It wouldn’t have to be obvious. Stick it on a chair under a table with tablecloth, leave your coat there, and pretend to go to the bathroom. In a crowded shopping area, there are tons of nooks and crannies to shove a bag in. Stick it behind an item on a shelf in Wal-Mart, for example. Heck, you can even stick the bomb in the garbage (think one of the standard fast food receptacles where you can stick your tray through).
The recent attacks did exactly that… a nightclub in the heart of tourist London, and a national airport.
The Bali nightclub bomb was about as “soft” a target as you can get.
This was the first thing that I thought of.
If I’m the network mastermind, and I’ve got a steady supply of 19 year olds willing to blow themselves up in a market, using a cheap belt of explosives, then I can can do that.
If I’m a doctor in England, planning my own possible death, then I want to make as big of an impression as I can. I only get one chance. I want a BIG BOOM!!
I have said for several years now, that were I a cell leader, I would be trying to co-ordinate a group of approx 15-20 “soldiers”. We would travel to a place like Choteau Montana, a small town in North Western Montana. Population, about 1500. The cops go off duty at 2am, and don’t get back until I think 6.
I think 15-20 terrorists going door to door starting about 3am could probably kill a couple hundred.
We are fortunate, in some ways, that those who wish us harm are not very creative.
I think people are seriously overestimating the number of potential terrorist recruits in the United States. The reason so many “amateur” terrorist attacks have occured in the UK is that they simply have so many more Muslims than we do. And London has long been a “safe haven” for Islamists from all over the world, where they could network in safety. It’s only very recently that they have turned from living in the UK while planning attacks in their home countries to planning attacks in the UK.
But I agree that it makes no sense for so many of these attacks to be suicide attacks. The limiting factor for terrorists in the United States isn’t targets to hit, it’s the number of terrorists. It’s not like Israel where you’ve got millions of potential recruits and the limiting factor is getting explosives. There you’ve got plenty of replacements for your suicide bombers. Not so here. The Beltway snipers are a much better model to follow. Except the problem is the idealization of the suicide bomber–someone willing the throw away their lives to strike the enemy. Since suicide bombings were the only successful tactic against the Israelis, suicide bombings have become the model for terrorist attacks. Suicide bombers are exhalted. It’s kind of like the rash of copycat school attacks after Columbine. It’s simply a failure of imagination.
The other trouble is that your suicide bomber has to be crazy enough to carry out a suicide bombing, yet sane enough not to give themselves away to the FBI beforehand.
If Al Qaeda had enough people here, they might do something like that. I don’t know how many terrorists are believed to be in this country, but I’d expect it’s a relatively small number and as a result, they’re focusing on doing as much damage as they can - which suggests something like a September 11, which scared people and affected the economy in a variety of ways - rather than trying to sow confusion with small things that, relatively speaking, won’t do as much harm.
Or anything that might represent pro-Israel sentiment, like the Pentagon, or anyplace seen as a seat of Jewish power, like New York.
They also don’t stick out in large east coast cities nearly as much as they would in Sheboygan.
Which is probably why those doctors didn’t just commit themselves to poisoning their patients, and spiking retail products with deadly drugs. It’s kinda scary to think how many people they could have killed if they wanted to act like this guy.
A few years back there was a scary article in the Altlantic, discussing various tactics terrorists could relatively easily use to circumvent all of the resources we were throwing at the airports. I remember they mentioned strikes at shopping malls during the Christmas shopping season, or at amusement parks during the summer, as well as the electric/computer networks.
In my everyday life I’ve wondered at the amount of damage that could be caused by blowing up 1 or 2 strategic bridges/tunnels going into Chicago, a train in one of the commuter stations, or a subway/el train. Or a single guy with guns during rush hour in a train station, or in an apartment/hotel overlooking a sporting event, concert, Taste of Chicago, etc. Given worldwide weapons proliferation, I’m surprised no one has been able to position a SAM somewhere to take down passenger aircraft. I’d think it would be easy to drop at least a few briefcase bombs in buildings/washrooms/closets throughout downtown. And I think there would be considerable terror caused by just killing random families in their homes in smalltown/suburbia USA.
Fortunately, neither foreign nor homegrown terrorists have pursued these options. Is it because Bush and company have been so successful in protecting us and the diminishment of our civil liberties and freedoms has been well worthwhile? Or is the threat not as great as suggested? I dunno.
Is it just me, or is anybody else getting really jumpy just reading this stuff. Jeez, you guys have some really ugly ideas.
I find it interesting that you say that. For me, the only reason I think these kinds of things is because the expensive “security theater” I see around me seems so ludicrous and wasteful. From that realization, it is a quick hop, skip and jump to thinking what might be realistic threats, that our government is doing little about while tossing huge sums at inconveniencing air travellers.
Of course, so much of our current administration’s efforts count upon the electorate not independently exercising rational thought…
And Hitler liked puppies. Goes to show that nobody’s ALL bad.
Why suicide bombings? Because it’s part of the symbolism.
The Madrid bombers had time to escape. But several of them commited suicide once the cops were banging on the door trying to take a couple or three cops with them - but mostly, to get themselves a piece of Heaven and some front page pics.
When I see some of the scenarios and figures you name I really wonder how can Sunspace find you scary. A military organization (real military, no para) could be able to pull something like that off. What was the biggest cell ETA or IRA ever had? How many people would it take to coordinate 200 people with them having no knowledge of the existence of the other 199 pairs (an ETA main point)?
And lets take the example of ETA and the IRA. How are/were they able to carry out sustained bombing campaigns for so long? Because there weren’t that many bombers in the first place, and the bombers operated amongst people who, while they might not approve of the bombings, many at least approved of the political goals of the bombers. So everyone in the neighborhood knows that a particular person is connected with the IRA, even if they don’t know exactly what this person does for the IRA. And like-minded people find it easy to join the IRA because they know a couple of connected guys. And non-like-minded people might not approve of the IRA, but they certainly aren’t going to go to the cops with their information, for several reasons, certainly they would fear for their safety if it every became known that they cooperated with the cops.
So a successful terrorist network depends on a somewhat sympathetic population to draw from. They must hide within this population and recruit from this population and get money from this population. And this population of disaffected pro-jihad muslims simply doesn’t exist in the United States.
Coincidentally, just last weekend my wife and I visited the Oklahoma City Memorial. It’s a gut-wrenching experience, and I always get obsessed with exhibits like that. I spent the weekend mining the Internet for information about the bombing. Right about now, **Lemur’s ** and **Nava’s ** comments are causing me a serious “Holy crap!” moment.
Which, of course, involved no airplanes, exploding shoes or shampoo, technologically advanced weaponry, or even furriners.
Some argue that al-quedah achieved its main goal (the public humiliation of the USA) with 9/11; and there is no reason for further attacks of this type. I tend to agree that small scale bombings would not make a lot of sense-if they want to stage an attack, they would be wise to do something on a large scale. of course, they then run the risk of galvanizing public opinion. Suppose they were able to pull off another 9/11-style attack? Would there be support for a massive retaliation (that well might wipe out most of Al-Queda?)
ISTM that any recent “humiliation” was not due so much to the events of 9/11, but instead to choices made and actions taken by the US thereafter.
I doubt that in their wildest dreams AQ could have imagined that the US would have willingly poured lives and $ into the quagmire that is Iraq. Yeah. We really showed them. Mission accomplished!
Thw symbolism of the trade centers was important to them. They tried to get then in 93 and did not go big enough.
If symbolism is still the watch word then I vote for Vegas. Not only the decadence but they would likely nail a few rich Arabs doing the wrong thing.
Those rich Arabs bankroll them.