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Terrorism Wins in Spain (pg. 13)
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by NeoPhono
Since terrorism is unquestionably not a new phenomenon, I am wondering if any of you have done any research or reading on how terrorism throughout history has been dealt with? |
Some background...I posted this once before.
It was a cool fall day in November 1979 in a country going through a
religious and political upheaval when a group of Iranian students
attacked and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This seizure was an
outright attack on American soil; it was an attack that held the world's
most powerful country hostage and paralyzed a Presidency. The attack on
this sovereign US embassy set the stage for the events to follow for the
next 23 years.
America was still reeling from the aftermath of the Viet Nam
experience and had a serious threat from the Soviet Union when then,
President Carter, had to do something. He chose to conduct a
clandestine raid in the desert. The ill-fated mission ended in ruin,
but stood as a symbol of America's inability to deal with terrorism.
America's military had been decimated and downsized / right sized since
the end of the Viet Nam war. A poorly trained, poorly equipped and
poorly organized military was called on to execute a complex mission
that was doomed from the start.
Shortly after the Tehran experience, Americans began to be kidnaped
and killed throughout the Middle East. America could do little to
protect her citizens living and working abroad. The attacks against US
soil continued. In April of 1983 a large vehicle packed with high
explosives was driven into the US Embassy compound in Beirut. When it
explodes, it kills 63 people. The alarm went off again and America hit
the Snooze Button once more. Then just six short months later a large
truck heavily laden down with over 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through
the main gate of the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut. 241 US
servicemen are killed. America mourned her dead and hit the Snooze
Button once more. Two months later in December 1983, another truck
loaded with explosives is driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait, and
America continues to slumber. The following year, in September 1984,
another van was driven into the gates of the US Embassy in Beirut and
America slept.
Soon the terrorism spreads to Europe. In April 1985 a bomb explodes
in a restaurant frequented by US soldiers in Madrid. Then in August a
Volkswagen loaded with explosives is driven into the main gate of the US
Air Force Base at Rhein-Main, 22 are killed and the Snooze Alarm is
buzzing louder and louder as US soil is continually attacked.
Fifty-nine days later a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro is hijacked and
we watched as an American in a wheelchair is singled out of the
passenger list and executed. The terrorists then shift their tactics to
bombing civilian airliners when they bomb TWA Flight 840 in April of
1986 that killed 4 and the most tragic bombing, Pan Am Flight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 259. America wants to treat these
terrorist acts as crimes; in fact we are still trying to bring these
people to trial. These are acts of war! The Wake Up alarm is louder and
louder.
The emboldened terrorists decide to bring the fight to America. In
January 1993, two CIA agents are shot and killed as they enter CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The following month, February 1993,
a group of terrorists are arrested after a rented van packed with
explosives is driven into the underground parking garage of the World
Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and over 1000 are
injured. Still this is a crime and not an act of war? The Snooze alarm
is depressed again.
Then in November 1995 a car bomb explodes at a US military complex in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killing seven service men and women. A few months
later in June of 1996, another truck bomb explodes only 35 yards from
the US military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It destroys the
Khobar Towers, a US Air Force barracks, killing 19 and injuring over
500.
The terrorists are getting braver and smarter as they see that America
does not respond decisively. They move to coordinate their attacks in a
simultaneous attack on two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These
attacks were planned with precision, they kill 224. America responds
with cruise missile attacks then goes back to sleep.
The USS Cole was docked in the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling on 12
October 2000, when a small craft pulled along side the ship and exploded
killing 17 US Navy Sailors. Attacking a US War Ship is an act of war,
but we sent the FBI to investigate the crime and went back to sleep.
And of course you know the events of 11 September 2001. Most
Americans think this was the first attack against US soil or in America.
How wrong they are. America has been under a constant attack since 1979
and we chose to hit the snooze alarm and roll over and go back to sleep.
In the news lately we have seen lots of finger pointing from every
high official in government over what they knew and what they didn't
know. But if you've read the papers and paid a little attention I think
you can see exactly what they knew. You don't have to be in the FBI or
CIA or on the National Security Council to see the pattern that has been
developing since 1979. The President is right on when he says we are
engaged in a war. I think we have been in a war for the past 23 years
and it will continue until we as a people decide enough is enough.
