I don’t think the case in point is terrorism either, but anyway, here’s a comparable act for you, minty.
This article may not answer minty greens question but it does state that al-Qaida did train terrorists in similiar tactics.
Not all that comparable, jjimm. As your article states, those IRA snipers were shooting British military personnel, which seems quantifiably different from the random attacks on civilians that we’re seeing here.
Cledet, I’d be very hesitant to use worldnetdaily as a reliable news source, but even then, all that article says is that “Osama lin Laden’s terrorists have prepared to kill Americans with small-arms fire from trucks and vans.” That’s not what’s been happening around D.C.
The thought that these were terrorists crossed my mind as well. As for minty green’s suggestion that we must show a prior example, allow me tio point out that the attack on the WTC was successful precisely because nothing like it had been done before. Despite prior warnings about slamming airplanes into buildings, no one really believed that hijackers would act in such a suicidal way. Thinking “outside the box” often gets results.
The current troubles in the DC area may be purely domestic, and I hope they are. But this also looks like a remarkably inexpensive way to throw the populace in the capital area off-balance and tie up law enforcement.
Yes, Cal, I would strongly urge that if you’re going to reasonably consider this as an act of organized terrorism–which is, after all, quite rare in this country–you’d better be able to show how it fits the profile in more than a superficial, it-scares-people kind of way. These killings are far more consistent with a garden variety serial killer–Son of Sam with a hunting rifle instead of a handgun.
As for your analysis of 9/11, while the methods were different than past attacks, the targets were precisely the sort of thing Al Qaeda has always gone after. That is just not the case in MD, except in the (once again) superficial feature that innocent people end up dead.
minty how were the targets of 9/11 remotely like what they ave gone after before? Aside from the previous attempt on the WTC, I don’t know of any attempts on large civilian buildings with no government or military associations. The current situation strikes me as very similar – civilan targets, maximum insecurity. And al-Qaeda didn’t announce responsibility after the WTC/Pentagon attacks, either.
Word of advice. Unlearned superficial chicken little comparisions are not a helpful method of analyzing the world.
As to al-Qaeda and related groups and attacks on civilians:
(a) Some history in connection with Algerian Islamist groups, notably the GIA (Islamic Armed Group), but unclear that all are actaully Islamist as opposed to secret services. Ugly situation. Usually done in form of attacks on ‘infrastructure’ of transportation, e.g. attacks on trains and bus lines. These are largely state owned. Similar plans for attacks in France c. 1995. Again, targetting state owned civilian transit.
(b) Some history in Egypt in re al-Gihaad (Jihaad), and more so, al-Hijra wa Takfiir (or Takfiir wa Hijra): attacks on Mosques associated with Sufi groups, of course also on Western tourists.
No known history of sniping as means of spreading terror, to my knowledge.
In regards to WTC matching al-Qaeda’s past history, one has to understand this in the context of Middle Eastern economies and thinking. Large economic institutions are largely either state owned or state associated. Default thinking in the Arab world esp. is to think government controls- directs. Legacy of state capitalist / socialist pasts continuing to this day. Makes negotiating deals a big pain in the ass.
It is very clear that al-Qaeda et al considered WTC (after all something falling into the vague area of State ownership in the context of how things are done elsewhere) to be state economic targets. Well in keeping with their regional experience and past habits.
Little or nothing about these DC killings suggest the slightest al-Qaeda association. Random sniping, while perhaps not imposible for them to self-justify, is hardly in keeping with their ideology and methods.
These only strike you as similar because you don’t know the background for the Salafiste justification for use of violence.
I live, work and go to school in the DC area.
A woman I associate with who is a lifer over at the seCret government spyIng plAce told me she thinks that it is Al-Qaeda. Take from that what you will but she has been right on a couple of other things before.
I just hope it isn’t and that it stops and that someone catches this moster real soon.
Nice to know. I won’t keep my mouth shut.
Really. It Scares People isn’t enough? Why the hell not? Why should I be able to show how it fits into a pattern when successful operations are the ones that break the pattern?
I can’t testify to the reasons for choosing targets like Collounsbury can, but aside from that, what he’s saying is exactly what I’ve been getting at.
No, randomly scaring people is not al-Qaeda’s modus operendi. Toppling governments by hitting at what they consider important targets, economic and military, is.
WTC, for whatever you may think of it, was clearly an important economic target.
Randomly shooting a few people in the suburbs of DC is hardly an effective means of achieving their objectives, chicken littlism not withstanding. In Algeria the ‘faux barrages’ and related attacks get victims in the 50+ range each attack. This, all the hallmark of an individual. Maybe a whacko racist, maybe a whacko individual Islamist, maybe a pure psychotic.
Now, the supertanker off of Yemen, that, if proven to be a terror attack, is very much in line with their aims and past history. Attacking the life blood of economic exchange.
