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… we’d have to invent them.
By now we’ve all heard how the FBI, at the conclusion of a year-long investigation, has thwarted a bunch of Islamic terrorists who were intent on machinegunning soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
CHERRY HILL, New Jersey (AP) — Six Muslim men suspected of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were ordered held without bail Friday.Prosecutors argued that the men, all born outside the United States, pose a flight risk. They are being held at a federal detention center in Philadelphia.
The men were arrested Monday night during what the FBI said was an attempt to buy AK-47 machine guns, M-16s and other weapons.
They targeted Fort Dix, a post 25 miles east of Philadelphia that is used primarily to train reservists, partly because one of them had delivered pizzas there and was familiar with the base, according to court filings. Their objective was to kill “as many American soldiers as possible,” the documents said.
The men have lived in and around Philadelphia for years, worshipped at moderate mosques and worked blue-collar jobs installing roofs, driving a cab, delivering pizzas and baking bread. Four are ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, one is from Jordan and one is from Turkey.
Much like the Seas of David group in Florida, who tried to scam $50,000 out of an undercover FBI man to buy al Qaeda uniforms, these guys seemed unclear on the concept. How unclear?
… one of the men, Tatar, called a Philadelphia police officer in November, saying that he had been approached by someone who was pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the incident was terrorist-related, according to court documents.
The “someone” he’d been approached by was one of the two paid informants who
…railed against the United States, helped scout out military installations for attack, offered to introduce his comrades to an arms dealer and gave them a list of weapons he could procure, including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
That’s right, one of the alleged “terrorists” was so alarmed by what the FBI’s undercover man was saying that he called the cops.
About the earlier “Seas of David” group, the Washington Post editorialized:
Does it matter? Yes, it does. It matters because the Bush administration has already lost almost all credibility when it comes to terrorism. It said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there were none. It said al-Qaeda and Iraq were in cahoots and that was not the case. It has so exaggerated its domestic success in arresting or convicting terrorists that it simply cannot be believed on that score. About a year ago, for instance, President Bush (with Gonzales at his side) asserted that “federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted.” The Post looked into that and found that the total number of (broadly defined) “terrorism” convictions was 39.
Or, as Talking Points Memo says about the current crop:
Writing about these domestic terrorism busts is always a delicate task. Living in Manhattan terrorism is not an abstract issue to me. And so long as they are operating within the bounds of the law, I certainly hope the FBI and CIA have their ears and eyes on the look out for the next terror plotters. But the real jokers they actually bust turn out to be such hopeless goofs that it’s hard to know whether to feel reassured that if Islamic terrorism is catching on in the US that it’s only doing so among the deeply stupid or that these are the only ones our guys can catch.
Did the FBI also have a pool going on how long these guys would have lasted if they had tried to attack Ft Dix? (I heard their training was going into the Poconos and firing paintball guns. Sure, they're real terrorists. Not.)
These Fort Dix people sound like just amateur nutters - no connection to Al-Qaeda or any other group - and, as someone says, not the brightest bulbs. If this is all the War On Terror has to fight, it should be over pretty soon. But as Jim implies, the government needs some terrorists to pop up now and then, or the US' continued presence in Iraq - which GWB keeps saying is vital to keep Americans safe at home - would seem even more futile.
Disconnected thoughts:
If these guys had got into Fort Dix with weapons, they probably wouldn't have managed to shoot as many people as Cho Seung-hui did at West Virginia Tech.
Does the Army really let random pizza-deliverers into Fort Dix? Maybe it needs to reconsider its entry rules. But it's common at civilian sites too, to find serious security at the front door, with guards and electronic passes for the people in suits, while round the back the cleaners, delivery people, etc., walk in and out unchallenged, often carrying big cardboard boxes.
I've mentally dubbed them the Dix Six, or...in light of their incompetence...the Six Dicks.
Does the Army really let random pizza-deliverers into Fort Dix? Maybe it needs to reconsider its entry rules.
Dunno about Ft Dix, but I certainly delivered pizzas to places that one would not expect to be able to go on Ft Belvoir (VA) in the 93-94 time frame. (Home at the time to some research labs and a communication center) At the time I was joking about a Top Secret- Pizza Delivery clearance, though I probably wouldn't do that now. The closed the base a few years ago, after I stopped delivering.
Oh, closed base means that they don't let outsiders on, not that the base isn't there anymore.
eric 5: Thanks for that clarification; I read it the other way first.
Wait.
The plan was to go to Fort Dix and shoot soldiers, right? There's a term for that -- "assaulting a fortification." It happens in war. It's frequently a bad idea, and occasionally a very bad idea, but it happens.
But it is terrorism to attack the enemy base with conventional weaponry? If so, there is no such thing as legitimate warfare.
