Vatican City is the seat of Catholicism, but in the eyes of most of the non-Christian world, I suspect it represents all of Christianity, so it seems like it would be an extremely attractive target for ISIS and those inspired by them.
There have been a number of terrorist attacks in Europe in recent years, ranging from trucks mowing down crowds of people to bombs in the Brussels airport. So why haven’t we yet seen an attack on/in Vatican City? Is their border security really amazing? Is the security at the borders of Italy (which completely encompasses VC) really amazing?
I would think being completely contained in another country would make it difficult to target without taking down that contry. They have to get into Italy and then make it to Vatican City. I guess they could do a fake ecumenical mission, but that doesn’t seem to be how ISIS operates.
And, remember that the refugees haven’t really been a good source to get in the country. So all you’re left with is radicalized Muslims who already live there. But of be weird for them to be in Vatican City. Few people are allowed there.
It’s not off the table, and I’m just guessing. But these do seem like reasonable issues to me.
My WAGs is they are not at war with Christianity, they are at war with infidels.
Going further they are at war with the concept of freedom. The Vatican has a structure more like they want (with more factors if you break down what they want into check boxes, such as religious leadership over a people and a non-democracy). And Islamic groups have expressed war against freedom as one of the main goals and main tactics, Bin Laden has said they will use our freedom (in the US) to destroy it. So their terror tactics appear to be to get the free people to trade their freedom for security and is working. Such a tactic wouldn’t work so well in the Vatican where there is no legal concept of freedom.
Such groups also use martyrs to spur on their cause, an attack against the Vatican would give that ‘weapon’ to their enemy, and produce martyrs on the other side, far more powerful and now unkillable.
Hah??? Paris, Madrid and London are “completely contained within” their respective countries. Unless you think the Swiss Guards are some super-deterrent, being “completely contained” within Italy isn’t going to help. And many of the recent terror attacks have been done by people born in the country where the attack took place-- no need to “take down” the surrounding country (which isn’t needn’t anyway, even if the attackers are not native).
It’s been quite a while since the Pope had an army; neither has Vatican City imported a bunch of “foreigners” & denied them citizenship.
I don’t think the terrorists fight “ideas” as much as they fight what they perceive as injustice. Even if some of their perceptions are correct, I must add that their methods of retaliation are utterly wrong.
Well, there’s a handy wall around Vatican City with much more restricted access points than getting into Paris or London.
I assume a big part of it though is that there’s little leverage benefit to it. You bomb a shopping mall in a country to make the government pull out of your corner of the world and go away. What benefit is there to blowing something up inside the Vatican? The Swiss Guard isn’t fighting ISIS. Sure, there’s some “We blew up something culturally important” aspect to it but you’d get better results by blowing up the Louvre instead. Even if you want to get the attention of the Italian government, there’s softer targets in Rome than Vatican City.
Indeed I had; it’s been almost 36 years now. But you’re making my case for me: while the rest of Europe has suffered in recent years from a rash of truck attacks, nightclub/cafe shootings, and airport/train bombings, Vatican City has remained a safe haven for decades.
But the Vatican is very small and the rest of Europe is quite big. There must be other 0.44 square kilometer “safe havens” in Europe, even in urban areas.
Sure, but if you’re going to spend years preparing for an attack of that nature, you might as well use it on the Pentagon (or the WTC, or on Capitol Hill or the White House, etc) rather than on Vatican City. The OP was asking about attacks similar to those in Europe: truck attacks and bombs, not crashing airliners.
Plus, I think an attack on Vatican City fails on the “terror” department. Seemingly random attacks on nightclubs and airports make people feel scared that they could be attacked anywhere. An attack on the Pope is more like “Well, glad I’m not the Pope I guess”. You could attack the tourist crowds but there’s a million easier tourist crowds in Italy to attack. Relative to the extra difficulty in attacking it, I don’t see the value versus attacking some other landmark location.
But the Vatican is not just another random chunk of Europe: it’s a stand-out target. If you’re a terrifying terrorist of terror, and you want to make the biggest possible splash on the evening news, which would be the best choice to attack:
One issue is that the Vatican has no temporal power. In theory, an attack on the US will scare us into leaving the Middle East to the terrorists (I said “in theory,” not in reality). Same for other European governments who are allied against ISIS.
The Vatican only has words and moral authority. While there’s little chance an attack on other countries would make a difference, there’s still a chance. There is absolutely no chance that an attack on the Vatican would accomplish any of the terrorists’ goals.
But you might as well ask, every time a suburban Parisian café is attacked, why they didn’t blow up the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or some other splashy target that’s a much shorter drive from the coffee shop. Even if we accept your notion that the Vatican is the cream of the target list, there’s a huge expanse between “random street in Brussels” and “Vatican City” so, if they’re hitting a random street in Brussels then there’s probably a reason for it.
911 turned out to be a rallying cry & wake up call for the average US citizen
The Vatican & the Pope attacked by a known radical group like ISIS would be a rallying cry & wake up pissed type call to far more people of the world & incite many less hawk like people to turn against the terrorist in a most hawkish way. IMO.
If we buy that the terrorists are doing anything except killing what they see as cardboard cutout bots, their goal is to change government behavior.
In a democracy it’s plausible to change government behavior by altering citizens’ attitudes.
No small number of people in the US want to wall off the Mideast and leave it to fester in its own juices. Every time there’s an attack in/on the US there’s a call for vengeance and a separate call for a more hermetic wall around the viper pit. Shame that oil makes the former attractive and the latter impossible.
How exactly is the “government” of the Vatican going to change policy to the terrorists’ benefit if some outrage is perpetrated there? It’s not. More accurately, it can’t.
OTOH, if you think of terrorists as mere nihilists who’re simply trying to kill or destroy anyone / anything not of their team, then the Vatican is as valid a target as any other cultural or political artifact in Europe.
ISTM the fact we don’t yet see an attack on the Vatican is a slight endorsement for the former theory. OTOH, Europe is a target-rich environment and they’ve only managed a handful of attacks per decade. So asking “Why hasn’t the Vatican been hit (yet)?” is much like asking “Why hasn’t lightning struck in my front yard (yet)?”.
The answer is far more a matter of random sparse statistics than it is deliberate aim.
No there isn’t. First, Vatican City isn’t completely surrounded by any walls (there are places where it has the permanent equivalent of a white picket fence, others where not even that); second, the actual wall that for some reason certain ignoramuses seem to confuse with the Great Wall of China, and which is as high and less difficult to climb* as the average vegetable-garden wall, as found in any Mediterranean countries, only surrounds the Vatican gardens.
the wall around the Vatican gardens doesn’t have chunks of broken glass stuck on top, unlike a lot of non-Vatican vegetable gardens.
Obviously “A”. An effective terror organization does not blow people up for shits and giggles, the do it to further their agenda. A random Cafe will send a message to the populace, which is the purpose of a bombing. It is to say “you are not safe, wherever you are, we can hit you anytime anyplace, be afraid.” Plus you have less chance of being caught by security.
For a terror organization, there is a lot to lose by hitting a target like the Vatican. You get most of Catholicism pissed at you and many others who might otherwise support or be sympathetic to your aims.