By the way, adults do spell out CIA, although I may add that I really could care less what a secretary at the CIA thinks.
Because all sorts of violent crime scares people, and next to none of it turns out to be organized terrorism.
Because otherwise you’re seeing terrorists behind every door. It’s reasonable to consider whether there is any sort of terrorist connection to these shootings. It is irrational to conclude that there is or is likely to be any such connection in the absence of anything that looks more like terrorism than simple, everyday homicidal looniness.
Then we have no basis for disagreement. You seem to be under the misapprehension that I have thus concluded.
What annoys me is the ease with which the suggestion is brushed aside. The onl argument against it seems to be that “It hasn’t been done that way before, so it can’t be terrorism”, which seems unconvincing in these days of the unconventional.
Let me make it clear (re-read my original posts) – I am not advocating that we assume that these are due to terrorist attacks, and cower accordingly. I am noting that it is by no means impossible, and worthy of consideration.
At most, it’s worthy of a minute’s consideration. In the absence of evidence about the sniper and his motivation, all we can go on for considering the possibility of terrorism is to compare it to previous acts of terrorism. That’s exactly what I did as soon as I learned of the 9/11 attacks, and I concluded in about 10 seconds that it was bin Laden.
And the argument isn’t that “It hasn’t been done that way, so it can’t be terrorism.” The argument is that it hasn’t been done that way before and the targets are completely unlike previous al-Qaeda targets, so it is extraordinarily unlikely to be organized terrorism.
It takes a very different kind of person to blow up a building, than it does to shoot random individuals. When you blow up a building, you can’t see the faces of the people you are killing. You see them as an inhuman mass. If it is a suicide attack, you arn’t alive afterwards to feel remorse and doubt at your actions. It is a one-time deal.
It’s a completely different thing that cold-bloodedly sniping individuals over a period of time. I can see (although obviously I don’t agree with) how blowing up a building or a bus or something can make sense to a religiously devout person. I cannot see how shooting random individuals can be justified. It takes a sociopath to shoot random individuals, not just a fundimentalist.
I’m not saying blowing up stuff isn’t evil. It is. But it is a different kind of evil than the shootings we are seeing.
Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber weren’t given the “T” label either – at least, not that I recall.
Over the last few years I have noticed, and found quite interesting, that in order to be considered a “terrorist” by the media and/or government, it seems some sort of fundamentalist religious affiliation is de rigueur – as though persons without strong fundamentalist religious views cannot be real terrorists.
For the purposes of this discussion, could someone provide a definition of “terrorist” which makes the presumed distinction between an al-Qaeda operative (terrorist) and the Maryland sniper (non-terrorist) clear to me? (Assuming the two are not in fact the same, which is the open-ended question in this thread.)
I ask because I wonder what, if any, practical difference there is between a person of Arab origin who flies a plane full of people into a building full of people, and a white American male like Timothy McVeigh who blows up a building full of people with a truck full of fertilizer? Or someone (quite possible another white American male) who takes pot-shots at random civilians?
All of these behaviors seem underpinned by the idea of “terror”.
Surely you jest. The book in which McVeigh confessed to the authors was actually titled American Terrorist. OKC was frequently described as “the worst act of terrorism ever on American soil.” An appropriate google search yields 21,700 hits.
Unsurprisingly, the title of a book about Ted Kaczynski also labels him a terrorist (Harvard and the Unabomber: The Making of an American Terrorist). Googling “unabomber and terrorist” yields 6,440 hits, many of them contemporary news references.
In short, your recollection is faulty on this point.
I’ve heard McVeigh called a terrorist, many times, in fact.
I heard the Unabomber called a terrorist, but less oftewn since it’s been revealed that he was a lone nut.
I think to be called a terrorist, you don’t have to be a member of an Arab group (just ask the IRA), but you do have to be a member of a group. A cause and a conspiracy may be prerequisites to be a terrorist instead of a simple “mass murderer”. Lone nuts whose ideology is based only upon their own paranoid delusions don’t make the cut, and it is not useful to group them in with larger, well-organized groups, who are killing for a political or social cause.
Collunsbury, take the stick out of your ass.
She has worked for the CIA for 16 years. She has been stationed overseas doing espionage work until she came back to go to law school. She speaks 12 languages.
She ain’t no secretary. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a secretary…
And I didn’t say that she was right, I was just merely reporting what I had heard from her, someone who works in counter terrorism.
I’d be extremely worried about anyone who is working in the CIA’s counter-terrorism unit discussing the DC shootings socially at all, let alone proferring her opinion that they are connected in some way to Al-Qaeda. Way to compromise security lady; especially if you have a friend who then goes and posts your opinions on a public messageboard.
Getting back to the OP. I can’t see how curfews would in any way make the public feel more secure when these shootings are happening in broad daylight.
I DO wish the police would point out to those who turn up at the scene when these shootings happen that a crowd presence only assists the sniper in escaping.