I have occasion to go to a huge military hospital to get new prescriptions filled about once a quarter; I have no decal on my car, so I have to go through a check at the entrance. It's done by private security guards, not US military personnel (OK, maybe that's not a good use of the Army, but...) and it consists of the rent-a-cop checking to see that I have the military ID of the person for whom the prescription was written and that I have a valid drivers license. I can see where the rooftop Pizza Hut light might substitute for the ID under that kind of criteria.
I was doing this immediately following September 11 at the same hospital; every car had a serious check by armed US Army personnel, and there were random inspections with trunk-openings and mirrors under the car.
This reminds me of the story that Theresa wrote about a few years back, the hapless guy who wanted to collapse the Brooklyn bridge with a blow torch and pluck.
The bit about the FBI scaring the terrorist, causing him to call the cops is bothersome, though. It's becoming clear to me now that the people in our government tasked with fighting terrorists watch Die Hard movies and episodes of 24 as if they were documentaries rather than the fantasies they are intended to be.
My favorite comment on this so far comes from Akron Ohio cartoonist Chip Bok.
...Trojan what?
Not to mention that the guys in Die Hard weren't even terrorists.
A couple of points. First, when I was still in the Navy (1989-1994) I lived off base. Every morning, there was a big traffic backup just outside the gate. These folks were all military and all unarmed. A few guys with guns could produce a real bloodbath.
Second, and more importantly, this is what happens when a police agency is in charge of intelligence. Police get promoted based on number of arrests, so the incentive is to arrest as soon as you can. An agency focused on intelligence would put out moles, but they'd still be active in the field.
Now, I'm not thrilled with the idea of the current administration creating a domestic spy agency for many reasons, not the least of which is I don't want Michael Brown in charge of it. However, as long as the pressure and organizational structure is on arrests, we'll keep seeing these kinds of incidents.
I liked Jon Stewart on Wednesday: "Here was the plan: six Islamic radicals, apparently from the former Yugoslavia, were plotting to attack a military base called Fort Dix in New Jersey; seemingly unaware that in this country, that is where we keep most of our weapons and the people who understand how to use them."
For those interested in antecedents, a significant majority of these guys are of Albanian origin. You know, those lovely folks from the KLA whom the US has been aiding with such alacrity in order to enable Albania to land-grab Kosovo from the heartland of Serbia.
Chickens coming home to roost. The KLA is on record as doing plenty of bad-ass stuff back "home", but when what-was-then-Yugoslavia tried to step on their tails there was a hue and cry and a general uproar of "these guys are being persecuted!" Well, here they are, in America. Let the fun commence.
Of the Albanians, three entered the US by overstaying their visa two decades ago. The fourth was resettled as a refugee - the one arraigned on the lesser aiding & abetting charge.
Alma @14, you may wish to re-evaluate your sources of information.
Apparently, not just overstaying their visas, but running a business. Not even lurking in any black economy of illegal-immigrant labour.
Keith, #9: The phrase which immediately springs to mind here is "agent provocateur". How convenient that protection against entrapment is one of the rights that the Torture Act denies to "suspected terrorists".
The eldest of those Albanians was eight years old when he overstayed his visa.
As far as suspected terrorists not being able to claim entrapment -- who is it who couldn't be "suspected" if it was convenient for someone, somewhere, to do so?
"Suspected" doesn't have a definition. It's short for "if we feel like it."
You want my suspicion? I suspect that if it weren't for the FBI's paid informants that those six guys would still be doing roofing and delivering pizza, without a single thought in their heads about Fort Dix (unless someone out there wanted a pepperoni).
#2: Does the Army really let random pizza-deliverers into Fort Dix?
ObSF: in the first episode of Torchwood Gwen finds her way into the Torchwood base (which is supposed to be top secret) because they've been getting pizzas delivered.
Fungi, Alma is from that area originally and has her own perceptions about how things went.
I don't intend to disagree with her perceptions of what happened in Kosovo; I'm hardly an expert and it's not relevant to the topic at hand.
What I meant was that if she's being told that these Albanians were resettled KLA members, she should take a look at who is saying that and why.
I suspect that if it weren't for the FBI's paid informants that those six guys would still be doing roofing and delivering pizza.
Absolutely.
"Raising the terror alert" no longer works. Now it's necessary to have some real "terrorists" to keep everyone scared.
I doubt we can evaluate what's going on in this case from the media reports with any confidence, but each of these revealed cases makes me suspect that most of the would-be terrorists we can find in the US are just not too competent.
