Al Quida - worst terrorists ever

[Dead kate moss]

Yesterday America's Department Of Homeland Insecurity (did you see what I did there?) told Americans to be vigilant if they were in Europe, as Al Quida apparently has something up their sleeves. The rest of us can get blown up, apparently. So far it looks like their sleeves were empty, and ten years on from 9-11, they seem like the one-hit wonders of the terrorist world. A couple of buses, some idiot trying to explode his shoe, and crashing a car into an airport only to get beaten up by the locals.  Not much of a track record, and consider me not living in terror.

Compared to the IRA, who got stuff blown up good and proper, and weren't stupid enough to go for this daft suicide bomber idea, the muslim menace is suspiciously not very menacing. Maybe the American approach of throwing anyone vaguley muslim-looking down the black hole of renditions and Guantanamo was effective after all. Perhaps the US and UK governments have foiled as many plots as they claim, though the ones we hear about seem mostly a couple of teenagers talking shit about the US on the internet. Or maybe the Al Quida boogieman of a worldwide network of evil Jihadists doesn't really exist.

[ThickAndCreamy]

We live in the longest period of major peace throughout Europe and what is essentially the safest period the world has ever seen. You are statistically most likely to be safer than ever, and live longer than ever in the history of human civilisation. If you're scared you need to get out more.

The 'worldwide network' is a large variety decentralised groups all with different ideas, often uncoordinated, with no real central planning thanks to Al Qaeda headquarters being forced to disintegrate after 9/11. People, and Al Qaeda certainly exist, but the menace of actually attempting a highly planned and elaborate terrorist attack is harder than you think, especially when it's small groups attempting to do it, with no experience (obviously) and often little idea what to do.

[Blumf]

and ten years on from 9-11

9 years, the 9/11^TM(R) attacks happened in 2001. Bet you forgot Poland too!

[SetToStun]

I think Bali and Madrid got people's attention too. And Mumbai. But, in all, it doesn't seem a huge threat right now - mainly for the reasons ThickAndCreamy puts forward. Still, that's not much comfort if you're the one siting next to a nutter with a bomb and a guarantee of eternal paradise.

[Winjer]

I downloaded and watched The Power of Nightmares about three weeks ago.

It'd be nice to have some verification from people in the know about how accurate the documentary is, but it blew me away.

[Dead kate moss]

I don't know if it's mentioned in the greatest documentaries thread, but it really should be.

[Winjer]

Done ;-D

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

After the 'news' was reported, this was all the US news channels talked about all day- then to my surprise, when I landed in England and switched on the radio, it was the topic of conversation on a talk show too. They all talk about Al-quaida like it's this conventionally structured corporation, which seems very naive and misleading to people. It is also in my opinion designed to make all these attacks (not that there have been very many considering this is supposed to be a super worldwide jihadi initiative) seem more concerted than they actually are. What you seem to have are cells and groups acting from inspiration rather than from command.

As has been pointed out, the IRA, Hezbollah, Hamas were and are all better at this. Perhaps because they were people's movements, and that allowed them the sort of co-operation or at least passive acceptance that would've made attacks very easy to carry out. And they all had clear visible enemies that lived next to them and that were empirically harming them in a fashion.

Returning to the reported story, surely if a plot has been foiled, I should be less scared. The logic is "You should've been scared about that thing that could've happened to you that you knew nothing about", which in practical terms is asking the entire population to live in perpetual fear. I'm not afraid, or scared, or nervous, or fearful. The terrorists and the fear-mongers can go and eat my shit in hell.

[quadraspazzed]

On a Real IRA note, I love this 'terrorism forecast' reported last week:

[Theresa] May said Today: "The director-general of the security service has informed me that he has raised the threat to Great Britain from Irish-related terrorism from moderate to substantial, meaning an attack is a strong possibility."

:-)

[Big Jack McBastard]

There's a lot to be said for the notion that there is no 'Al-Qaida' it's simply a too-easy-media-catch-all-blanket phrase for anyone from the middle east who does a bit of bombing.

