I was hearing about the lockdown in Brussels on the radio today. It’s a ghost town on the streets. Military vehicles and armed soldiers are prominently standing around everywhere. Basically, the terrorists have caused far more economic damage from things like this (and the locking down of the borders between the EU nations, essentially starting the process of breaking up the EU) than the mere 130 lives they took and buildings they shot up.
So I tried to think of what smart terrorists would do now. They wouldn’t attack Brussels. Not now. They’d wait until a month after the security lockdown lifts and everything goes back to normal. The point of the attack wouldn’t be to kill people…it would be to turn their targets into police states, dominated by fear, with heavily armed police out in public everywhere.
I have always assumed that they are aware of this, and that is also why I have always advocated against these reactions. Sure there is probably some emotional satisfaction gained by terrorists and their supporters for the pain, grief and anguish they cause because us humans seem addicted to revenge and inflicting suffering on others. But surely the more intelligent among them who are responsible for organizing the attacks are aware that the real damage comes, as you say, from the different societies reaction to them.
In a way I also think there is something almost valuable in the horror that they inflict on unarmed civilian populations. It causes a reassessment of things that we take for granted, and an incitement to look at other parts of the world where people are not so fortunate. We tend to take our security and level of comfort for granted, not realizing that our current level of evolution is a result of thousands of years of humans working together to build more advanced civilizations.
For example I used to work with refugees, and when I met youngsters and kids who had made it all the way to Sweden by themselves from places like Afghanistan or Burundi I was always so impressed. They were so grown up, dedicated, tough and focused. By comparison the Swedish kids were lazy, spoiled whiners who just took everything for granted.
But essentially yes, it is our ignorant responses to these attacks that are really hurting us. In reality everyone is much more likely to be hit by a car or choke on some food than die in a terrorist attack, still we put an incredible amount of money into ineffectively trying to protect ourselves, for example by filling the streets of Brussels with tanks and soldiers, or by spending millions/billions/trillions on wars that only end up causing more terror. In that way the terrorist tactics are very successful and as long as we keep playing into their hands, I don’t see why they would stop using them.
Spoken like someone who hasn’t thought this through.
Let’s say you are a terrorist, and right before your big attack the government takes all these security precautions or whatever. Your first thought isn’t going to be, “Ha-ha! They are going to feel my wrath next month!”
No, it’s going to be, “Oh crap, how did they find out, and how much do they know?”
Despite my choice of a vaguely arabic sounding online name, I don’t know how the terrorists think. I’m thinking in terms of military strategy - a bit of Sun Tzu. Never attack the enemy at their strong point.
Even if the terrorists were hyper-competent spetsnaz/Navy Seal commandos, able to realistically take on the troops in brussels and defeat them (at least, for a while, until overwhelming reinforcements were brought to bear) it doesn’t make any sense to attack a city where all the security is. If the operation must take place this week, choose a different target.
Agree. The whole point is to attack soft unprotected targets that cause political damage. I don’t even consider an attack on a military target terrorism. Attacking the military is fair game, after all, that is what they are for.
The terrorist organization wants their opponents to overreact, beefing up “security” to the point of infringing on accepted freedoms. When the “security” fails, the net will be cast wider to include those suspected of encouraging (or even not opposing) the ideals of the terrorists. The terrorists hope that the government enacts so many harsh laws and carries out so many punitive reactions, (with a fair amount of innocent collateral damage), that the general citizenry will either select a new government more favorable to the ideals of the terrorists or the citizenry will be so divided that a civil war will break out, resulting in the government spending so much effort on that civil war that it no longer has the resources to oppose the terrorists.
If terrorists want to turn opposing countries into police states primarily for the purpose of eroding civil rights - as opposed to turning them into police states because the effectiveness of their attacks means they are probably winning militarily - I think there would be some factual evidence for that case.
I don’t think terrorists particularly care that much about our civil rights. Unlike George Bush, I don’t think terrorists hate us for our freedoms. I think they hate us for our policies most of all, with a liberal dash of racism/intolerance thrown in. I think they want to use fear to make us change our policies toward them, not change our policies toward ourselves.
Does anyone have evidence of the “terrorists would like to roll back our constitutional liberties” as a large part of their agenda?
Thats what politically motivated westerners think terrorists want. Terrorists are mostly young men who want to release their rage in an orgasm of violence against targets they resent.
You are correct. But so are the others. Both are true. The individual terrorist who blew himself up was psychologically motivated by rage and resentment, but the supporting structure and more strategic people involved have a more complicated world view.
The same holds true for American soldiers. I doubt that US soldiers are motivated by advancing US strategic interests in a region. They just want to “serve their country” or “be heroes” or “protect their friends” or whatnot.
As the targets of terrorism, we tend to focus on the message terrorists are directing at their targets. But I think it’s important to remember we’re not their only audience; in fact, we’re not their primary audience.
The real message terrorist organizations are sending is directed to the society they live in not the outsiders they are attacking. The message they are sending is this:
Our enemies still exist.
We are fighting those enemies.
The rest of you should support us because of our fighting.
So when terrorists attack France or Britain or America, they’re also sending a message to Syrians and Iraqis and Saudis. So we should be thinking just as hard about the reaction in Damascus and Baghdad and Mecca as we are about the reaction in Paris and London and Washington. Terrorist organizations are more concerned about the response they’re getting at home than the response they’re getting overseas.
Yes, but it has been asserted that one of the strategic aims of terrorists is to limit freedoms in their enemies’ countries. I think the strategic aims are to force the enemy country to capitulate and withdraw, grant independence, or whatever. I’d like to see some evidence of the “our strategic aim is to reduce civil liberties” goal, if it actually exists for any terrorist group (esp. ISIL).
I think the terrorists have been remarkably restrained and this lends a bit of credence to the OP. I don’t think their goal is to just kill random people. I think the plan is to tie up tremendous amounts of resources of their adversaries and hopefully make their targets disengage from the region that the terrorists originate from as a rational cost-benefit calculation.
I think they forget how nationalistic certain tribes really are when provoked.
You missed the point. A government that shuts down its own citizens is already beginning the sequence that will lead to its own demise. If it is spending all its efforts policing itself–or if it devolves into civil war–it is not going to have the resources to address outside issues.
Yeah, I have to agree that I don’t think the terrorists give a rat’s ass about the political situation in their target countries. I think it’s more akin to Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo: to prove to themselves (and potential recruits) that they can hit the Western countries at home and kill some infidels.
I could believe that they are hoping to foment a crack-down on Muslims in the target countries which will (likely) result in more recruits.
I don’t think that limiting the freedom of their enemies countries is a strategic goal at all, it’s just a result. The strategic goal is to pressure the nations into either responding violently (thus creating breeding grounds for more terror) or to withdraw their military and economic presence from the countries that the terrorist claim to represent.
I don’t think that a government which takes some action against its own citizens is necessarily on the path to its own demise.
In America, the Constitution protects certain rights, theoretically for all people at all times. But in reality, when the the American people feel their safety threatened, the government tends to ignore constitutional rights and gets away with doing so. From Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War, to internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, to torture and indefinite detention after 9/11, civil rights have tended to vanish in times of war and conflict. After the threat dies down in people’s minds, the Constitution tends to make a comeback.
I’m not saying that I think it should be this way, but this is the way it is.