I mean, terrorism by mass-shooting isn't inherently that hard, right? The VA Tech wacko did it, and he was an obvious, non-functional nut. If he'd worn a turban and made a video about killing Americans on behalf of Osama, we'd still be hearing about VA Tech as the new 9/11, with more restrictive laws and more sweeping powers needed. Various other mass shooters have done the same, overwhelmingly because the little voices told them to or they went berzerk or whatever.
If the claim that one of the "terrorists" called the cops at one point is true, it sure seems to undermine the notion that they were planning a real attack. Though who knows? Like I said, even an obvious non-functional nut can kill a bunch of people.
"Fungi, Alma is from that area originally and has her own perceptions about how things went."
Which is fine. But we're not talking about what happened then, are we?
I have no problem with these guys getting arrested, even if all they did was make scary videos and stupid threats. But I want them charged with a crime, and I want a public trial so we can find out if there was a crime, and if they were entrapped into it. Sure sounds like it. I don't want them to disappear down some Gitmo-like rabbit hole for the next eighteen months.
most of the would-be terrorists we can find in the US are just not too competent
Why the FBI seems to feel that they need to do this kind of encouraging bothers me - if someone asks for information they shouldn't have, that's one thing; if the FBI is doing all the work it's another, and 'entrapment' is not sufficiently strong as a description.
As Jim says, there's really nothing stopping the current government from declaring anyone to be a terrorist for no reason or any reason, and they have the power to lock people up and lose the key, and the people, for as long as they feel like. (And there are far too many people who think that's a good idea.)
Yet more proof that Michael Chertoff is incompetent:
In Venice, Italy, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told The Associated Press that the arrests were a "vivid example of" the terror threats facing the world. He declined to comment further on the case, saying it was ongoing.
one of the alleged “terrorists” was so alarmed by what the FBI’s undercover man was saying that he called the cops
This reminds me of the time Maxwell Smart infiltrated some evil organization's inner council. When the time came for him to bring the organization down, he used a karate chop on the first evil councilmember who stepped in after him. The guy turned out to be FBI. Next guy gets the chop. Scotland Yard. The it's the CIA. Then it goes on and on, until we've gone thru the whole spook alphabet and we realize that the whole council had been infiltrated.
P J Evans @ 26
This is the way the FBI has done things since at least the early '50s*. Read the stories of how they infiltrated the Communist Party of the USA**, or how they tried to infiltrate and entrap members of the SDS*** and Black Panthers in the 60s and 70s.
For some reason, every time the FBI screws up royally everyone thinks it's the first time. While I haven't done a detailed analysis from source documentation, based on the events I've heard of over my lifetime, the FBI has always been marginally competent at best, and often outright incompetent at law enforcement per se. They forte has always been using PR to convince people of their confidence. This includes carefully selecting the cases they are seen to be working on, from those they have the most chance of solving.
* I conjecture, with not a lot of hard data, that blowing cases out of proportion for PR was the FBI modus operandi from the very beginning. The "10 Most Wanted List" and the radio show "The FBI in Peace and War" are evidence for this.
** And ask yourself why the CP was worth the trouble, except insofar as they could be persuaded by agents provocateur to escalate from political action to violence and real espionage. Oh, certainly, keep an eye on them, but the actual level of surveillance was excessive.
*** Some of these operations were close to Keystone Kops level farce. The agents often had very little background, and stood out like sore thumbs. In some groups, I have been told, it became a game to see how much nonsense they could be fed. As time went on, the Feds realized what was happening and started using group members they'd turned with blackmail or other pressure instead of inserting their own agents.
@12: Has the 1993 CIA shooting by Mir Amal Kanzi been completely forgotten now? He shot up the cars of folks waiting to get in at the gate.
Old story from sex & dope busts. There's a horrible true story in Laura Kipnis's Bound and Gagged about a guy doing 15 years for helping a couple of undercover agents fantasize about making a snuff movie.
#7 "If so ... no such thing as legitimate warfare"
It's presumably still not terrorism if your attack is carried out in uniform by members of a formal armed force belonging to a recognised state which has declared war. No such thing as guerrilla warfare, perhaps.
#28 ... sounds as though the Maxwell Smart scriptwriters had been reading G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. Or maybe the homage to this in Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero.
Dave Langford @ 33... No matter where they got the inspiration, isn't it scary that we sometimes can't tell Reality from an episode of Get Smart? It's like reading about the latest antics or utterances from the White House and wondering if that's another spoof from the Onion.
Maybe KAOS won and we didn't notice.
Maybe I'd feel differently if I had actually seen the video in question. But, based on the description I heard on NPR of the video, there are a bunch of contexts where the video would be perfectly innocent. Perhaps this wasn't one of those contexts. But I'm not getting the impression that, as a society, we care about the difference. e.g., NPR called the guy at the video store "the unsung hero of the story." Well, maybe. But right now, it looks like they were a bunch of blowhards whom the FBI strung along.
