Al Qaeda, strategy, and what would be "success"

[pigeonmeister]

[quote]

Originally Posted by Feltan

Well we do have some common ground after all.

I hope so- I do feel that there were some noble intentions within US strategy in Iraq and Vietnam. I have nothing like the world view of the vast majority of the anti-war movement. I opposed the war, principly for the reason that it would not work- not much else. Most criticism of US foreign policy is as unsustainable as the arguments of the pro-war lobby, and I have argued that on this forum. I am just very wary of the fact that a whole generation of right wing political commentators are already laying the blame on the US domestic scene and not what is happening in Iraq. There is an inherent arrogance in believing that American power is limited only by US public opinion.

I agree with that portion of your post, but from a slightly different slant -- namely, Americans love a winner and despise a loser. If Bush and company cannot show, in some meaningful sense, a "victory" he will go down in history as a loser....and be despised.

And what are the variables for making this historical judgement? Is it just a battle for PR within the US that might be won or might be lost depending on a George Clooney Oscar speech or a CNN report? I don't think so- American policy makers are being held ransom by (and reacting to) events in Iraq.

As far as war aims shifting? Other than WWII, I know of few conflicts in living memory where the war aims did not change -- it happens. However, those "shifting war aims" still need a path to victory, or they are useless in the extreme.

Reminds of the Simpsons sketch- in which Bart says something like 'All war is bad- except for the following wars: The America War of Independence, WW2 and all three Star Wars!

I know of no other conflict which has seen the underlining premises behind it so comprehensively and (more importantly) contemporarily debunked. Wars of choice, require a solid justification and an exit strategy grounded in reality. Iraq has niether and is suffering because of it. The fact is that this is a unique venture without a precedent of historical success (Bush tries to evoke post WW2 Germany and Japan- but no serious historian gives credence to this analogy) I think what you are saying is 'No war plan survives contact with the enemy'. Perhaps you are right here, but then are you saying that there can be no accountabilty- 'We tried, it was a bit harder than we thought, but at least we had a go'?

[pigeonmeister]

Originally Posted by jBirch

To clarify, I'm of the opinion that the fundamental nature of the terrorism conflict is PR because a terrorist is impossible to stop militarily.

James.

That's a very interesting observation, and one I would probably agree with (in that terrorism cannot be eliminated by militarily force)- but then in relation to Iraq we are not talking just about PR relating to the terrorist threat. We are also talking about PR relating to a political process that has both military, economic and political elements interwoven. A peace process is different to a terrorist threat in that 'success' is dependent on other factors apart from PR, although still reliant on it in some areas. If a bomb goes off but nobody reports it then does the bomb actually exist?- perhaps not. But if a country gets election it has to some extent at least a participatory democracy, regardless of how it is reported it is defined by the tangible existance of institutions- not a single event.

Iran is another case where an actual process and issues of terrorism are interwoven. If Iran is a terrorist state then it is surely impossible to beat militarily (and presumably politicaly or economicaly)- but PR is still not going to be the only deciding factor apart from this.

[dcmdale]

Originally Posted by pigeonmeister

But you completely ignore what changed the domestic political considerations. Was it the nature of the conflict or the nature of the protest?

An interesting question. I would suggest that the two worked in combination along with other social factors that shaped the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. If you have 400,000 people marching through San Francisco, are they all there with a unified motive? How much did changes in draft policy feed the protests? It suddenly got harder for middle-class, suburban white males to avoid the draft. Dads, who previously supported the war, now started worrying how to hide their own kids. The availability of student exemptions that tended to put all the kids who put it off for 4 years onto the same campuses with a fear that 4 years might not be enough? How much was the excitement of “being part of something big?” Or a convenient excuse to cut school? How much was a reaction to perceived racism? Rebellion at authority?

However, if I were to characterize the piece that I had visibility into: I can’t remember that I ever had a discussion with anybody about whether or not it was possible to win the war. The real question that we argued about a lot was whether we had a right to be there in the first place and whether it was worth American lives to fight over some real estate half way around the world. I think that while there was a general frustration with what was going on over there, the assumption was that the U.S. could “win” whatever that meant. (“We were after all the most powerful country in the world.”) The idea that the war was couldn’t possibly be won wasn’t something that *I* heard until much later. Other people’s experiences may vary.

