Oh, something I've been thinking for the past half a week or so.

[xiphias]

I'm now less worried about a possible terrorist attack in Boston during the DNC than I was.

Why?

Because the absolute BEST opportunity for a terrorist attack was five days ago. I mean, the Esplanade July 4th concert is 1) televised, 2) symbolic, 3) tens of thousands of people packed very close together for a high body count, 4) impossible to secure, so there would be relatively easy to attack.

The DNC isn't really going to offer any targets as attractive as that.

It's possible, of course, that something WAS planned, and was intercepted and stopped, but I sort of feel that Ashcroft would have boasted about it by now.

Comments

[badmagic.livejournal.com]

Nah, there's not going to be a terrorist attack on the DNC. The Powers That Be just figure that if they can get people to accept random bag searches in Boston, they can get away with it anywhere. I mean, that last time someone in authority tried to something like this, crates of tea got thrown into the harbor.

[navrins]

Ah, but a successful attack on the DNC takes out the entire Democratic party leadership. Which can only be good for al Qaeda. A new president might, you know, institute policies that would actually hurt them.

[alaria-lyon.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that the democrats think Al Queda wants a Bush presidency while the republicans think Al Queda wants a democratic presidency. I have yet to hear from an actual member of Al Queda or another terrorist cell, and I wish we would. I am getting a little tired of people imposing motivations and ideas on them and I'd like to hear their reasons and motivations from them. And I don't mean the leadership, I mean the underlings who carry out the plans.

But maybe that's the psychologist in me.

[navrins]

My theory is, more or less, as follows:

What does al-Qaeda want to gain by attacking the West? If we're going to analyze them, then we have to assume that at least its leadership is more or less rational in choosing methods they believe might accomplish their ends. (By definition, its leadership is the people who decide what the organization is going to do, and therefore are the people who matter if you're trying to predict what the organization will do.) And bin Laden has certainly demonstrated and been acknowledged for impressive smarts when it comes to such methods.

I'm assuming the goal isn't random wanton destruction; if it is, then they don't much care who's president, but Bush hasn't been very effective (so far as I know) at stopping them, so he's a safe choice. (Most Bush supporters seem to believe Bush's claims to have been effective, or at least that Kerry would be less so - which would by itself explain the discrepancy you mention. Bush is also a big fan of not trying to understand the enemy, just assume they're stupid irrational animals - which is foolish and counterproductive.)

So assume there's an objective to al Qaeda's major actions - the attacks on the USS Cole, the WTC and Pentagon, Madrid, and Saudi Arabia, at least. What could they gain by those acts? Well, what HAVE they gained? Hatred of Muslims by Americans. A serious increase in tension between the West and the Islamic nations. Two wars. Were those natural, predictable results? I think so. Could their actions have been chosen to cause those results? I think so. If so, doesn't it make sense to assume that those are in fact the results they want?

Now, is America more likely under Bush or under Kerry to continue to inflame more tension, more hatred, more conflict, more war - in short, more of the things that I am assuming the 9/11 attacks and others were intended to cause? Well, Bush has already done it (though admittedly he seems to be trying to improve). We don't know if Kerry would do more or less, but we know Bush.

I originally started speculating further about al Qaeda's long-range motives, but on second thought I don't think I need to. The above seems good reasoning for assuming that al Qaeda would be happier to keep Bush in power than to have a change.

The only argument I've ever heard for why they'd prefer Democrats is that Democrats would be softer on them. Which sounds like crap to me. Republican policies don't seem to have been particularly effective at slowing them down. I can't imagine anybody truly thinks Democrats *want* the terrorists to win - they (and I) just think that Bush's strategies for defeating them suck (both because they don't work well, and because they have unacceptable side effects), and the Democrats have other methods that would be better (which I'm not sure of, but it seems worth a try - when method A sucks, it's time to try something else, even if you don't know that it'll be better.)

Let's hear it for paranoia

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

Just because al Qaida might not do anything at the DNC, it doesn't mean that they wouldn't get blamed for it if anything did happen.

Happen in the Monty Python sense of "Nice milit'ry base, be a shame if som'in were to... 'appen to it."

reported by Reuters

[roozle.livejournal.com]

and widely published, March 17th

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040317/325/eotq9.html

This was in response to the bombing in Spain.

[redbird]

I don't expect Al Qaeda to do anything during the party conventions. It's not their pattern: there was nothing special going on in Madrid last March, and the closest thing to noteworthy planned in NYC on 11 September 2001 was an extremely off-year primary election.

Re: reported by Reuters

[alaria-lyon.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, the rumors I've heard is that al Qaeda DID feel that the Madrid train bombing worked in their favor to put a more socialist group in power, which they wanted.

Dunno WHY that's what they wanted, 'zactly, but, apparently, they felt that it worked.

[navrins]

Which I find odd, since everyone thought (yes, unattributed hearsay) the attack would strengthen the ruling party - and The Economist claims it would indeed have done so, and in fact did so in the immediate aftermath of the attack - but then the ruling party tried to convince people it was the work of Basque terrorists (ETA), and got caught in the lie.

It seems plausible to me that al Qaeda expected what everyone else expected, and did NOT predict that the Spanish government would be that stupid in their response.

Perhaps the rumors about al Qaeda being happy about the change in power were started by people who weren't happy about it? I'm not claiming this is true, just putting forth the possibility.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Well, wasn't one of the immediate effects of the change in government in Spain the withdrawal of Spanish forces from the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq? Hard to see how al-Qaeda would see this as a bad thing.

[navrins]

Maybe. But how many troops did Spain have there? Couple hundred, maybe? Compared to Britain's 3,000 (I think) and our 120,000-plus? I don't think Spain's troops in Iraq mattered to anyone besides themselves - but Spain's political support and public opinion might've.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

The quantity of troops might have been small, but it might have been seen as a more symbolic thing? Dunno, I'm just guessing at this point.