This Forum is Closed
March 29, 2024, 06:24:23 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: GGF now has a permanent home: http://forum.globalgulag.com
 
  Home Help Search Links Staff List Login Register  

Terror warnings reveal limits of power

Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Terror warnings reveal limits of power  (Read 429 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
bigron
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 549



View Profile
« on: October 06, 2010, 05:49:07 am »

Middle East
Oct 7, 2010 
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LJ07Ak01.html 
 
Terror warnings reveal limits of power


By George Friedman

The United States government issued a warning on October 3 advising Americans traveling to Europe to be "vigilant." US intelligence apparently has acquired information indicating that al-Qaeda is planning to carry out attacks in European cities similar to those carried out in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. In Mumbai, attackers armed with firearms, grenades and small, timed explosive devices targeted hotels frequented by Western tourists and other buildings in an attack that took three days to put down.

European security forces are far better trained and prepared than their Indian counterparts, and such an attack would be unlikely to last for hours, much less days, in a European country. Still, armed assaults conducted by suicide operatives could be expected to cause many casualties and certainly create a
dramatic disruption to economic and social life.

The first question to ask about the October 3 warning, which lacked specific and actionable intelligence, is how someone can be vigilant against such an attack. There are some specific steps that people can and should take to practice good situational awareness as well as some common-sense travel-security precautions. But if you find yourself sleeping in a hotel room as gunmen attack the building, rush to your floor and start entering rooms, a government warning simply to be vigilant would have very little meaning.

The world is awash in intelligence about terrorism. Most of it is meaningless speculation, a conversation intercepted between two Arabs about how they'd love to blow up London Bridge. The problem is how to distinguish between idle chatter and actual attack planning. There is no science involved in this, but there are obvious guidelines. Are the people known to be associated with radical Islamists? Do they have the intent and capability to conduct such an attack? Were any specific details mentioned in the conversation that can be vetted? Is there other intelligence to support the plot discussed in the conversation?

The problem is that what appears quite obvious in the telling is much more ambiguous in reality. At any given point, the government could reasonably raise the alert level if it wished. That it doesn't raise it more frequently is tied to three things. First, the intelligence is frequently too ambiguous to act on. Second, raising the alert level warns people without really giving them any sense of what to do about it. Third, it can compromise the sources of intelligence.

The current warning is a perfect example of the problem. We do not know what intelligence the US government received that prompted the warning, and I suspect that the public descriptions of the intelligence do not reveal everything that the government knows. We do know that a German citizen was arrested in Afghanistan in July and has allegedly provided information regarding this threat, but there are likely other sources contributing to the warning, since the US government considered the intelligence sufficient to cause concern. The Obama administration leaked on Saturday that it might issue the warning, and indeed it did.

The government did not recommend that Americans not travel to Europe. That would have affected the economy and infuriated Europeans. Leaving tourism aside, since tourism season is largely over, a lot of business is transacted by Americans in Europe. The government simply suggested vigilance. Short of barring travel, there was nothing effective the government could do. So it shifted the burden to travelers. If no attack occurs, nothing is lost. If an attack occurs, the government can point to the warning and the advice. Those hurt or killed would not have been vigilant.

I do not mean to belittle the US government on this. Having picked up the intelligence it can warn the public or not. The public has a right to know, and the government is bound by law and executive order to provide threat information. But the reason that its advice is so vague is that there is no better advice to give. The government is not so much washing its hands of the situation as acknowledging that there is not much that anyone can do aside from the security measures travelers should already be practicing.
The alert serves another purpose beyond warning the public. It communicates to the attackers that their attack has been detected if not penetrated, and that the risks of the attack have pyramided. Since these are most likely suicide attackers not expecting to live through the attack, the danger is not in death. It is that the Americans or the Europeans might have sufficient intelligence available to thwart the attack. From the terrorist point of view, losing attackers to death or capture while failing to inflict damage is the worst of all possible scenarios. Trained operatives are scarce, and like any strategic weapon they must be husbanded and, when used, cause maximum damage. When the attackers do not know what Western intelligence knows, their risk of failure is increased along with the incentive to cancel the attack. A government warning, therefore, can prevent an attack.