Originally Posted by pigeonmeister

Are you really saying that if domestic pressure had not forced a withdrawal (and lets not forget this was a policy that went back to Eisenhower and the 50's) then there was still a chance of a succesful outcome after 1975? What grounds do you give for this?

History is full of “what ifs” and I really don’t want to refight this period. Until the end, the military, at least outwardly, felt that they were never able to prosecute the war in a manner that made sense from a military standpoint. All the things that they would have done differently were never discussed publicly; however, it certainly involved interdiction of supplies before they got into the jungles, disruption of command and control centers in the North, and elimination of bases outside the country. Again, I am not saying that it would have been successful, but that it was an open question at the end of the war and one that I don’t think will ever be answered.

Originally Posted by pigeonmeister

I am not going to argue that much of the Vietnam protesters were not drugged up hippies who had a totaly unrealistic world view and very few solutions to the reality of international geopolitics- they still do to some extent.

Many of those people were friends, so I probably hold a higher view of many of them. As with any group that size, there was a pretty good representation of the population in terms of what they understood and brought to the table (or didn’t).

Originally Posted by pigeonmeister

Research is never based solely on press reports and doesn't have to based on observation (there was history and historical research before films and newspapers after all). However all of what I have said can be found in the memoirs of those involved, but the multitude of declassified documents (officially or stolen) are equally revealing. McNamara's 'Fog of War' is an example of a semi official, semi autobiographical source- either way he would never argue that the US media cost America the war.

You do more than most then. I actually was including (in my own mind) in the concept of “press” all of the public forms of information and analysis that make up the literature about events like this. My real point, though, is that almost all sources of information have built-in filters. Obviously, we try to compensate by reading alternative viewpoints, etc. My concern with the image we have of Vietnam is that as time moves on, the issues “simplify” and get categorized.

I at one point, I lived in a neighborhood with 70% Vietnamese (yes, the school was bi-lingual: Spanish, but that is another thread). I would say from talking with these people that the average guy in Vietnam didn’t care much about whether the government was American or North Vietnamese or South Vietnamese. There is a myth that the population was all in favor of the VC and that everybody was a villager by day and a gun-toting VC by night. An American patrol would come into the village; the villagers wouldn’t cooperate partly because they didn’t like the Americans, partly because cooperation would be punished by the VC. The VC would come into the village, demand that so many villagers participate in an operation and destroy the village if the demand wasn’t met. The Americans find out that villagers participated in the operation, so they burn the village. American soldiers started seeing a VC in every villager. Antiwar activists didn’t dispute that because it fit with their argument that we were at war with the people of Vietnam. All these Vietnamese peasants wanted was for people to leave them alone.

Iraq may be different in this regard. It seems from participation in the political process that they do care more.

[dcmdale]

Originally Posted by jBirch

To clarify, I'm of the opinion that the fundamental nature of the terrorism conflict is PR because a terrorist is impossible to stop militarily.
James.

And I am arguing that PR is critical, but not sufficient.

[pigeonmeister]

Originally Posted by dcmdale

An interesting question. I would suggest that the two worked in combination along with other social factors that shaped the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. If you have 400,000 people marching through San Francisco, are they all there with a unified motive? How much did changes in draft policy feed the protests? It suddenly got harder for middle-class, suburban white males to avoid the draft. Dads, who previously supported the war, now started worrying how to hide their own kids.

To me this gets to the heart of what I am saying. What was driving the process behind all this, I think that you are saying the draft was a huge factor. This is, probably, why Americans are protesting the war in Iraq in a profoundly different way to the 60's and 70's. My parents attended Birmingham (UK) University 1963-67, there were sit-ins, mass speeches, a real sense of political engagement on campus. I attend the same University now and I am telling you that most students care more about which bar has pound a pint night tonight. The point is that the draft had a profound and unique affect on American domestic opinion.

What I am saying is that you need to look at what was driving the draft as the most important factor, rather than identifying the draft itself. What was driving the draft had very little to do with American politics and a lot more to do with the escalation of troop numbers required to prop up the unsustainable South Vietnamese government.

However, if I were to characterize the piece that I had visibility into: I can’t remember that I ever had a discussion with anybody about whether or not it was possible to win the war. The real question that we argued about a lot was whether we had a right to be there in the first place and whether it was worth American lives to fight over some real estate half way around the world.