America has to "Get out of Bed" and act decisively now. America has
changed forever. We have to be ready to pay the price and make the
sacrifice to ensure our way of life continues. We cannot afford to hit
the Snooze Button again and roll over and go back to sleep. We have to
make the terrorists know that in the words of Admiral Yamamoto after the
attack on Pearl Harbor "that all they have done is to awaken a sleeping
giant." |
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| Yoepus |
| quote: | Originally posted by NeoPhono
Since terrorism is unquestionably not a new phenomenon, I am wondering if any of you have done any research or reading on how terrorism throughout history has been dealt with? |
Actually I wrote a research paper on a very, very similar topic. Unfortunately I can't find it anymore on my Harddisk:(
First, there isn't ..
Wait wait! Good!
I put a copy on my defunct website:
http://www.yoedian.com/y/contents.php?id=6
Ok and heres a summary basically for all those who don't want to read it (and I'll admit, its pretty primitive in ways research paper goes.... it was for freshmen year ;) but it has some good points none th eless)
My findings were this:
There is no such thing as historical terrorism. Terrorism didn't exist in history because there were no bombs, no guns, no liberal democracies, and no way to hear about it. In history what you do have are barbarians or savages. Back to them in a moment.
Striking "terror" into the hearts of the enemies couldn't be done easily by exploding yourself in a city a week away, some people would never hear of it, other wouldn't believe it.
The paper I wrote therefore only address modern terrorism and how come we haven't seen the equivalent of such in history?
The answer again is due to the absence of democracies and good press.
Prior to that, it wasn't essential to kill and terrorize the civilians, it was just essential to do so to the leaders.
There are many historical examples, though it would be hard to describe them in modern terms. One could imageine the huns, mongols, and vikings to be Barbarians. Although I'm not exactly sure what political agenda the vikings were going for.
In the age of gunpoweder, you get angry mobs.
Rebels you get throughout history, though usually rebels were at the top echelon of society. To have a succesful revolution, all you needed is you and your good rich buddies to kill the other bad rich buddies in power, and then your the new guys in power.
bah I'm repeating myself.
Here's two paragraphs from my essay:
| quote: |
First let us start with the democracy. Terrorism is a poor tool against anything but a democracy as its aim is towards intimidating public opinion through violence to concede to their political goal. Nations ruled via a group of few such as Monarchies, Absolute governments, and so on perceives terrorism as nothing but a nuisance. In fact the very fundamentals of ‘terrorists’ aimed against such governments shifts its definition they tend to be more rebels then terrorists. See targeting civilian complexes, civilian population, and even the occasional military asset or two does little to move the way of the ruling few. The misery of the populace is not their foremost concern and so they are willing to concede a few civilian lives for the preservation of their government. If military targets are stricken, they will just draft more recruits into their military with no fear. This is why historically guerilla warfare has had fewer successes against such nations. Indeed terrorists under these types of governments don’t undergo these types of strategies, as they are ineffective. You may see this for example in the 20th century in the cases of almost all the Muslim dictatorships. Their local ‘terrorists’ peruse a tactic of political assassination in an attempt to achieve their political aims. The assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan on July 20th, 1951 or Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1975, and the countless other attempts on prominent political officials throughout the Arab world lay testament to this tactic. Their second tactic in such governments are propagating the citizens (usually through a strong ideological or religious drive) against their current government in hopes for an attempt at cope where the people will recognize the rebels ‘legitimacy’ if they succeed. Muslim terrorists establish mosques that incite hate into the populous and then use them as recruiting grounds for their militias.
Now we can make the jumping point to the democracy. It contrasts greatly here in the fact that that the country is run by the people’s will. So the terrorist tactics against dictatorships, such as political assassinations usually only tend to lead to a strengthening of resolve, and if they don’t the people just elect another leader to fill the other’s place. There aren’t many examples to highlight this in the modern area (which should imply it is indeed a tactic they don’t use) but a comparable situation can be made out of the late Israeli Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin at the hands of an Israeli. The Israeli people were strengthened by his death to make an extra struggle for peace and his predecessor, Shimon Peres followed in his footsteps as best he could. So then, since political assassinations don’t work, how about propaganda? Well this doesn’t seem to work particularly well either. A modern democracy typically has free-press and free speech policies allowing all viewpoints to be heard. This creates a majority middle ground of the democracy’s citizens, which moderates the extremes on either side. In times of peace there is no decisive factor that will move this majority from its moderate views. By their very nature, a terrorist’s political agenda is very far from the middle or else they would ‘play with in the rules’ of the political structure of a democracy. So what do they do? Well they decide to change the opinion of the decision-makers of the country – the majority middle ground citizenry. This is where the communication revolution comes in. Before radio or telegraph terrorism could not work against democracies in the way it does today. People would not be aware of a terrorist incident as it happens and the democratic government would have treated the threat with their best intentions (and usually with acceptance) much as a dictatorship would, by the time the populace would have heard about it. Hearing about an incident from far away late after it happen, left the majority alienated from the incident and did not shift their opinion in one way or another. Furthermore there was still the establishment of newspapers ensuring the majority was the middle ground, and assassinations still yield ineffective since the populace would just re-elect another. Terrorism could be used, but it did not obtain the effectiveness it would obtain by latter improvements in informing the public.