In addition, a public warning can set off a hunt for the leak within al-Qaeda. Communications might be shut down while the weakness is examined. Members of the organization might be brought under suspicion. The warning can generate intense uncertainty within al-Qaeda as to how much Western intelligence knows. The warning, if it correlates with an active plot, indicates a breach of security, and a breach of security can lead to a witch-hunt that can paralyze an organization.

Therefore, the warning might well have served a purpose, but the purpose was not necessarily to empower citizens to protect themselves from terrorists. Indeed, there might have been two purposes. One might have been to disrupt the attack and the attackers. The other might have been to cover the government if an attack came.

In either case, it has to be recognized that this sort of warning breeds cynicism among the public. If the warning is intended to empower citizens, it engenders a sense of helplessness, and if no attack occurs, it can also lead to alert fatigue. What the government is saying to its citizenry is that, in the end, it cannot guarantee that there won't be an attack and therefore its citizens are on their own. The problem with that statement is not that the government isn't doing its job but that the job cannot be done. The government can reduce the threat of terrorism. It cannot eliminate it.

This brings us to the strategic point. The defeat of jihadist terror cells cannot be accomplished defensively. Homeland security can mitigate the threat, but it can never eliminate it. The only way to eliminate it is to destroy all jihadist cells and prevent the formation of new cells by other movements or by individuals forming new movements, and this requires not just destroying existing organizations but also the radical ideology that underlies them.

To achieve this, the United States and its allies would have to completely penetrate a population of about 1.3 billion people and detect every meeting of four or five people planning to create a terrorist cell. And this impossible task would not even address the problem of lone-wolf terrorists. It is simply impossible to completely dominate and police the entire world, and any effort to do so would undoubtedly induce even more people to turn to terrorism in opposition to the global police state.

Will Rogers was asked what he might do to deal with the German U-boat threat during World War I. He said he would boil away the Atlantic, revealing the location of the U-boats that could then be destroyed. Asked how he would do this, he answered that this was a technical question and he was a policymaker.

The idea of suppressing jihadist terrorism through direct military action in the Islamic world would be an idea Will Rogers would have appreciated. It is a superb plan from a policymaking perspective. It suffers only from the problem of technical implementation. Even native Muslim governments motivated to suppress Islamic terrorism, like those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria or Yemen, can't achieve this goal absolutely. The idea that American troops, outnumbered and not speaking the language or understanding the culture, can do this is simply not grounded in reality.

The United States and Europe are going to be attacked by jihadist terrorists from time to time, and innocent people are going to be killed, perhaps in the thousands again. The United States and its allies can minimize the threat through covert actions and strong defenses, but they cannot eliminate it. The hapless warning to be vigilant that was issued this past weekend is the implicit admission of this fact.

This is not a failure of will or governance. The United States can't conceivably mount the force needed to occupy the Islamic world, let alone pacify it to the point where it can't be a base for terrorists. Given that the United States can't even do this in Afghanistan, the idea that it might spread this war throughout the Islamic world is unsupportable.

The United States and Europe are therefore dealing with a threat that cannot be stopped by their actions. The only conceivably effective actions would be those taken by Muslim governments, and even those are unlikely to be effective. There is a deeply embedded element within a small segment of the Islamic world that is prepared to conduct terror attacks, and this element will occasionally be successful.

All people hate to feel helpless, and this trait is particularly strong among Americans. There is a belief that America can do anything and that something can and should be done to eliminate terrorism and not just mitigate it. Some Americans believe sufficiently ruthless military action can do it. Others believe that reaching out in friendship might do it. In the end, the terrorist element will not be moved by either approach, and no amount of vigilance (or new bureaucracies) will stop them.

It would follow then that the West will have to live with the terrorist threat for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that military, intelligence, diplomatic, law-enforcement or financial action should be stopped. Causing most terrorist attempts to end in failure is an obviously desirable end. It not only blocks the particular action but also discourages others. But the West will have to accept that there are no measures that will eliminate the threat entirely. The danger will persist.

Effort must be made to suppress it, but the level of effort has to be proportional not to the moral insult of the terrorist act but to considerations of other interests beyond counter-terrorism. The United States has an interest in suppressing terrorism. Beyond a certain level of effort, it will reach a point of diminishing returns. Worse, by becoming narrowly focused on counter-terrorism and over-committing resources to it, the United States will leave other situations unattended as it focuses excessively on a situation it cannot improve.