Far less trouble to blame a name than to actually get to the root of who has done what and why. They might as well be called 'The folks who are pissed off we invade their countries and nab their resources' as 'Al-Qaida'. Thing is people are far too willing to use that moniker to make a monster out of people who you'd be hard pressed to call unjustified if the boot was on the other foot.

[CaledonianGonzo]

There's a lot to be said for the notion that there is no 'Al-Qaida' it's simply a too-easy-media-catch-all-blanket phrase for anyone from the middle east who does a bit of bombing.

It's covered in some detail in The Power of Nightmares, but the name Jamal al Fadl is worth bringing up here:

In January 2001, the trial began in New York of four men accused of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in east Africa . The U.S also wanted to prosecute Osama bin Laden in his absence under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). To be able to do this under American law, the prosecutors needed evidence of a criminal organization, which would then allow them to prosecute the leader, even if he could not be linked directly to the crime.

Jamal al-Fadl was taken on as a key prosecution witness, who along with a number of other sources claimed that Osama bin Laden was the leader of a large international terrorist organization which was called "al-Qaeda".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_al-Fadl

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Though I think it's mainly to do with the need to personify these attacks, the use of 'al Quaida' also helps dehumanise the terrorists (though arguably me calling them terrorists does that too) and from a political/media perspective it also creates a long term enemy that because it's essentially inspired by a religious credo, so for that reason it theoretically could last for centuries. In 100 years time the news might still be reporting how our security threat has increased from 'severe' to 'really quite severe now actually thanks', while the populace worries but essentially shrugs, because most people can do very little about it.

There is no such thing as increased terror threat, because the indicators they use to forecast it either don't exist, are based on incorrect intelligence.

Does anyone know what level these threat gauges were at when 7/7 happened, or the Bali bombings, or the Madrid attacks? I know they are constantly on 'likely' or something, and never fall to 'No terrorism today, so rock out', but you'd think for us to pay any heed to these warnings there would at least be one provable example where a terror plot happened on a day where the government decided to press our worry buttons.

[sirhenry]

Remember those first few days after 9/11 when Tony Blair was standing firm and saying that we weren't going to let a bunch of terrorists change 'the British way of life'?
Any idea who it was who told him to shut it as changing 'the British way of life' to one of fear and paranoia was actually rather useful for control purposes?

I'm far more likely to die right outside my house, being hit by a car[nb]5 deaths in 3 years and I've seen 2 of them[/nb], than even know someone who is injured by al Quaida, so it seems pointless to worry about it.

[weekender]

I sometimes wonder if the 7/11 chain of stores did badly out of the whole 9/11 thing, with people getting the two confused.

I haven't been arsed to even look it up on a generic search engine though, so I keep wondering.  Happens every year on 7th September, I really should look it up one of these days.

[Welshy]

I'm far more likely to die right outside my house, being hit by a car[nb]5 deaths in 3 years and I've seen 2 of them[/nb], than even know someone who is injured by al Quaida, so it seems pointless to worry about it.

Ah the spirit of the Blitz is alive and well!

Disband MI5 and divert all fundng to road safety partnerships. Show 'em fucking Muslams what we think of their bullshit bombs.

[Viero_Berlotti]

I do often think what I'd do if a group of terrorists started shooting up Piccadilly station with AK47's when I'm walking through it in the morning. I have my escape route planned, and good hiding places sussed out, I also know of the location of a discarded brick hidden in a nearby passageway that would make a handy weapon if I needed it. It's more to do with my overactive imagination than being scared of terrorists though.

[Buchstansangur]

Thirsty? Need a break?

[sirhenry]

Ah the spirit of the Blitz is alive and well!

Disband MI5 and divert all fundng to road safety partnerships. Show 'em fucking Muslams what we think of their bullshit bombs.

I was thinking more about the maths of probability and risk. Though yes, the Blitz spirit is presumably the ideal result for all the fear-mongering. Problem being there's no concrete 'them' this time, which makes it harder to focus the blind hatred.[nb]But so much easier to mangle metaphors.[/nb]

[Blumf]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/09/the_pope_and_the_axis_of_terro.html

The American military was convinced there was a giant secret bunker hidden in Cambodia from which the North Vietnamese were directing their attacks. The bombing, followed by an invasion, was going to destroy it.