There was a This American Life episode about a guy charged with a crime for essentially buying a weapon from the FBI (in disguise) to sell to the FBI (in a different disguise). It's as if the FBI's actual job is to conduct moral purity tests. Tempt people, then arrest those who succumb.
#23, Albatross, If he'd worn a turban and made a video about killing Americans on behalf of Osama, we'd still be hearing about VA Tech as the new 9/11, with more restrictive laws and more sweeping powers needed.
Not to pick nits or anything, but if he'd worn a turban we'd all be freaking right now about Sikh militants, not Al Qaida. (Who also have a track record of massacring North Americans ...)
Hint: there are many violent ideologies out there. If militant islam goes out of fashion, the FBI won't be hard up for replacements to fill the frame.
Charlie,
You can pick those nits, but the sort of people who write "PANIC! Terrorists!" headlines wouldn't: they don't seem to understand that there is a difference between Sikhism and Islam, let alone who wears what clothing.
A recent incident in Joliet, where a cop attacked a Sikh and verbally abused him as a supposed "Arab", inspired me to (very quickly) write a short story: "Bad Egg"
Alan Braggins @ 32
No such thing as guerrilla warfare, perhaps.
The line between terrorism and guerilla war has been somewhat blurry of late. At this point, I doubt they even refer to the same category of thing: "guerilla war" is a military term for a kind of conflict, and "terrorism" is a political term for the way your enemies fight.*
* Yes, there's a much more precise definition having to do with the use of highly destructive tactics against civilian populations in order to cause demoralization. But the way the term is used these days is much more elastic, and more than a little self-serving.
The mention of Chesterton reminds me again of what a great novel Conrad's The Secret Agent is. Conrad really nailed the symbiotic relationship between terrorism and authoritarianism, and captured the rich stew of comical stupidity, vanity, hubris, and pure crazy that makes the whole system work with such tragic results.
I read The Secret Agent shortly after 9/11 as part of my grieving process, and Conrad hasn't let me down yet in terms of making sense of what's going on in the GWOT.
Well, considering that they were talking about a "map of the fort" I don't think attacking the car line going in crossed their minds. Given some of the other things about this case, I'm really, really, really not worried about these kind of terrorists wanna-bees. I'm more concerned about those who want me to be afraid of them.
"Silly jihadis, they brought guns to a tank fight."
Bruce @ 39
Alan @ 32
Erik @ 7
Thinking back and trying to summon up what Che Guerverra would have said in 'On Guerilla Warfare' I confess the gray hair is real and I can summon no direct quotes. But it seems to me back there in the mist of youth that:
1. By inference such warfare is warfare against occupation, i.e. it is an indigenous population taking on an occupier through popular uprising. The two folks that I can think of off hand (Vo Nguyen Giap and Gueverra) I think would both start from that premise.
So . . . Not that I think we should be satisifed with but two choices, in that case, attacking Fort Dix would not qualify as a guerilla engagement (frankly I would be more apt to consider it one of those 'very bad ideas' and leave it at that).
But is it terrorism?
Let's try something slightly different. Let's take a couple things that we know of and let's imagine that we interrupted each in the planning stage. Let's take say: The Twin Towers, the USS Cole and let's place them (as planned acts) against Fort Dix.
2. The guerilla warriors cited above went to great lengths to put civilians and targets containing large civilian populations out of bounds. Remember, your objective was to get folks on your side, to bring people to your arms. Now that, it seems to me heads you in the right direction.
The Twin Towers is a terrorist attack (with certainty). It couldn't possibly be considered a guerilla operation.
Fort Dix is probably not a terrorist attack (with some ambivalence). Like it or not, as Eric @ 7 points out Fort Dix is after all a military base full of what? Full of war fighters.
The USS Cole is not a terrorist attack (with certainty). A warship that contains nothing but military, coming into port is a legitimate military target. No?
But then you get stuck.
It was Khadafi (not someone I find myself referring to often) who pointed out that the USS Nimitz off the shores of Tripoli represents the biggest terrorist threat he knew of. And given his experience with F-111's coming out of the night, attacking clearly civilian targets, with no formal declaration of war, simply a President's assertion that this represented retaliation, we would be forced to at least consider putting such an act in the terrorist category. And I don't know about you, but I find that more than a little unsettling.
At the bottom of the well I think it should probably work something like this. Terrorism is an act:
* Which is clearly random in nature;
* That targets almost exculsively civilian non-combatants who are demonstrably engaged in the peaceful pursuit of their ordinary everyday lives;
* By people who have communicated their intent prior to such an act;
* With weapons that include either unusual features or incredible fire power or both.