But would you have been having the same conversation about America's right to be there if America had achieved its aims quickly and with little sacrifice? Vietnam festered over at least 4 terms and 3 presidents, troops were dieing from the early 60's until almost the mid 70's, 58,000 died. Yet if you look at the Korean War, the cost was much larger if you take into account that almost 34,000 were killed in just 3 years. It was the fact that Vietnam was strung out over a long period (of albeit enormous cultural and social change anyway) that made it imprint on consciousness and that reason was because the situation on the ground was never strong enough to cut troop escalation let alone start a withdrawal. This means that, as you say: 'The two worked in combination along with other social factors that shaped the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s.' It doesn't mean that there was no cause and effect.

History is full of “what ifs” and I really don’t want to refight this period. Until the end, the military, at least outwardly, felt that they were never able to prosecute the war in a manner that made sense from a military standpoint.

Again I feel you slightly miss my point- the military solution was winnable in that America could have kept 500,000 troops in Vietnam for ever and they could have said, nominaly, that the South was not communist. You are looking at Vietnam as a war that could have been won or lost if different tactics had been employed. Whilst in fact Vietnam was a political problem in which military action could only play a small part. The fact that the military part (of what was in effect a nation-building exercise) so dominates conjecture is testament to how little chance the poltical solution stood.

All the things that they would have done differently were never discussed publicly; however, it certainly involved interdiction of supplies before they got into the jungles, disruption of command and control centers in the North, and elimination of bases outside the country. Again, I am not saying that it would have been successful, but that it was an open question at the end of the war and one that I don’t think will ever be answered.

Again- how does any of this a) make the American's more popular in the eyes of the Vietnamse b) give any more legitimacy to the hated Southern government- whose survival was the basic raison d'aitre for America involvement. If you are propping up a hated regime then however succesful the US army were, that government will never have popular legitimacy. What is a government without popular legitimacy- dictatorship, and this was not an America aim.

My concern with the image we have of Vietnam is that as time moves on, the issues “simplify” and get categorized.

true- look at the artificially 'forced' Vietnam analogy in Iraq. 90% of it is invalid, although some comparisons can be noted. Much of it is probably just cognitive dissonance.

There is a myth that the population was all in favor of the VC and that everybody was a villager by day and a gun-toting VC by night.

Is there?

All these Vietnamese peasants wanted was for people to leave them alone. Iraq may be different in this regard. It seems from participation in the political process that they do care more.

Totaly different political cultures, but from what I hear most Iraqis just want to be able to go to work or school without fear of death and would like electricity most of the day. Partipation largely means voting for whoever the local cleric tells you to.

[dcmdale]

Originally Posted by pigeonmeister

To me this gets to the heart of what I am saying. What was driving the process behind all this, I think that you are saying the draft was a huge factor. This is, probably, why Americans are protesting the war in Iraq in a profoundly different way to the 60's and 70's. My parents attended Birmingham (UK) University 1963-67, there were sit-ins, mass speeches, a real sense of political engagement on campus. I attend the same University now and I am telling you that most students care more about which bar has pound a pint night tonight. The point is that the draft had a profound and unique affect on American domestic opinion.

I think the point that I am trying to make is that Vietnam, in particular, and the '60's, in general, was an intensely complex and polarizing experience for the U.S. and it was a period that could better be described as "simply over" rather than "resolved." About the only common conclusion that I think people from that era could agree on was that it was a bad trip. I think that those who lived through that period, myself included, mostly stuck the emotional baggage of that period up on a back shelf to stew in the person's own conclusions and prejudices. Time tends to simplify the complexity of the issues and it is that simplification that I am reacting to.

For those whose views were hawkish, the stew tends to simplify in the direction of "the liberal press was responsible." For those on the anti-war side, it has produced "inevitable failure." I think both conclusions are unprovable oversimplifications that tend to simply justify positions held at the end of the war. I think that the role of the press is overstated by the right wing commentators as you have stated. However, I think that liberals tend to minimize that role. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to dismiss any non-failure possibilities with a certainty that is not justified; conservatives, however, minimize the challenges faced by those alternatives.

Originally Posted by pigeonmeister

Is there?

This was an assumption made by both sides in the U.S. during the war. For hawks, it justified the brutal tactics employed by U.S. troops and allowed body counts to be inflated because one didn't have to distinguish VC and civilian bodies. For doves, it supported their belief that the U.S. was trying to impose an unpopular government on the people and that we were really fighting the populace, not an army. Neither side had any real reason to question this assumption and the assumption fits with American beliefs about the essential political nature of man.

