Only A Matter Of Time
Via Bill, comes this FoxNews piece interviewing counterterrorism expert Juval Aviv:
I predict, based primarily on information that is floating in Europe and the Middle East, that an event is imminent and around the corner here in the United States. It could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few months. Ninety days at the most.
[snip]
What they’re going to do is hit six, seven or eight cities simultaneously to show sophistication and really hit the public. This time, which is the message of the day, it will not only be big cities. They’re going to try to hit rural America. They want to send a message to rural America: “You’re not protected. If you figured out that if you just move out of New York and move to Montana or to Pittsburgh, you’re not immune. We’re going [to] get you wherever we can and it’s easier there than in New York.”
Almost two years ago, I wrote:
Al Qaeda has a history of increasing the amount of damage with each attack. This could be good or bad for the US. The likelihood of something bigger than 9/11 is probably small with new security measures and such. But if they do one-up 9/11, it will be absolutely devastating.
But Al Qaeda has not engaged in small attacks on US soil. It would not be difficult for a terrorist nut job to waltz into a Wal-Mart with an AK47 and a bomb strapped to his chest. Kill a few people and detonate the bomb when the cops arrive. If that occurred, people wouldn’t shop at Wal-Mart for months. It’d hurt us. I tend to think Al Qaeda will not engage in this type of thing since their MO seems to be doing something bigger than the last one.
I think that maybe in the future Al Qaeda will either realize that the likelihood of successfully launching a massive act of terrorism is small and may resort to smaller, localized attacks to put people on edge. Remember, the sniper in DC was small scale but had people terrified. Or they may successfully pull off another big one.
Has Al Q figured out that they’re not going to score a big hit on a big city? I don’t know. I also tend to doubt it will be within 90 days and I doubt it will be rural America. It may be mid-sized cities in rural America but you can’t kill many people blowing up farms.
Time to put the carbine back in the truck.
July 13th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
[…]
Only A Matter Of Time – Part 2
|By SayUncle|
In a follow up to this post (good stuff in the comments, by the way), I heard on the news this […]
July 12th, 2005 at 10:56 am
“Time to put the carbine back in the truck.”
And that sentence alone is why I don’t think that al Quaeda is going to hit “rural” targets. They might be evil incarnate, but they ain’t stupid.
If Mohammed walks towards a Wal-Mart in Lubbock, TX with an AK-47 in his hands, he’ll be shot dead by three or four different calibers before he makes it to the door.
Red states profile. And they carry.
July 12th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
Why the heck would it be rural America when the Bush Administration has left ports in major cities and public transportation underdefended?
lets assume for a minute that al-Quaida cannot pull off a large scale attack. Even assuming hat, whats mor eimpressive internationally – -a small scale attack in say Chicago or a small scale attack in say Peoria?
Furthermore, the economic, cultural, and media power centers in thsi country are all in large cities. An attack – -even if small — in one of those cities immeditely increases in symbolic value (which, frankly, is all the value those attacks can have. they are not in a position — and never have been — to do real damage to the infrastrucure of the country)just by the virtue of the fact of where it takes place.
Terrorists would be stupid to hit Peoria when they could hit LA or Chicago or NYC.
July 12th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
I think the message involved in hitting smaller cities would be that you’re not safe there either. Of course, trying to understand the insane is almost futile.
July 12th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
And that’s precisely the mistake we (the US) keep making that prevents us from gaining any ground. Pretending that they don’t have an agenda, or that they don’t act in meaningful ways to try to accomplish specific objectives is as counterproductive as it is false.
This is what Clarke warned us about, but unfortunately people were too busy trying to discredit him (for having the audacity to disagree with our Fearless Leader) to bother listening to him.
Paint them as mindless, insane zealots and you simply make it that much easier for them.