oh oh, and the conclusion!:
From this then I’ll say, that the only reason terrorism exists today is because of the healthy state of our world’s democracies. For without either the democracies themselves, or the press that makes them think we’d just have political assassinations.
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| NeoPhono |
If I were in the position of determining the course of al Qaeda actions, I would choose not to attack the US, but to continue attacking its allies, especially in Europe and the middle east. My reasoning for this is two fold.
First, I believe that Kerry, based on his campaign promises, would not be nearly as quick to act or to use excessive force to deal with terrorism the way Bush has. It is overly simplistic, but in the three and half years since 9/11 under the leadership of Bush, there have been no terrorist attacks on US soil. If there was to be another attack, I believe the American people would again rally around Bush since he has been effective and extremely pro-active thus far and because the previous attack caused outrage at the culprits, not the politicans (which I do not think would change if there were to be another attack). I think this would lead to an easy victory for Bush in the upcoming elections.
Secondly, with continued attacks on American allies in the "war on terror," I believe you would contiue to break up an already fragile coalition and lead it into greater turmoil. The way it stands now through most of the world, this war is extremely unpopular, and I can see participation in it being used as a scapegoat by a population in order to blame politicians for any terrorist strikes on their soil. The more you can get a population to blame politicians for attacks, or even the way they deal with those attacks, instead of who physically committed those acts, the more effective those attacks will be at bringing about change that would benefit the terrorist cause.
In short, I believe that having Kerry elected president is in the best interest of al Qaeda due to the promises he has made while campaigning. If European allies continue to fall as they are constantly under terrorist attack, I think it will only help the Kerry campaign, as well as propogating the "divide and conquer" methodology proposed by Occrider. However, another attack on American soil would due much to bolster the chances of a Bush re-election, and even more retaliation. |
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| Yoepus |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
Yoepus, high-five.
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*SLAP*
n' down-low
:p |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Yoepus
However, if we give Al Q credit for that genius, do we believe that Al Q really is smart enough to use reverse psychology by officially endorsing Bush or are they just stupid?
... and if you chose the smart enough to officially endorse Bush reverse psychology option, than you must interpert this as Al Q actually prefering Kerry to lead than Bush, which means they believe Bush will do more damage to Al Q.
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Only a wily Sicilian knows the answer to that :D
| quote: |
Occrider, I think you could play either side of any debate with success.
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I think my new year's resolution in ott 5 will be to do a 180 on all my opinions. Either that or get off the damned fence on most major issues :) |
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| NeoPhono |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
I think my new year's resolution in ott 5 will be to do a 180 on all my opinions. Either that or get off the damned fence on most major issues :) |
If you need to know the right way to fall, let me know. :D |
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| Yoepus |
and I'll tell you which side to route for on the Israel-Palestine mess, err debate.
I'm sure you will be wonderfully surpised which side I'll tell you to chose:eyes: :stongue:
Still haven't got it huh?
Well it doesn't start with the letter "P", and it doesn't have a "tine" in it...
I'll let you think it over for a few days, you might need the time :p
:happy2:
p.s.
I don't get the sicilian joke, plz help. |
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| occrider |
| Oh and just to add, I would refrain from using the purported Al Q. letter as evidence to formulate an opinion on who would be the better candidate. Not only do we not know if it is authentic, but it would be pointless trying to second-guess the letter's true motivations with the Kerry endorsement hehe. I dunno ... I'm still of the opinion that Kerry would do a better job countering terrorism. But that's another thread topic ... |
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| rainbow_marble |
spain = :haha:
i wonder if the families of those killed are glad that their country wont try to give justice to the terrorist group reponsible.
these terrorists should try taking over europe, then we would watch all the european countries praise the US when we come to aid them... what a bunch of pushovers (england, poland and a few others excluded) |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vesa
My pleasure ;) Makes me remember all those grand arguments of the past :cool:
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Yes they were rather lengthy weren't they? :)
| quote: |
The rest of Vesa's arguments.
