Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 00:41:39 -0800 (PST) From: "f.johan.beisser" <jan@caustic.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>, JacobRhoden <jrhoden@unimelb.edu.au>, <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: WTC Payoff [11 september] (was Re: oh my god the nasa shuttle blewup) Message-ID: <20030204000148.B63914-100000@pogo.caustic.org> In-Reply-To: <3E3F35B7.1A94A309@mindspring.com>
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On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, Terry Lambert wrote: > Then throw everyone out of work. That's a much better way to get that > across: cause an economic depression. Not knowing where your next meal > is coming from is a great spur to confusion and general fear. yes. but to actually accomplish that, through a military means takes more than what any terrorist network has. in country vs country, working like that might be an option. > No, but it always has an objective. There is always an economic > balance for the perceived cost of the act. not always. people, even when there's minor amounts of training involved, are relatively inexpensive. manpower is something that's not a severely limited resource in this case. even self sacrificing ones. > You can usually deduce from the actual effect (or the intended > effect) what the objective was. > > The WTC cost them time, training, and dedicated personnel which > could have been used for other purposes. The reason it was done > was that it was perceived to have the highest cost/benefit ratio > of the available options for action. the cost, to the leadership, may not seem that high. > The payoff in an economic sense, not the payoff in a financial > sense. As in a payoff whose value equals or exceeds the cost. i don't believe that anyone involved (with the planning, at least) was expecting the reaction the US had. since the relatively minor (in comparison) attack on the USS Cole and our east african embassies really didn't provoke much of a reaction out of our government and military, the rather powerful reaction the WTC attacks created may not have been expected. at least, not to the extent it came too. > We know what it cost them; the question is what did they expect to gain > from it that they valued. The obvious answer is "to damage the U.S. > economically, thereby making it less able to carry out foreign policy", > but it's not the only possible one; the point is, there *is* an answer. yes, there is. we don't know it, though, and even if we did, we might not understand the reasoning. > No, you think in terms of winning. > > If it's a real war, and not a play war, and you are fighting for > your survival against an implacable foe, then if you are smart, you > think in terms of destroying your opponent utterly, and plowing salt > into his fields, so that he can never threaten you again. Ever. > You are William Tecumseh Sherman. You use every weapon in your > arsenal, without hesitation. you use every weekness you can, but not all at once. you plan, you weaken, you do more planning. again, looking at this from "their" point of view, they're dealing with a better armed, better equipped, and better funded foe. that foe isn't a military one, initially. it's a concept, that concept is "America" and "Americans." this isn't a stand up war, it's a war against a culture seen as corrupt and base. the people who sacrifice themselves are working to preserve something they believe in, more than a concept of self. > They are perfectly repeatable, at least in terms of using some > civilian commercial aircraft as weapons. It will merely cost > slightly more to repeat it, next time, than it cost them this > time, and that's only if they wish to repeat it in a relatively > short time frame. no, they aren't. this is an attack that would only work once. now that it's been done, hostages will no longer co-operate with hostage takers. the rules have changed for both sides. remember, before September 11th the rule was to co-operate with the hijackers. do what they said, and they'll make their demands, eventually the plane will land, hostages will eventually be let go. negotiations would be made. this is no longer true, that option no longer exists for any would-be hijacker. if it were to be repeated, i suspect it'll happen with a chartered flight, and honestly, a learjet isn't likely to take down an office building. to top it off, the various Air National Guard units on alert are now permitted to shoot down wayward aircraft. it doesn't take the president to do this either. > As a military act, destroying one shuttle in such a way as to cause the > other three to be grounded indefinitely would be up there, if you > planned to act in an area within a time window sufficient that the > existing in-place assets were useless, and you wanted to prevent that > lack being remedied, for example. For something like *that*, you > wouldn't claim credit, because claiming credit would unpin the other > resources, and the distal target was the pinned resources, and the > proximal target was just a means. i'm not convinced, yet. > Not claiming credit for the WTC was just plain dumb, given that the FUD > of whether or not the event was accidental, was just not there, with it > being a coordinated attack with more than one participant. If just one > plane had hit one target, you would never have known it was even a > hijacking, and not a nutso pilot, which could have grounded planes for a > *lot* longer, while everyone wondered why he snapped, and how he was > able to keep people out of the cockpit long enough to do the job, and > whether or not other pilots were at similar risk of snapping or > "copycat" acts. Now *that's* FUD. one impact can be seen as an accident. i admit, when i first woke that morning, i thought the first impact was accidental. while watching CNN, and the SECOND plane hit, i knew it wasn't an accident anymore. untill that second impact, i don't think any flights would have been grounded elsewhere in the US. only, perhaps, on the northeastern coast. did the events of 11 september have an economic fallout? yes. did it cause the US to be highly reactionary? yes. were there "copycat" attacks? yes, but they were minor, and not done by commercial pilots. by not claiming credit for the attacks, and allowing the people who were investigating to figure out the "w's" (who, what, when, where, why?) created a much more paranoid atmosphere. i think the objective, well beyond simply destroying the WTC towers, was accomplished. as far as the WTC towers being a target, i think it can be summed up in four or five words: second time's a charm. -------/ f. johan beisser /--------------------------------------+ http://caustic.org/~jan jan@caustic.org "Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends." -- Tom Waits To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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