Is what we need. It's really important for me to say that I intend to hurt you, and to make it clear that I intend to act randomly that puts the 'T' in terror. And it is also critical that I do it in a way that gets your attention (a plane run into a sky scraper). At which point:
Twin Towers (still terrorist)
Fort Dix (just plain stupid, but more effectively seen as criminal behavior and more likely therefore to allow for considerations of entrapment)
USS Cole (still not).
But unfortunately I'd also have to admit: Khadafi while not exactly right, most certainly had an argument.
BigAl, I think it could be argued that terrorism is a form of guerilla warfare.
Terrorism, the guerillas terrorising those who supported the French, was a part of the original guerilla war in Spain. That blurs the difference between a guerilla and a terrorist, but there still remains a reason for the act.
Essentially, the terrorism is directed at an identifiable class of targets. What makes the terrorism of 9/11 not-war is that it was random. If war is a trial by combat, terrorism is a show-trial.
It's worth remembering that in addition to the military personnel on post, most sizeable military installations also have a fair number of dependents--that is, unarmed spouses and children--living on post, in addition to the civilian personnel* that provide a variety of services, from runnning the PX/BX and commissary, to working at the medical center. schools and mess halls and so on. All of these people would be pretty vulnerable to such an attack, since the housing section of a post is typically segregated from the business end of it.
Assuming they could get on post with their weapons (shall we all chant the verse about how "assume" makes an Ass out of U and Me?), attackers would be able to do a good bit of damage there, especially at night, before the people with serious weapons were able to show up and deal with them--probably with extreme prejudice, given the circumstances.
I still think their chances of getting weapons and ammunition on post in sufficient quantities without getting caught were covered by the Chance Brothers Actuarial Group and Betting Shop (call and ask for Slim or Fat); it's possible the plan was to make caches in advance--some posts have more unused and not regularly-checked places than others where things could be hidden, but that's another thing I'd consider a fool's hope.
Of course the FBI relies on agents provocateurs. (So does the ATF--Ruby Ridge, anyone?) It's so much easier than doing real intelligence work, and you can make up scripts that suit your fantasies (or publicity and budgetary needs) so much more easily that way. The bureau was run for a very long time by a man with a rich fantasy life who was unable to deal with the truth about himself and I think J. Edgar "There is no Mafia and I am not a homosexual" Hoover's preference for acceptable fantasy over unsettling truth is in their DNA by now.
*These usually don't live on post in the US--there's not enough housing available for the qualified military families most places.
JC@35, I don't know about the FBI, but there are many stories about the DEA doing precisely that (being both the supposed seller and buyer until their victim yielded to temptation; or even just told them to talk to each other and leave him alone).
fidelio
Add to that, I've heard that many military families (women and children) are also familiar with weapons and probably have them at home. This would make them not good targets of choice.
The networks are still trying to get us to believe that these guys were Serious Terrorists and that we should Be Very Afraid.
Dave Bell @ 43
You made me go look it up :)
"Acts of sabotage are very important. It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and in-discriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution."
Che Guevera, On Guerrila Warfare
When all's said and done his isn't the last word but most folks who ever had any skin in the game, that is, actually fought (and in his case died) agree with the above sentiment.
And no it's by no means easy and its always blurred so don't get me wrong. When you take off the uniform things get confusing (really confusing). Algeria, Rhodesia, we could write ourselves a long list.
What I was after initially was this:
An act of 'terrorism' has boundaries, probably a lot sharper than anything that one might consider guerilla. And we can do some good if we remember that terrorizing someone isn't always a matter of 'their crazies' running around throwing bombs or crashing airplanes. That reasonable men can conclude that sometimes its also attributable to 'our crazies' sending very sophisticated weapons of war into places on very thin pretexts. Seen from that end of the telescope I think its a lot easier to ferret out the propaganda (like the Dix Six, or as someone above suggested the Six Dicks) from real and present dangers.
There's no doubt there's some dangerous people out there willing to do some really scary things. And we should be wary and vigilent. And we should take care in really knowing what constitutes dangerous, cause a lot of those dangerous people willing to do some dangerous things wear suits, travel in motorcades and work in downtown Washington DC.
Down here in NC, the pizza deliverers to Fort Bragg were the ones most upset at the Dix Six. They said on the local TV news that as a result of this concern, in order to get into the base it now takes them over 30 minutes just to get through the front gate.
#46--P.J. Evans--I have not found that to be consistently the case. Of the military families I have known, familiarity with and access to weapons, especially among children under 10 or 12 years of age, is about what you'd expect for the general population. Also, most posts tend to discourage having personal weapons in post housing--this may have changed since I lived near Ft. Campbell, but I rather doubt it. IIRC, friends who owned deer rifles, for example, either lived off-post or had to have them registered and locked up if they lived on post. It's been a while, though, and I am not entirely clear on the details. However, as a general rule, the people in charge do not like for there to be weapons on post that are not under official control, and they have the powers to make that rule stick, as far as military personnel and their families are concerned.
