A question: if 9/11 could be considered a WMD attack (which case could certainly be argued), would the original WTC attack have been a WMD attack if they brought down the tower? In other words, is it the scale of an attack that defines WMD, or the specific nature of the weapon involved?
For that matter, what if it WAS a WMD attack. Would that make a difference? Suppose Osama Bin Laden had somehow managed to acquire a nuclear bomb, and a number kamikaze followers set it off in a major city.
Would that justify the indiscriminant nuking of a civilian population? IMHO no, and I’d hope, though aren’t certain, that most world leaders, including those mounting the current “War on Terrorism”, would agree.
I would say from a technical viewpoint that the use of the word WMD implies a single weapon capable of great destruction. Nuclear weapons of almost any size would fit the description (The Davey Crocket might not). Bio weapons that infect, spread, and kill many people would.also qualify. There are other weapons.
In retrospect, I would say the planes could not be considered a WMD even though they could have generated great loss unless a single plane did so as a stand-alone event. Although the planes killed people on impact it was a domino effect that killed the remaining people. The collapse of the buildings were secondary events because of the time delay involved.
Little Nemo thanks very much for your explanation of the origin of the term “WMD”. I’ve always disliked seeing this term used instead of the older (and more descriptive) term “NCB” (for Nuclear/Chemical/Biological weapons).
The fallout (pardon the pun) of this little exercise in doublespeak is obvious from this thread. There’s a tendency to call anything that has the capability to kill lots of people as a “weapon of mass destruction” thereby erasing the very useful distinction of classifying nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as special cases requiring special tactics.
At the same time “WMD” doesn’t really accurately describe many Nuclear/Chemical/Biological threats. For example ricin is a dangerous toxin and could be used as an assassination tool, but could only be used with great difficulty to kill more than a handful of people at one time. Radioactive dirty bombs are dangerous not because they would kill substantially more than a conventional high-explosive bomb, but because the resulting contamination of the area would cause long-term economic and social disruption. And so on.
Little Nemo has confirmed what I’ve long suspected. That the term “WMD” was manufactured to conflate the smaller (but still significant) dangers of biological and chemical weapons with the apocolyptic threat posed by a thermonuclear detonation. A purely descriptive term was discarded in favor of a term designed to “sex up” the threat and provoke a particular political response.
NCB weapons certainly pose a significant threat to us. They can be particularly effective in the hands of terrorists primarily because they prey on our natural fear of “contamination” in a way that conventional arms do not. But, to paraphrase PETA:
“Ricin is not Sarin is not Smallpox is not the H Bomb.”
Or, to quote Sun Tsu:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”
Purposely lying to ourselves about the nature of the dangers which confront us is no way to win a war. Unfortunately in these times, the courage required to look coldly at the enemy and speak honestly of his strengths and weaknesses seems to be sorely lacking … .