Amid the Hysteria, A Look at What al-Qaeda Can't Do

Time Magazine ^ | January 18, 2010 | Peter Beinert

[drellberg]

In fact, terrorists have not pulled off another attack on the scale of 9/11 anywhere in the world. A 2007 study by Canada's Simon Fraser University found the global death toll from terrorist attacks has substantially decreased since 2001. While al-Qaeda plots do sometimes succeed--like the double-agent operation that killed seven CIA officers in Afghanistan last month--they have become, Rand terrorism expert Brian Jenkins points out, less frequent and less potent.

[tiki]

Let me be the first to say: Bush’s fault.

[Pearls Before Swine]

In fact, terrorists have not pulled off another attack on the scale of 9/11 anywhere in the world.

The Bali nightclub disaster comes immediately to mind.

[Need4Truth]

I see the author credits “fellow Muslims” for putting pressure on terrorists, but not Bush.

[HangnJudge]

If I wanted to terrorize...

A nuke floated into New York harbor
in routine water traffic
would do nicely

Or,
Parking car bombs in hospitals or schools

Maybe,
Floating a houseboat against a dam
packed with high explosives
scuttle it, then detonate below water

That’s what I would do
If I wanted to cause maximal terror

Pretty tough to stop
once the tools are available

A halfway competent terrorist could cause
a fairly massive degree of mayhem
and still be able to walk away undetected
to repeat over again as needed

That is what I’d do...

A car bomb at a hospital, school, or other soft target
would be virtually impossible to stop,
or even detect, in advance
and would be ridiculously simple to implement

You could even set up a webcam to “broadcast” the event

[andy58-in-nh]

The author, Peter Beinert, attempts to minimize the nature of the threat we face by misrepresenting its scope and true identity. "Al-Qaeda" is not the name of our enemy. It does not define the boundaries of the threat to Western civilization; instead it is one of many organizations acting on behalf of radical Islam.

Just in case you wondered, the New America Foundation, which Beinert represents, is a tax-exempt policy shop in DC that claims "non-partisanship" because they don't endorse candidates, but whose output is wholly in support of the Progressive agenda.

[tiki]

LOL, yeah, I believe that.

[hennie pennie]

How many trees were destroyed in the production of this ridiculous trivial twaddle?

I suppose the last paragraph of this ludicrous essay is a shout out to all Americans that the best way to fight terrorism is to spend a day spending money at the local shopping mall.

[flowerplough]

Here’s a Coupla Things al-Qaeda Can’t Do:

Sneak vain, vapid, portly, suicide-bomb-vest-wearing intern girls into the White House for sex with the horndog president.

Sneak a vain, vapid, publicity-seeking, uninvited Washington couple wearing suicide bomb vests into a “y’all come” state dinner for India in the White House.

Accidentally(?) insult our black president with comments about him having “no Negro dialect unless he wants to have one” and get away with it.

Get picked as our black presidential candidate’s running mate after saying something like, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American presidential candidate who is articulate and bright and clean-cut and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

So there’s four specific things al-Qaeda can’t do.

[bitterohiogunclinger]

The author of this article is a moron, and his thought processes, unfortunately are exactly the same as the current bunch of idiots that are running this country.
Terrorists, and terrorism is a tactic, nothing more.
Those that would strut around declaring that “Al Qaeda” hasn't carried out anything as spectacular as 9-11 as evidence of their containment are fools.

The enemy is using asymmetrical warfare tactics against us because they know our liberal progressive kumbaya singing DemonRATs and media elite don't have the intelligence to admit the true nature of our enemies, nor the will to defeat them.

They have managed to cause our liberties to be curtailed and caused us to expend huge amounts of money and lives fighting a “war” with both hands tied behind our backs, while our commie pres-ent hands them lawyers and prosecutes the very patriots that fight to keep us safe.

The enemy plans and fights in terms of centuries. DemonRATs start planning our defeat after two days.

[drellberg]

I posted without adding my own comments but now want to add a few thoughts.

I think this is a difficult subject to parse well.

On the one hand, the US must surely be winning this war on terror, so much of what Beinert says I think is true — even though I see much to dislike about what he’s written (and when he’s written it — where was he during the 7 highly successful Bush years?).

Considering how easy we all think it would be to blow up hospitals, beat TSA security, build IEDs, etc., the fact is that none of this is routine. And for all of the talk of needing new measures to combat attacks of the sort we saw on Xmas Day in Detroit, better communication would have short-circuited this one, too. In other words, all we truly needed in this instance was fewer Dem screwballs running our anti-terrorism infrastructure.

We spend what amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars annually on the war on terror. At that price tag, we better be winning, and I think we are.

On the other hand, the complacency and the stupidity of the Dems is putting our country at real and entirely unnecessary risk.

So the challenge is to make a credible case that this is an effort worth spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to undertake and at the same time make clear that we have the wrong guys spending that money.

[KingNo155]

The terrorists can cause much more harm by not blowing things up but by tying things up, look one guy crossed a secure area to kiss his girlfriend and it shut down the airport for over 7 hrs; how many millions of dollars did that one non terror event cost? How many Security people did that tie up? Thier goal is not to kill us but to pit us against one another so they can come in and save us by converting us to Islam.