Cold pizza! WILL THE TERROR NEVER END??
1) Fools exist. (e.g. Michael Chertoff.)
2) Fools can do real damage. (e.g. George W. Bush.)
3) That doesn't mean it's okay to take a bunch of fools and mold them yourself into something they'd never be on their own just to give yourself a headline about your "success" in the War on Terrorism.
I've seen formal definitions of terrorism, but I think from the perspective of most governments, the critical feature is that they don't come directly from another government. That is, deterrence doesn't work.
Now, this is self-serving, since we have no qualms about launching cruise missiles at people who've annoyed us, because very few countries have a credible deterrent against us. But it's also an important functional definition, because it says something about what defenses are useful. Any moderately powerful government can manage an attack on us hundreds of times more powerful than the 9/11 attack, but we mostly don't worry about that. If we know the return address, and the people making the decision about the attack understand what will happen next, we have a fine defense available. On the other hand, that defense doesn't work against Al Qaida, or Tim McVeigh. When McVeigh blew up a building full of people, there was nobody to bomb. When AQ did the same with a bigger building, there still wasn't really anyone to bomb. We could go bomb and invade Afghanistan, but we were only marginally hitting AQ--mostly we were hitting people who supported AQ, if that. (And invading Iraq had even less connection with AQ.)
The FBI has a pretty mixed history with public prosecutions involving terrorism (go ask Richard Jewel), but I don't think it makes sense to be too critical of arresting a bunch of blowhards who are talking a big game, but probably weren't going to do anything about it. It's probably pretty hard to be sure they're really blowhards, and the FBI agents *really* don't want to be on the news, explaining how they'd investigated this group that just killed 20 people, but had decided that the group was just a bunch of harmless blowhards.
For unstoppable pizza delivery, there is always Hiro Protagonist, in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
JC#35
Hang on... the function of the FBI is to tempt people to transgress, and then hand them over to another branch of government to punish?
Is it me or did it just get old testament in here?
!NATAS SI IBF EHT
Pete Darby #54: One way of seeing this is LeGuin's:
"To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws."
In a sense that's circular (you can't have theft without property, nor crime without prohibitions), but it makes a deeper point: agents of law enforcement are rewarded for catching criminals, if you catch criminals you look productive and you get promoted. It thus makes sense to create criminals.
Referring back to the short dialogue at #23/#36 between albatross and Charlie.
The first person to be killed in a hate crime related to September 11 was Balbir Singh Sodhi, a turban-wearing sikh shot in Mesa, Arizona on September 15th, 2001. So there are certainly North Americans who can't distinguish between different headwear and different religions, at least when the people involved are browner than them.
BTW, the 1985 Air India bombing, usually blamed on separatist Sikh militants, was, one suspects, more aimed at the ethnically Indian or Sikh passengers, rather than Canadian or USians, but possibly hoping to get more publicity by involving them too, and because some of the ethnically Indian or Sikhs were also North Americans.
#52:It's probably pretty hard to be sure they're really blowhards, and the FBI agents *really* don't want to be on the news, explaining how they'd investigated this group that just killed 20 people, but had decided that the group was just a bunch of harmless blowhards.
But this is the argument that causes people to spread nonsensical chain letters about people going a party, waking up in a bathtub to find their kidneys have been stolen. This is the argument that says we should treat everyone as guilty and make them prove their innocence because we value protective cover over justice. This is Dick Cheney's 1% Doctrine.
If the blowhards broke the law, they should be arrested and tried. But it's rather unseemly for the FBI to play this for any more than it is.
albatross, #52, I think your last paragraph misses the point.
It's not that the FBI have arrested some blowhards. It is that FBI seem to have been using undercover agents to provoke them into illegal acts.
Here in the UK we have some rumblings over the July bombings in London. It looks as though there was a cock-up in an earlier investigation, leading to a ringleader getting way without being investigated.
There looks to be a certain amount of bureaucratic CYA going on over that: did the security services and the police talk the same language?
I've not heard anyone suggesting entrapment should have been used.
fidelio
I'll take your word for it, since what I got was (at best) second hand information.
#59 P J Evans--There's a wide range of people in the US military, with a wide range of views on guns in the home and weapons training for their children, but by and large, we shouldn't mistake them for the Dorsai--and I refer you back to the gun use thread, and the remarks in it about the effort involved in training people to use guns effectively.