July 12th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
“I think the message involved in hitting smaller cities would be that you’re not safe there either”
Any terrorist attack says that people aren;t safe. but, again, why would the terrorists care if people who ar enot connected to the engines of media, culture and commerce care if they don’t feel safe? Look at the DC sniper thing — quite a lot of national fear for a pretty localized event. If that had happened in Peoria, it would not have become the all consuming media circus that it did.
July 12th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
Painting them as entirely insane is as bad as stating their agenda is entirely meaningful. Sure, they do plan and put thought into it but one of their goals is to kill infidels wherever they are. So, while I would be wise not to discount entirely their agenda, it’s equally silly to not minimize the fact they’re fucking crazy.
July 12th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Our borders still leak like sieve..
July 12th, 2005 at 2:21 pm
I think an attack in rural america would be far more devastating. Us folks in DC are hardened enough to the daily bomb threats and security perimeters – as are the people in NY, LA, Chicago etc. Sure, we are still freaked out but its in ways that people outside our major cities simply can’t comprehend. Frankly, while we are still recovering emotionally – life goes on and luckily most manufacturing, etc is outside of these cities. Where an attack to occur in small town america I don’t know how capable the country would be to recover so quickly as all of rural and small town america would be locked down as much as the cities.
Sorry, but Knoxville and other small cities are oasises of peace and tranquility and an attack there, or in peoria, or even St. Louis would go a long way towards shaking the resolve of the nation because all of a sudden rural americans (or even people in small sized cities would understand).
As far as the national concern over the sniper – thats simple. He was very much part of the muslim/al quaeda war on America – but for some reason the government is relucatant to go down that path.
The simple fact is he trained with a well known sleeper cell (which was subsequently broken up by the FBI) and while he may have been out to make some petty cash, his underlying motive was hatred of our society. He struck both in an urban and very rural areas (Spotsylvania County and where they caught him was basically uninhabited wildnerness for around here) and targeted children and minorites, etc. Its was shocking an no one knew where he would hit next.
Here in DC, we are still freaked out by it (and the anthrax attacks – we still have almost daily evacuations because of “suspicious powders on packages” even though the press doesn’t cover them – and the constant bomb threats and the threats to metro and the incredible number of violently anti American muslims who live here in the DC area)
July 12th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
A couple of days after 9-11 I commented to my wife that we were actually very lucky that the terrorists chose such a spectacular attack.
I mean, they had 20 operatives in country. One got arrested ahead of time but didn’t tip off the operation.
Now, imagine if your 20 guys, instead of going to flight school and shuffling through metal detectors, each bought or rented a compact car and filled it with ANFO/TNT and nails. Then pick 20 different cities and have each guy drive his car through the front door of an elementary school.
The effect on our country — the level of fear, the economic shock, the resulting willingness to sell liberty cheap in the name of security — would all make 9-11 look like a walk in the park.
The sad thing is that our society hasn’t really made any serious effort at threat assesment or coming to grips with the meaning of terror in our lives. We’ve settled for feel-good, band-aid solutions like nationalizing airport security, erasing ditgital images of bridges from Jane Doe’s camera and expensive administrative bloat (DHS), but no one has talked about what might happen next. We’re not preppared and we’re not safer (except to the minimal extent that terrorism has largely been focused on Iraq for the last two years but I think we can take it that London signals that our foes have finally clued in to the fact that their efforts in Iraq are only succeeding in getting terrorists killed more efficiently and cheaply than they can really afford).
July 12th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
Yeah, like if somebody targeted some rural backwater like Oklahoma City (hypothetically speaking), it would bring the nation’s resolve to its knees.
July 12th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
“Yeah, like if somebody targeted some rural backwater like Oklahoma City (hypothetically speaking), it would bring the nation’s resolve to its knees. ”
This si a bit snarky, but it does have a seriuos point: the people who report on and make decisons about reporting on are not generally directly connected to locations like OK City, and hence the level of fear is not neccesarily the same. Add to that the fact that an attack on OK City looks weak and pathetic to the international community, and the lilihood of such an attack is much less than an attack on a large city like NYC or Chicago.
