February 13, 2004
Why no more 9/11s?
Charles Krauthammer speculates as to why Al-Qaida hasn't attempted another major terrorist attack on American soil since September 11:
Nonetheless, it seems odd to have a moratorium on so intriguing a question. I ask it of almost every intelligence expert I meet. Their speculations fall along two lines.
The first is that al Qaeda has been so severely degraded and disrupted that it simply cannot do it. It has lost its Afghan base, lost much of its funding and is reduced to going back to where Islamic radicals were years ago: launching minor guerrilla operations in Pakistan/Afghanistan, and sending operatives out to hit soft targets such as synagogues in Tunisia and embassies in Istanbul.
A variation on this theme is the idea that as al Qaeda International shrinks, terrorism is becoming more regionalized, being taken over by actors such as Jemaah Islamiyah (Indonesia), Abu Sayyaf (Philippines) and Ansar al-Islam (Iraq).
[...]
But I remain puzzled. Let's say that al Qaeda is so badly hurt that it cannot organize another Sept. 11 with 19 hijackers, four planes and years of training. But how much training, how much planning can it take to pack a few truck bombs and blow them up in a bunch of crowded shopping malls? Considering the economic and psychological havoc that would wreak, why haven't they done it?
After all, Timothy McVeigh did not need a huge terror apparatus to kill 168 people in the heartland of America. It takes but a primitive level of organization to do that. It is hard to believe al Qaeda is not capable of doing the same. So why haven't they?
The other explanation is that it is a matter of pride. Having pulled off the greatest terrorist attack in the history of the world, they do not want to sully their reputation by resorting to the cheap car bomb.
Or put it less psychologically and more strategically: Part of the appeal of al Qaeda -- what it uses to recruit people and funds -- is its mystique. Superhuman feats, brilliant execution, masterful planning. That aura feeds its ideology of historical inevitability, that ultimately it will prevail over Western decadence, because the seeming high-tech West lacks the diabolical and methodical will that Islamism brings to the war.
Could that be it? For the sake of its own mythology, is al Qaeda biding its time until it can pull off the next spectacular?
Posted by damian at February 13, 2004 07:48 AM