Joe McMahon @ 30 -- I certainly remember the CIA shootings. I lived in southern McLean at the time and had driven past that intersection some fifteen minutes earlier on my way to the GW Parkway to take my husband to work.
You know, there was a potential terrorist arrest last month. Six Alabama men were arrested with a significant cache of actual weapons and the intention of killing Mexican immigrants. Somehow, though, they doesn't seem to count as terrorists as far as the media is concerned. Maybe because they're not Muslim.
Serge 53: And that would be one of the stupidest character names in history, if NS hadn't had the excuse that the character called himself that. So it's just one of the stupidest main characters in history.
I hated that book. It's full of religious bigotry, chiefly in that the entire plot hinges on the ridiculous notion that ancient Pagan peoples were Pagan because their brains were inferior.
I've never read anything else by that author, and given how little time I have to read any more, I don't see why I should.
Xopher @ 62... I only brought up that book for the sake of the pizza joke. I personally didn't care for it at all. I seem to remember that he had come across a metaphor about information transmission and taken it too far into the Real World. I liked Cryptonomicon, but I felt it was going all over the place. And a bit too hip for me. (Which probably brands me as an old fart.)
#62 Xopher:
How did you get that from Snow Crash?
Spoiler text:
Gurer jnf fhccbfrqyl n ebbg ynathntr bs uhznaf, juvpu yrg lbh qb fbzrguvat unysjnl orgjrra tvivat pbzznaqf naq cebtenzzvat crbcyr. Gur ynathntr unq orra ybfg, naq gur vqrn (V gubhtug) jnf gung gur onq thl unq erqvfpbirerq/erpbafgehpgrq vg. Znlor V'z zvferzrzorevat, ohg V pna'g guvax bs nal ersrerapr gb cntnaf be crbcyr onpx va uvfgbel orvat vasrevbe, bgure guna va gur ynpx bs cevrfg-xvatf gb ercebtenz gurz orpnhfr gurl qba'g xabj gur ebbg ynathntr nalzber.
What am I missing? I don't recall anything about pagans being inferior.
#58:
Fair enough. I'm not trying to excuse entrapment, I'm just saying that it's probably sensible to keep an eye on people who you think are probably harmless blowhards, just in case they turn out to be more serious than you thought. And pathetic losers can still kill lots of people, as various mass shootings have demonstrated time and again.
Fort security: dependents and guests have to be credentialed and inspected to get in and out. Food deliveries coming through the gates are from approved vendors only, and confirmed with a phone call from the gate (and I think there are Domino's and Pizza Hut on base anyway). Nonresident dependents and deliveries from off-base can be forbidden without notice by orders of the Commanding General's office or by the ranking security officer.
Stick around the back country of Ft. Lewis or the Yakima Training Area and the MPs show up out of nowhere, locked and loaded; it's been that way since Jane Fonda and Stephanie Koontz invaded during the FTA Tour in 1970. The urban contact boundaries are a mass of electronic surveillance and human patrols which is apparently seamless and pretty much invisible.
Anyone choosing an American military base as a terrorism target is likely operating out of very partial and mostly wrong information, although what I'm hearing of current recruitment standards makes me suspect that the easy way in is through the recruiter's office. The big security breeches of the past couple decades have been by way of gang-associated soldiers or plain vanilla crooks in the ranks.
Charlie Stross and others:
What's the right term for the head-wrapping worn by some Muslims, such as Osama bin Laden?
I must say here that I know perfectly well that the run of members of the US Military are just people doing a hard job, and that the officer corps, although neither inerrant nor actually in touch with some source of mystical power, are on the whole competent beyond the run of the civilian manager class. My host in Montana is a Lt. Co. USA ret, and a generous and admirable human being.
it's probably sensible to keep an eye on people who you think are probably harmless blowhards,
keep an eye on, sure. Keystone cop an arrest, I'm not so sure about.
going a party, waking up in a bathtub to find their kidneys have been stolen
I know someone who had that happen to them. Well, I knew someone, who was really good friends with this guy, who worked with another guy, who's third cousin had heard in a high school cafeteria that this had really happened.
albatross, #65: There's a HUGE difference between "continuing to keep an eye on a group that you think are probably just blowhards" and "encouraging a group of blowhards to become more than that in order to score publicity points for Fearless Leader".
To touch on the question of arms in the home on post.
It's not happening. To have a firearm, on post, at every post I've been on (Fts.Bragg, Devens, Huachuca, Leonard Wood, Lewis, Ord, Hood, Hunter-Liggit; as well as Walter Reed and DLI , and Cps. SLO, Roberts, Williams, Parks as well as AFBs Edwards, Vandenberg and Travis) requires registering it, and then keeping it in an Arms Room. Checking it out is a pain (at DLI it required a phone call, and then sheduling both the pick up, and the drop off). It's discouraged.