Its also a bit weird to see people essentially arguing that the country would collapse based on a London style attack in a plce like Peoria. Nothing collapsed after OKC, and nothing collpased after 9/11. I think we need to start giving our fellow citizens a bit of credit here.
July 12th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
Random comments:
If somebody is going to blow something up in East Tennessee, it won’t be Knoxville. Oak Ridge is full of nuclear material (that’s where they put the stuff that other countries surrender as well as much of our own stock) and it just happens to be the city that gave birth to what they want more than anything else. A big fat nuclear bomb.
It’s not a question of if they will hit Oak Ridge, it’s a question of when.
Small town with almost no security and the potential to cause more chaos than hitting 5 large cities at the same time.
Knowing all of this…I’m still fine living here. If I don’t have a government that can protect me, I deserve to get blown up. I voted for the people in charge of protecting me. If I didn’t vote for the people who could do the best job then I am at fault.
Also…
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING is going to stop people from shopping at Wal-Mart.
Blow it up. Burn it down. Gas all of the shoppers. Lace all of the shelves with anthrax. It doesn’t matter.
They are open 24/7 and prices are low.
People are never too scared to go to Wal-Mart.
July 12th, 2005 at 11:14 pm
I though the truck bomb in the first World Trade Center attack was designed to kill people and spread terror. They were actually trying to smash one tower into the other, but for some reason this was not widely reported. That fact alone turns wacky extremists into clever calculating extremists.
They attacked the WTC because it they though it was the center of power for the Zionists (yep, they actually believe that “Elders of Zion” crap). I never understood why congress and the white house aren’t bigger terror targets than the pentagon. Perhaps they thought we would just elect fiercer warmongers. I also heard they went long on gold and short on stocks.
I think that a worse attack would have been to unleash 20 trained snipers with 20 bolt action, scoped rifles. Rifles, not carbines, the kind of gun that can go through a foot of wood and still kill. It was not widely reported, but Moose and his goons were going through the Maryland state records and showing up at residents doors seizing peoples’ .223 AR variants without a warrant. They test fired and did the voodoo “ballistic fingerprinting”crap. Of course there were no hits, but I really doubt that after the whole mess they threw away the “fruit of the poison tree”.
Now is a good time to mention that despite the unconstitutional Maryland “Assault Rifle” database and despite profiling the killer as a disgruntled, white guy in a white work truck who is stupid enough to buy his “assault rifle” in Maryland so it can be properly registered; the killers ended up being Type 2 Muslim guys in a dark colored car, with a stolen rifle. But hey, gun control still works.
Did I just say that chief Moose “profiled” the killers? Wouldn’t that make Moose a racist?
July 13th, 2005 at 3:19 am
I love how Fox is not just doing weather reports, but are now forcasting terrorist attacks. As soon as the bombs went off in London, their question wasn’t could it happen here, but when?
Of course it could happen here or anywhere for that matter. It is ridiculous to think that you can protect any part of any county from a package exploding.
I wouldn’t rely on Fox News for any information. Recently they brought on a commentator about the bombings. Know what his subtitle was? Former Terrorist. It’s ridiculous.
July 13th, 2005 at 10:39 am
As far a I can tell, Neal Knox was the only person who “reported” the Moose gun seizers. Although I had a number of friends who had a guns siezed, no one from the (free) Press reported it.
Thanks a lot, mainstream media. I’ll be sure to trust what you say in the future.
July 13th, 2005 at 8:25 pm
It’s not a question of if they will hit Oak Ridge, it’s a question of when
Oh come on..for the love of christ…security is pretty shitty at OR/Y-12 but I dont see a convoy of terrorists driving through the main gates and heading to a building with a stockpile of plutonium. And if they do get into a building..so F%^& what? You would have to strap on a couple thousand pounds of explosives to get a rather large explosion to throw out radiation over ETenn..take off your tin foil hat…