I was aware at the time that there were people (generally doctors or missionaries with a long history working with the people) who challenged that assumption, but largely they weren't heard. My occasional dealings with Vietnamese since, however, has caused me to seriously question that assumption.

I think that the assumption had strong strategic implications in Vietnam. As for Iraq?

[pigeonmeister]

This was an assumption made by both sides in the U.S. during the war. For hawks, it justified the brutal tactics employed by U.S. troops and allowed body counts to be inflated because one didn't have to distinguish VC and civilian bodies. For doves, it supported their belief that the U.S. was trying to impose an unpopular government on the people and that we were really fighting the populace, not an army. Neither side had any real reason to question this assumption and the assumption fits with American beliefs about the essential political nature of man.

I hate to bang on about this- but what was underlying or catalysing this split? Was it the nature of two polarised groups supporting their different agendas? Or was it the nature of the conflict- i.e the fact that the VC moved through the populace and 'hearts and minds' operations with the populace were limited by the fact that they were (as you identified a few posts ago) torn between being punished by the VC or punished by the US army. I still think that you are correctly identifying the huge cultural and political shifts in the US as being interwoven into Vietnam, and all melded into popular culture. Vietnam transcended into the civil rights movement, popular poltical consciousness and established divisive generational, social and political battle lines. The media (like popular culture) reflected this- but you are making no attempt to seperate cause and effect. By mis-mashing everything that happened in the 60's you are adopting only a cultural approach. You have to look at Vietnam as a concept-and make a judgement if it was a viable one before you even consider American domestic opinion (given that domestic support was totaly sustainable for the vast majority of American efforts there)

I think that the assumption had strong strategic implications in Vietnam. As for Iraq?

Lets get beyond 'strategic implications' and state that US troops, in Vietnam, were often trigger happy and criminaly so. One of America's most decorated soldiers of all time (Col Hackworth) called Vietnam 'One big atrocity'. To be fair I think that, by and large, American forces are now better trained for dealing with an enemy that uses the civilian populace.

[dcmdale]

Originally Posted by pigeonmeister

The media (like popular culture) reflected this- but you are making no attempt to seperate cause and effect. By mis-mashing everything that happened in the 60's you are adopting only a cultural approach.

There is a degree of accuracy in characterizing what I have been saying as a cultural approach. I certainly don't disagree that there existed cause and effect relationships (see my statements about the draft, for example) and I am not even going to say that those causes and effects cannot be analysed; however, I am intensely skeptical of most of the analysis that I have encountered: partly because of the complexity of the period, partly because I think a sizable part of the population still has emotional baggage associated with it (even if they didn't live through it). Cause and effect may be easy to figure out in Physics, but it is less so with history. Subtle things may have significant impacts. To use the draft example again: did the student deferment cause colleges in the '60's to get a higher concentration of liberal students and did that in turn produce a higher concentration of liberal professors in subsequent years and does the liberality of that scholarship influence "acceptable views of Vietnam" today? Could be a causal chain there. Might also be conservative fantasy. YMMV.

I should note that, over time, I have become more skeptical of all historical analysis because my experience has been that the black-letter analysis I learned is so rarely supported by reality when I dive further into a period and that when I approach a period thinking I know something about it, I often find myself improperly prejudiced by previous analysis that I have read.

It is certainly possible to put together a case for the "unwinnable war" position. However, that case is going to be predicated on beliefs concerning which causes produced which effects. Those beliefs aren't necessarily shared across the spectrum. The conclusion plays a lot better in groups where there are similar beliefs. Your conclusion may, in fact, be correct, but I am not going to regard it as proven as against other opinions that may be built off the same data but reach different results. It is hard to say with certainty what would have happened it another path had been chosen.

Originally Posted by pigeonmeister

Lets get beyond 'strategic implications' and state that US troops, in Vietnam, were often trigger happy and criminaly so. One of America's most decorated soldiers of all time (Col Hackworth) called Vietnam 'One big atrocity'. To be fair I think that, by and large, American forces are now better trained for dealing with an enemy that uses the civilian populace.

Boys with guns. I suspect that the troops in Vietnam were no more trigger happy than in previous wars. It just didn't get reported. As the WWII and Korea generations are aging, I have been hearing more "getting peace about it before I die" type stories from that period. Not justifying Vietnam.