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Ok, I agree with your arguments as presented here ;). I just have one caveat add, and that is with this statement:
| quote: |
Of course, it is theoretically possible that the claim "terrorism can change governments" may apply in today's model just as much as it did on 3/11. The claim might even be true in all models depicting modern world, and thus it might be logically valid! However, one can't conclude from a single model whether this type of sentence applies in other models. The only way to know is go inside each different model and try it.
In layman terms, we can't know yet the security level of today. To conclude it logically, we would need a huge amount of information, which would only be possible if we had a God-like omniscience. But history may show us in our later life, how secure we actually were today.
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Whilst your argument here that it would be illogical for us to extrapolate experiences from a single model to predict cause and effect scenarios with other models, is completely true, allow me to add another dimension. Our inability to draw a logically concrete conclusion from a single model resides in the fact that we lack information pertaining to the cost-benefit analysis of that experience along with the personal experiences that these terrorists have had with respect to the ex post facto world/government response. This inability, however, does not necessarily hold the same weight with the terrorists themselves. One could argue that on top of whatever probability based logical system they have for each model, they may also have a certain amount of empirical evidence that supports their decisions one way or the other. After all, this is what ... the 6th or 7th worldwide attack they've committed since 9/11? Perhaps their model provides some kind of indication that the deterrants and increased difficulties that occur with each attack are worth the additional risks given the potential bounties gained from a successful operation. Of course, making that assumption is somewhat flawed since one could make the case that terrorist attacks on the whole are largely unsuccessful in acheiving their objectives and, as a result, these organizations continue to up the ante in order to acheive some of their intended results. But of course, when making that assumption, one could assume that the terrorists could illogically, as you say, arrive at the conclusion that since this big attack was actually successful that additional like-minded attacks will acheive the same results. Oh well ... something to think about I suppose.
Oh and by the way ... I accept your revision of my original statement. It was more or less the point I was trying to make. |
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| DaveSZ |
Terror group claiming responsibility for Madrid bombing wants Bush to win:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...dc&e=2&ncid=721
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Purported Al Qaeda Letter Calls Truce in Spain
Wed Mar 17, 4:56 PM ET Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Opheera McDoom
CAIRO (Reuters) - A group claiming to have links with al Qaeda said on Wednesday it was calling a truce in its Spanish operations to see if the new Madrid government would withdraw its troops from Iraq (news - web sites), a pan-Arab newspaper said.
Reuters Photo
In a statement sent to the Arabic language daily al-Hayat, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which claimed responsibility for the Madrid bombings that killed 201 people, also urged its European units to stop all operations.
"Because of this decision, the leadership has decided to stop all operations within the Spanish territories... until we know the intentions of the new government that has promised to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq," the statement said.
"And we repeat this to all the brigades present in European lands: Stop all operations."
Skepticism has greeted previous claims of responsibility by the group for attacks in Turkey and Iraq. U.S. officials say its links with Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network are unclear.
An unrelated videotape of a man describing himself as al Qaeda's European military spokesman also claimed responsibility for the Madrid bombing, saying it was in retaliation for outgoing Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's domestically-unpopular support for the U.S.-led Iraq war.
In a shock election result three days after the Madrid bombs, Spain voted in the Socialist party, which has since said it will probably withdraw its troops from Iraq.
"The Spanish people... chose peace by choosing the party that was against the alliance with America," the statement said.
WE WANT BUSH TO WIN
The statement said it supported President Bush (news - web sites) in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry (news - web sites), as it was not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom."
In comments addressed to Bush, the group said:
"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization."
"Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected."
The group said its cells were ready for another attack and time was running out for allies of the United States.
"Whose turn is it next? Will it be Japan or America, or Italy, Britain or Oslo or Australia?" the statement said, adding Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were also targets.
The group is named after Muhammed Atef, also known as Abu Hafs, a close bin Laden aide killed in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan (news - web sites).
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This supports Vesa's assertion that cunning tactics will be more effective against terror than Red Coat Vietnam style confrontations (e.g. Iraq).
Vesa you should run for office, because you have a good head on your shoulders.
;)
If the terrorists are politically savvy enough, they will try to attack the US before the elections to help Bush win. |
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