Cobb: Building Defensive Weapons

September 02, 2004

Building Defensive Weapons

The other day a specialist was on NPR bemoaning the lack of organization in the Department of Homeland Security. I have my biases.

I think that, depeding on your defintion of 'win', we can win the WoT. If the goal of terror is to terrorize, then we must refuse to be terrorized. That starts with reducing the hyperbole associated with manic rhetoric about how shoddy DHS is. The fact of the matter is that we have had no significant events of terrorism since three years ago. We must be doing something right. But let's dig deeper.

It has been said that mechanical engineers build weapons and civil engineers build targets. What are the targets of terrorism and what are the defensive weapons we can build? I hear grousing about the lack of sophisticated airline security with regard to the number of bags that are x-rayed and scanned. Some context should be drawn as to whether this legitimate complaint has merit in perspective.

I come at it this way. AQ had a number of years to plan the plane hijackings. It involved senior planners and fairly large cells. Let us assume that this was their Pearl Harbor. They will never again be able to pull off a stunt of this magnitude unless we are totally inept. Secondly, we have captured or killed most of the senior leadership. We have attrited their ability to create, plan and carry out such massive attacks. We've had two Olympics and two major political conventions without incident. Is it possible that they can no longer plan well enough to take out the biggest targets? Is there no mother of all terrorist acts in the works? I think there aren't quite enough masterminds remaining to pull it off, and we've demonstrated our willingness to run our military through two countries making sure.

On the other hand, there are baby Bin Ladens with one and two, perhaps three years of experience. Relatively speaking, these young turks will be amateur terrorists. What do amatuer terrorists do? That's easy - look to Iraq. They kidnap and behead. They use car and truck bombs. They attacked the UN headquarters in Iraq. They form ragtag militias.

So now we throw in a bit of rhetorical thinking. It seems to me that when one thinks of AQ capability of fielding weapons of mass terror, our attriting ability and record is parallel to that against Saddam Hussein ability to field weapons of mass destruction. Once you start taking out the leaders, you reduce the net ability of the enemy to field sophisticated super weapons. Iraq, after our total domination of it, no longer poses a threat, not for the lack of trying as Baathist and Sadrists prove - but for lack of ability based on our battle of attrition. Understand that it is the ability of AQ to recurit minds like Atta which increases their ability to deploy weapons of mass terror. But men such as Atta are as scarce as weapons scientists. Each officer we take out of AQ, exponentially aids our cause and reduces the net potential of that organization. When we prevail, what will be lef of AQ is a network of suicide bombers and rock throwers. We don't defeat terrorism, we defeat mass terrorism.

What this means for our defense is that here at home we will face, perhaps what Russians face with Chechnya or what Spaniards face with ETA or what Chinese face with Falun Gong or what Israelis face with Hamas: an unending stream of small acts of terrorism. Will America be able to absorb a monthly bus bomb? Hard to say. But the fact that we have no large attacks - nobody taking out the Golden Gate Bridge, nobody cropdusting cities with Anthrax says something.

The expert made a point that I think bears repeating. We don't have enough EMTs. We don't have enough ambulance drivers. We don't have enough firefighters. These are the people who are going to make a difference in dealing with the 3 year old terrorists. But it hasn't come to that even in three years.

I think as we advance most forcefully against the masterminds and the networks of WMD proliferation, we will severely attrit the ability of anyone but state sponsored terrorists to recruit for, plan and carry out acts of mass terrorism. But we'll never stop the molotov cocktails, rock throwers and mad bombers. They can be anywhere, at any time, for any fool reason. But I think the lessons of the Sadrists in Iraq are very instructive, for to carry out a radical jihad, some loud mouths must be heard and some holy order must be established. They are the groups, like Hamas, in the middle. There is where we will watch.

Posted by mbowen at September 2, 2004 11:05 AM

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Comments

Is it too cynical that none of these things would have filled the pockets of the military industrial complex?

There are bad people in the world; those people will do bad things. Sometimes, really bad things.

There were no bus bombing before 9/11� your average terrorist comes to the US to blow something up and then they sit in Greenwich Village having a coffee and realize if they can get their Uncle to send them some of those rugs they have been making at home for nothing� he can sell those on the street and make more money than his parents have ever seen.

Posted by: Robert at September 2, 2004 12:13 PM

I always recall the concept that people don't have weaknesses, they just rely too heavily on their strengths. It's a variation on the 'man with a hammer' theory - he sees every problem as a nail, and so he bangs.

So a reorganization and consolidation of 22 departments into the DHS is somewhat of a nothing and something of a surprise. It allows the Coast Guard to keep guarding the coast, and the Customs people 'customizing'. But it also forces them to think about what each other is doing.

From that cross communication some real growth and progress can come. It gives opportunity for synthesis to rise in a greater organization. We'll see.

Posted by: Cobb at September 2, 2004 12:18 PM