> Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 09:39:00 +0000
> From: James Heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: Maxes Wager
>
> The problem with this speculation is that there is no way to know about
> the likely methods, possibilities or even motivations of groups like the
> perpetrators of 11 September.
You are right (skipping ahead) that my main target is the curret bombing campaign. The reason this came up is that Max S. argued that a measure of success of the U.S. current campaign is whether anti-U.S. attacks on a 9/11 scale occur again. The main moral and practical argumenets against this have been made by many people, so I did not repeat them. But there was one minor point that had been overlooked - that an attack on a 9/11 or even one sixth of a 9/11 attack is unlikely due to capability. In short -- I was simply showing an argumeent as invalid in its own termes, as opposed to showing it wrong in a larger sense.
The basis for my prediction that this is unlikely is the nature of our society rather than the nature of Al-Queda. I don't want to go voer my whole argument again in detail -- but a sucicide hijacking of a major jet plane is unlikely in the future. This is not because increased security -- which may or may not happend. (Destruction of civil liberties on the other hand is already occuring.) Sucicide hijacksing is unlikely because now that passengers know they have nothing to lose they will overwhelm any such attempts, as the passenger on the fourth plane did. Other means likely to be available to anti U.S. terrorists (as opposed to U.S. terrorists such as the Pentagon) are unlikely to kill people in the thousands. In short future anti-U.S. terrorism is unlikely to be able to approach a 9/11 scale. I honestly think we do have the information to make this sort of guess, since it is based on what we know about our society, rather that what we know about anyone else. The only assumption about anti-U.S. terror networks in this is that they don't have the full resources (as opposed to possible money grants) of a state behind them -- something that is fairly widely accepted.
You are right though -- when focusing on a point such as this I should reiterate that our currrent bombing campaign is cruel and insane. (Actually the biggest death toll will come not from the bombs, but from the closing of borders; the increase in starvation due to lack of food aid will kill at least tens of thousand and perhaps hundreds of thousands. )
> Tending to the social science side, most of us on this list would like
> to be able to apply our predictive methodologies, but they are not much
> help, since, the groups involved are so small and unrepresentative, that
> the arbitrary plays a predominant part in their thoughts and actions.
>
> I think of it like crime, or an act of God, if it happens, it happens,
> there is not much that you can do about it, beyond the obvious security
> measures. On a personal level, you can feel angry about the waste of
> life, but it is not as if such thinking is susceptible to debate. It is
> just a condition of living in a free society that people can if they
> choose act destructively.
>
> It is fear that is the most destructive thing. But it would be a mistake
> to think that it is the 'terrorists' that create the fear. Fear is
> written into contemporary society. Al-Qaeda merely give it a
> conveniently alien form, so that we can all pretend that they are
> terrorising us, when the truth is that if it weren't them, it would be
> something else, like foot and mouth, AIDS, crime or any other moral
> panic.
>
> The campaign in Afghanistan - Gar's main target, I think - is something
> quite different. That is a campaign undertaken not just by one but many
> governments, and part of a political process. I think there is something
> of an obligation to say that it verges on the insane. Or more precisely,
> it visits the West's own moral confusion, arbitrarily, upon the
> blameless people of Afghanistan, in the form of carpet bombing. Now
> that's depraved.
>
>
>