The request that Americans be vigilant in Europe represents the limits of power on the question of terrorism. There is nothing else that can be done and what can be done is being done. It also drives home the fact that the United States and the West in general cannot focus all of its power on solving a problem that is beyond its power to solve. The long war against terrorism will not be the only war fought in the coming years. The threat of jihadism must be put in perspective and the effort aligned with what is effective. The world is a dangerous place, as they say, and jihadism is only one of the dangers.

(Published with permission from STRATFORr, a Texas-based geopolitical intelligence company. Copyright 2010 Stratfor.) 
 
 
Report Spam   Logged

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

bigron
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 549



View Profile
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2010, 06:16:09 am »

Washington´s Fear Campaign: US Issues Terror Alert for European Cities


By Patrick Martin
 
Global Research, October 6, 2010
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21314
World Socialist Web Site - 2010-10-05



The US State Department issued a terror alert Sunday for American citizens traveling anywhere in the continent of Europe, an unprecedented action that seems calculated to spread alarm without actually helping anyone avoid becoming the target of a terrorist attack. The Pentagon imposed a weekend curfew on troops at the US Air Force Base at Ramstein, Germany, ordering soldiers not to wear their uniforms off base “in response to a threat condition.”

 

Britain, Japan, Sweden and Canada all followed suit, issuing alerts to their own citizens who might be traveling to Europe. In each case, they cited the US alert as evidence that there was an increased danger of a terrorist attack at European transit hubs and tourist attractions.

 

The actual statement from the US government speaks only of “the potential for terrorist attacks,” without any specifics. “Current information suggests that Al Qaeda and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks,” the State Department said.

 

Since this has likely been true of every day since Osama bin Laden issued his “declaration of war” against the United States in 1996, it is not clear that the alert has any objective basis or represents a new threat.

 

US citizens traveling in Europe “should take every precaution to be aware of their surroundings and to adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when traveling,” the State Department said, although spokesmen, when pressed for more direction, conceded that there was nothing travelers should do except run in the other direction in the event of an explosion or outbreak of gunfire.

 

The US media, particularly the television news, has been full of ominous warnings of “Mumbai-style” attacks involving groups of gunmen engaging in suicide attacks on train stations, airports and tourist attractions like the Eiffel Tower. The reference is to the attacks in the Indian financial hub two years ago, during which 10 gunmen killed 166 people and wounded more than 300, using small arms and grenades at hotels and the main railway station.

 

The right-wing Fox News led the way with a lurid account of targets that included the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and that city’s main railway station and television tower.

 

One unnamed US official who confirmed the reports of impending terrorist attacks to the French news agency AFP called the threat “credible but not specific.” He continued, “It’s unclear, for instance, precisely where something might occur. For that reason, people shouldn't limit their thinking to the United Kingdom, France, or Germany.”

 

After the US warning, British officials raised their terror alert level to “high” for British citizens visiting France and Germany. Sweden’s foreign ministry issued a similar alert Monday, calling for Swedish travelers to exercise caution “in public places, in and around public buildings, at tourist attractions, on public transport and in other places with large crowds.” Last week the Swedish Security Service issued a heightened alert of an attack within Sweden, citing an unspecific “shift in activities” by Islamic groups in Sweden.

 

Japan’s alert, issued Monday by its Foreign Ministry, was similarly vague. A Japanese official told the British newspaper the Guardian “the highly unusual warning was not prompted by any specific intelligence but by the previous British and American alerts.”

 

The Canadian government issued a statement cautioning Canadians traveling to Europe to be vigilant, also citing the British and US warnings.

 

The French Foreign Ministry said the US-initiated alert was “in line with the general recommendations we ourselves make to the French population.” The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, in deep political crisis over its attacks on the democratic rights of Roma and Muslim immigrants, as well as unpopular efforts to raise the retirement age, has embraced the anti-terror scare as a diversion.

 

There has been a sustained effort to whip up public fears of terrorism over the kidnapping of five French citizens in the Sahara, one of whom was reportedly executed by Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb. Bernard Squarcini, a top intelligence official, told reporters three weeks ago that threat of an attack in France “has never been greater.” Twice over the past month the government has closed the Eiffel Tower, the number one tourist destination, because of alleged terrorist threats.

