney World … Mall of America … MGM Grand … great, now I’m probably on a list :)
mattsteinglass 02.27.07 at 8:00 pm
What level of domestic terrorism would it would take to send the United States to the point where its citizens would accept a highly repressive domestic government response in order to feel safe?
How about zero? Don’t you get it — 9/11 changed everything! :(
abb1 02.27.07 at 8:09 pm
If it’s a big one planned at the top, then their intended audience are not the Americans, so things like the Mall of America don’t make sense: ordinary people abroad don’t know what ‘mall’ means. Mall of America is not an internationally recognized symbol of American power in the world.
JRoth 02.27.07 at 8:14 pm
Why does abb1 hate [the Mall of] America?
abb1 02.27.07 at 8:24 pm
’cause it’s puny. According to wikipedia:
Who would want to target such a pathetic little place.
Fledermaus 02.28.07 at 5:43 am
Ergo, an obvious strategy for any terrorists would be to go and do this a few times, in more or less random locations.
Dude, my friends and I gamed this one out during a discussion of “if we were al quada what would we do” I used the example of the DC snipers and the hysteria they caused – and that was just two people with a rifle and a car. Imagine 10 or 20 pairs repeating it throughout the US – even for a couple of months.
That combined with a bunch of bragging on Al Jezera would likely be enough to send the country over the edge.
Thom 02.28.07 at 3:10 pm
If they wanted to really freak Americans out, couldn’t they just broadcast radio dramas about Martians or something?
Same panic, much less bloodshed than your average bombing – everyone’s a winner.
Richard 02.28.07 at 4:53 pm
If I was al quada I guess I’d go quadding.
Barry 03.02.07 at 1:57 am
One thing to remember (which will get you excommunicated from the ranks of the neo-conmen) is that Al Qaida has only struck in the US twice – 1993 and 2001. It looks like their strategy isn’t based on hitting the USA frequently.
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