Better training for this type of war? I certainly hope so.

Relating Vietnam back to my original question: I have backhandedly indicated that I think the U.S. may have been fighting the "wrong war" in Vietnam because of assumptions they were making about the populace. Same in Iraq?

[jBirch]

Originally Posted by dcmdale

Boys with guns. I suspect that the troops in Vietnam were no more trigger happy than in previous wars. It just didn't get reported. As the WWII and Korea generations are aging, I have been hearing more "getting peace about it before I die" type stories from that period. Not justifying Vietnam.

Well, different wars to be sure. WWI and WWII were still old world European style conflicts with "civilised" states on both sides fighting relatively equal "people".

The two wars in SE Asia were more like the Boer and East Indian Insurrections in British history or the various Native campaigns in US history where the "invaders" and "occupiers" saw themselves as somehow more humanely superior to their enemies and their host states (where states, or state concepts actually existed).

Better training for this type of war? I certainly hope so.

Absolutely, but the lessons weren't learned.

In Iraq and Afghanistan US forces have learned to sucessfully overcome the conventional military quickly and overwhelmingly. The US is absolutely brilliant at the initial invasion and the strategic manouvre for defeating any military and political resistence.

Where the US fails is as an occupying force. The lessons it should be learning are the ones from its own Revolutionary War and the various British expeditions in the 19th century. Not, necessarily, anything from these recent foreign excursions. The Anti-US sentiment in the world today is exactly the same as the (still festering) anti-English sentiment of the 19th century. If the US fails to learn from that example, then it is doomed to failure. By all accounts, it has completely forgotten what it should have learned.

The US taught the world that a nation of citizens CAN NOT be occupied and coerced yet it continues (paradoxically) to try to prove that philosophy wrong. The British tried the same grand strategy and failed. Why does the US think it can make a go of it?

Relating Vietnam back to my original question: I have backhandedly indicated that I think the U.S. may have been fighting the "wrong war" in Vietnam because of assumptions they were making about the populace. Same in Iraq?

I agree that some US Generals and Politicians are of that opinion and that many US units operate with that base assumption driving their doctrine. However...it is untrue to say that all US units are like this and that all US operations are tainted with that faulty assumption.

James.

[dcmdale]

Originally Posted by jBirch

The US taught the world that a nation of citizens CAN NOT be occupied and coerced yet it continues (paradoxically) to try to prove that philosophy wrong. The British tried the same grand strategy and failed. Why does the US think it can make a go of it?

Good military strategists are nothing if not military historians. I am not a historian of any stripe. Even I, however, can think of dozens of both successful and unsuccessful occupations that can be divided up into about 5 basic approaches with good and bad examples of each. That doesn't mean, however, that people that know how to win an occupation are in the appropriate decision making positions. (See comments about powerpoint jockeys).

The retrospective on Vietnam did push me a little towards "hearts and minds" and where current directions in Iraq are failing to get the desired results. I am suspecting that, like Vietnam, the values that we are trying to win hearts and minds with are our values, not the values most important to the audience.

[pigeonmeister]

Originally Posted by dcmdale

The retrospective on Vietnam did push me a little towards "hearts and minds" and where current directions in Iraq are failing to get the desired results. I am suspecting that, like Vietnam, the values that we are trying to win hearts and minds with are our values, not the values most important to the audience.

Values maybe the same, it is institutions that protect and symbolise them that Iraq lacks and that, I believe, cannot be installed- but must grow organicaly. If America wants a Western style nation-state then this must surely come in conjunction with the kind of social, economic and political revolution that came with the Western nation state. Otherwise it is just bolting Western ideals onto indiginous sources of authority and political culture.

The Iraqi people just want to walk the streets without fear and that is a universal value if ever there was one. However cementing this may require the sidestepping of Western political 'values' i.e The US has to strike a deal with militant elements of the Mahdi army, it has to recognise the authority of tribal elders and non elected sheiks/clerics.

As in Vietnam US objectives are proportional to the effectiveness and popular legitimacy of the government whose authority it is fighting to maintain.

[dcmdale]

Originally Posted by pigeonmeister

Values maybe the same, it is institutions that protect and symbolise them that Iraq lacks and that, I believe, cannot be installed- but must grow organicaly. If America wants a Western style nation-state then this must surely come in conjunction with the kind of social, economic and political revolution that came with the Western nation state. Otherwise it is just bolting Western ideals onto indiginous sources of authority and political culture.