But the bunker was never found. It seems never to have existed.

But it became a vision that was going to possess Haig, and others, in the years to come. That somewhere there is a hidden central control where the enemies of America are co-ordinating their attacks.

They know this secret place exists. Even if there is no real evidence.

And you can do bad things and cut corners in order to prove it exists.

...

Haig then became President Nixon's chief of staff during Nixon's final - paranoid - days.

After that he became the commander of NATO in Europe. And as his power grew so did his vision of the hidden threat. In 1979 Haig made a speech about what he called the new "global disease of terrorism" which he was convinced the Soviet Union was behind.

Up to this point the terrorists in Europe and Latin America and elsewhere had been seen as disparate groups. They might know each other - but they were separate movements driven by their own weird interpretations of leftist or rightist theory.

Haig was saying - no, they are all part of something bigger.

[Jack Shaftoe]

I do often think what I'd do if a group of terrorists started shooting up Piccadilly station with AK47's when I'm walking through it in the morning. I have my escape route planned, and good hiding places sussed out, I also know of the location of a discarded brick hidden in a nearby passageway that would make a handy weapon if I needed it. It's more to do with my overactive imagination than being scared of terrorists though.

Ha, I've done the same thing, starting when I notice a rather jumpy commuter whose combat trousers are stuffed with bags of dried fruit - although my plan quickly spirals into a) taking a weapon from a terrorist and launching a Die Hard style fightback, which then b) leads to me discovering my ability to teleport like Nightcrawler and basically re-enact the beginning of X-Men 2*, only in Paddington Station**. It's probably best I'm not on any COBRA style emergency response planning committees.

* this includes the ability to pull Mad Terrorists into walls for a gruesome, yet picturesque death.
** I think by the end I can throw fireballs as well.

[ThickAndCreamy]

Blumf, that blog is slightly deceiving actually. The bunker in Vietnam they couldn't find did actually exist, but not in a conventional manner. They bombed Cambodia, sacrificed many troops going on essentially suicide missions to look down there after the bombings just to find nothing of worth having been destoryed.

The Vietcong were a more intelligent, and decentralised group than the US ever imagined. The bunker existed, it just never stayed in the same place for more than about 10 days, and so was consequently nearly impossible to target and destroy. The Vietcong constantly moved bases and the head of organisation so as to never be easily found or destroyed. US intelligence just never realised this until the Vietcong said about it publicly after the war.

This is not to say Haig wasn't a deceitful bastard though, nearly as equal as Kissinger on the immoral front.

[hoverdonkey]

So, can we go to EuroDisney next week or not? (Paid for by child benefit too! Yippee!)

[Blumf]

So, can we go to EuroDisney next week or not? (Paid for by child benefit too! Yippee!)

Heh, I was at EuroDisney a few years back, they had armed soldiers posted around the main entrance area. Most reassuring and I'm sure that had the need arisen they could easily pick off the bad guys without touching any kiddies nearby.

[Blumf]

Blumf, that blog is slightly deceiving actually. The bunker in Vietnam they couldn't find did actually exist, but not in a conventional manner. They bombed Cambodia, sacrificed many troops going on essentially suicide missions to look down there after the bombings just to find nothing of worth having been destoryed.

No expert on the subject, but wouldn't those have been one of the many elaborate 'warren' like dugs outs the Viet-Cong were famed for, as opposed to a Bond villain style permanent fortress of evil the US were after.

[ThickAndCreamy]

Indeed. COSVN headquarters left a vast trail of false intelligence and did permanently exist, just they were as hard as finding a needle in a haystack. US Intelligence constantly believed that their men were getting shot up when bombed in Cambodia because they were so close to getting towards it, when really they just didn't have the knowledge to cope in such environments and had no idea about the extensive planning the Vietcong had enacted.

_{Anyone interested in Vietnam and Kissinger-era foreign policy should read The Price Of Power. One of the greatest books ever written showing how foreign policy works and just how irrational human behaviour is.}

[quadraspazzed]

File under 'How Very Surprising':

US accused of exaggerating terror threat for political gain

• Pakistani diplomat launches scathing attack on White House
• European intelligence claims raised terror alerts 'nonsensical'