 

Elsewhere on the European continent, however, there seems to be a more skeptical attitude to the US-inspired terror scare. The German Interior Ministry, which controls the police, said Germany has “still no concrete indications of imminent attacks,” concluding, “The government does not currently see any reason to modify its evaluation of concrete risks.”

 

The German magazine Der Spiegel published a lengthy account of the source of the terror scare, claiming that it is a single German citizen of Pashtun descent, Ahmad Sidiqi, who was detained by US forces in Afghanistan in July and is currently in US custody. He is being interrogated by “special units of the CIA and the American military,” the magazine said. In other words, he is being tortured at a CIA “black site,” the prison on the grounds of the huge US air base at Bagram.

 

Sidiqi reportedly told his American interrogators that he had met with a high-level Al Qaeda operative in Pakistan and was told of instructions from bin Laden for attacks in Europe.

 

According to a report by CNN Monday, German officials said they had been given access to Sidiqi in Afghanistan and that he was cooperating with the US investigation. CNN reported, “Sidiqi divulges new, unverified information every day, the German intelligence sources said.” Despite these alleged revelations, German officials said there were no plans to raise the country’s security level.

 

The media furor in the United States has largely ignored the fact that there has not been a significant, large-scale terrorist attack in Europe since the suicide bombings on the London transport system on July 7, 2005, which killed 52 people.

 

As for its practical impact, the terror alert is of no use whatsoever to the 10.6 million Americans who visit Europe annually, or the hundreds of thousands who are traveling on the continent at any one time. The State Department did not issue a “terrorism warning,” a higher level of alert that would have led to widespread cancellations of travel plans.

 

The timing of the alert, coming less than a month before a national US election, suggests a political motivation. President Obama’s Democratic Party is trailing in many pre-election polls, and could lose control of the House of Representatives, the US Senate, or both.

 

In the US, administration spokesmen were at pains to present Obama as a hands-on “commander-in-chief.” The White House informed the press through email Sunday that Obama “has been following the threat information on a daily basis and was informed on the travel alert throughout.” Officials said Obama had convened meetings of his national security team on Friday night and Saturday morning, and was briefed again Sunday morning before the State Department issued its alert.

 

The Bush administration made heavy use of terror scares before the 2002, 2004 and 2006 elections, whether in the form of alerts like that issued Sunday by the State Department, or video and audio statements from Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda figures, usually made public the weekend before the balloting.

 

The heavy publicity given to the transatlantic threat is also being used to justify intensified police measures in the United States. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent a bulletin to local police agencies Sunday morning declaring there was no specific threat to US targets, but warning that Al Qaeda might seek to inspire those with “the ability to access the US legally” to carry out attacks using “small arms, lone shooters and small unit tactics.”

 

Such a warning is so general that it could apply to almost anyone in the United States. It comes two weeks after FBI raids on the homes of antiwar activists in Minneapolis and Chicago which have no precedent since the outrages of the J. Edgar Hoover period in the 1960s and 1970s. The FBI and DHS warning urged local police to monitor individuals “loitering for no apparent reason, sketching or pace counting.”

 

The terror scare also takes place within the context of mounting strikes and protests across Europe against draconian austerity measures directed against the working class. European governments clearly have political reasons to seek to divert public attention away from their right-wing policies and create an atmosphere of fear and panic that can be used to justify repressive measures.

 

An additional motivation for the terror alert is to justify the escalating US bombing and missile attacks on targets in Pakistan, under conditions of mounting opposition both in Pakistan itself and within the American population. Media reports claim that the supposed terror plot is being prepared from Al Qaeda bases in the tribal regions of Pakistan across the border from Afghanistan, and that the sharp increase in US drone attacks in Pakistan is at least in part a response to this supposed threat.

 

The European governments also face mass popular opposition to their participation in or support for the US-led colonial-style war in Afghanistan.

 

Pakistani officials said Monday that a US drone strike killed as many as eight people of German nationality in North Waziristan, the district in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that the US claims is the haven for Al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan after the US invasion. Missiles destroyed a building in the town of Mir Ali.
 
Report Spam   Logged

Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
Free SMF Hosting - Create your own Forum

Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy
Page created in 0.033 seconds with 21 queries.