The Iraqi people just want to walk the streets without fear and that is a universal value if ever there was one. However cementing this may require the sidestepping of Western political 'values' i.e The US has to strike a deal with militant elements of the Mahdi army, it has to recognise the authority of tribal elders and non elected sheiks/clerics.

As in Vietnam US objectives are proportional to the effectiveness and popular legitimacy of the government whose authority it is fighting to maintain.

Can't find anything that I disagree with.

[jBirch]

I read an interesting article in SITREP today written by a US LCOL with the following premises:

1) Terrorism has as its primary weapon the suicide bomber.
2) No matter how/when/where a suicide bomber detonates themselves, they are successful.
3) Suicide bombers are immune to military prosecution precisely because they must be found and killed outright before they have a chance to detonate their explosives. Any engagement that doesn't result in their immediate and instant death, will not prevent their success.
4) It is their belief and faith in their jealous God that motivates them as a weapon.
5) Because they are motivated by blind faith, they are immune to logical persuasion as a means of disarmament.
6) Suicide bombers are suspiciously moral/ethical/devout. They are truly God's soldiers and as such, oddly inspiring in a superhero kind of way.
7) Aiding the effectiveness of these weapons is the irresponsible mass media. If a suicide bomber detonates, and nobody is around to hear/see, did they really detonate?
8) They operate with a divine righteousness that leads them to innovate explosives and craft their weapons in the basements of their homes, shacks in the woods and back alleys.
9) Because they can not be stopped with firepower, can not be found with sensors, and can not be persuaded with reason, the battlespace, therefor, is for the souls of these weapons from a religious perspective. The only way to disarm them is to convince them that their God is wrong.
10) The mass media must be better managed to prevent the suicide bomber from inflicting ideological damage.

I don't agree with all his premises, but he does make some compelling points.

As well, he makes a conflicting set of comments that I think very apt:

1) Suicide Bombers are the ultimate expression of individuality. They are the ultimate "I AM".
2) Suicide Bombers undermine the basic tenats of freedom.

Comments?

James.

[dcmdale]

Originally Posted by jBirch

1) Terrorism has as its primary weapon the suicide bomber.

In the context of current Islamic terrorism, yes. I don't discount the ability to innovate from that weapon if it stops working.

Originally Posted by jBirch

2) No matter how/when/where a suicide bomber detonates themselves, they are successful.

"Success" here is relative. Premature detonation caused by security forces can be spun to the group intended to be terrorized as a win.

Originally Posted by jBirch

3) Suicide bombers are immune to military prosecution precisely because they must be found and killed outright before they have a chance to detonate their explosives. Any engagement that doesn't result in their immediate and instant death, will not prevent their success.

As a practical matter, probably. If one could prevent detonation (or take advantage of a "dud"), there are lots of opportunities to exploit such a situation. Perhaps more discussion of this later.

Originally Posted by jBirch

4) It is their belief and faith in their jealous God that motivates them as a weapon.

Can't speak to "jealous," but their belief in God and their religion motivates them.

Originally Posted by jBirch

5) Because they are motivated by blind faith, they are immune to logical persuasion as a means of disarmament.

From outside their religious beliefs. Domestically, I would suggest that most abortion clinics in the U.S. would go up tomorrow if fundamentalist leadership wasn't working hard to convince angry believers that it was wrong to do so within their common beliefs.

Originally Posted by jBirch

6) Suicide bombers are suspiciously moral/ethical/devout. They are truly God's soldiers and as such, oddly inspiring in a superhero kind of way.

Yes, to their own kind and within their own assumptions.

Originally Posted by jBirch

7) Aiding the effectiveness of these weapons is the irresponsible mass media. If a suicide bomber detonates, and nobody is around to hear/see, did they really detonate?

Terror is not about the boom and the people killed in the boom. It is about the fear created by that event. How it is reported certainly has an impact on how much fear people have, which impacts effectness of the weapon, which impacts the usefulness of the weapon to the terrorist and the frequency with which it is used.

Originally Posted by jBirch

8) They operate with a divine righteousness that leads them to innovate explosives and craft their weapons in the basements of their homes, shacks in the woods and back alleys.

Innovation in use of weapons is also a historical strength of this part of the world.