A lot of posts have a rod and gun club, which is an acceptable alternative to the Arms Room, but still means the weapons are not in the home.
To violate that (which does happen) is a court martial offense. Keeping a firearm in the barracks is a career killer. There are stories (one comes from DLI) of NCOs who kept one, and had it used by suicidal soldiers when it was being shown off. This smacks of urban legend to me, (I don't hand off weapons I've not cleared; and if I were keeping an illicit one, I'd not be showing it to people).
In the barracks (as opposed to on post housing) most weapons are prohibited. Swords, knives (those get iffy. Some commanders demand that all knives larger than 'x' be kept in the company arms room, some don't care) bokken, etc., are usually addressed in policy letters.
About the only thing which is free and clear is sporting equipment, e.g. golf-clubs and softball bats (when I was at DLI the CQ had to do walk-arounds at East Eurpean Languages II. We weren't allowed weapons; and the post wasn't secure. I know this because the run team went out a hole in the fence to get to S.B. Morse Golf Course to train. We were required, by the First Sergeant, to carry a baseball bat).
And rifles aren't carried with ammo, apart from the range.
So an attack could be nasty.
Until the MPs show up. They have not only more firepower than any six guys are going to be packing, but they have what most people don't, training in fire and manuever.
Cops don't have that, which is why the Northridge Bank Heist Siege lasted so long.
Most crooks don't have it, which is why no cops got killed at the Northridge Bank Heist Siege (they watched Heat and took the wrong lessons; i.e. automatic weapons are all-powerfull, instead of, co-operative action, good training and a plan, will let people get past the shell of police encirclement).
They could have killed a number of people, but the end result would have been foregone, and the odds are people would react diffferently from a school shooting.
Training tells.
Ammunition anywhere off the firing range is usually a military no-no. I recall way back when our platoon/barracks getting a surprise inspection in the middle of the night, with an emphasis on making sure all the weapons were locked and no spare cartridges were rolling around in anyone's footlockers.
Turned out the platoon sergeant had just seen "Full Metal Jacket" earlier that night...
Terry Karney says "Training tells." and is entirely right; I worry a great deal less about the military people doing their jobs right (although the time the guy miscomputed his targeting on the big guns and dropped a heavy artillary shell in the middle of Highway 510, narrow missing the Bonneville Power Administration distribution lines and the Nisqually Tribe's fireworks stands was proof that anybody can make a mistake) than, say, the power company or the railroad. And I include keeping people of ill intent from getting their stuff and using it against the civilian populace among all their jobs.
Terry - you mean the North Hollywood bank robbery? (just nitpicking here, moving right along...)
#71: they watched Heat
Clearly the answer is to watch different movies - I once saw a very silly movie about Swedish ninjas, with the message that a room full of people with automatic weapons can empty their magazines without scratching the heroes. Of course this does require realising that you aren't the heroes (who then killed everyone in the room with one shot/blow/throwing star/blowgun dart per victim). (Then they took the atomic physicist they were rescuing back through the snow (in their black ninja costumes) to their waiting Volvos.)
Fragano @ 55
It thus makes sense to create criminals.
And conversely, it makes sense for criminals to want to create cops. Which is why the drug cartels are happy with the War on Drugs: it gives them more government with a stake in what they do, and more bureaucrats and cops to bribe.
Alan Braggins @ 75... There's got to be the germ of an idea in there for a Skiffy Channel movie. Maybe there's a secret robotics project going on inside the military base, and ED-209 automatically goes after the Swedish ninjas. And, after it chases them into a city, the robot wreaks havoc everywhere and its creator (a Beautiful Female Scientist) can't stop it, until the slacker pizza-delivery guy (played by Dean Cain) discovers that he is made of strong stuff after all. Maybe they gum up ED-209's guns and joints with a few well placed pizzas.
I don't know if the Dix Six were doing anything criminal or not. However, a couple of points.
1) Familiarity breeds contempt and is a good way to bypass security. I eat lunch every Tuesday at Argonne National Labs (nuclear weapons research facility). The first Tuesday, the gate guard checked my trunk. The 15th? I got a smile and a wave.
2) Terrorists aren't typically successful folks, at least by the standard of their society. If they were, they would have too much invested in the status quo to run around blowing stuff up. So in the US, terrorists, from the KKK to the radical anti-abortion groups, have a high percentage of folks from the margins of society. Unfortunately, it doesn't take a genius to pull a trigger.
None of this justifies arresting people who've done nothing wrong, of course.
ED-209
Funny how a just reading that can make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Greg London @ 79... ED-209... Funny how a just reading that can make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
"Dick, I'm verydisappointed."
"It's just a glitch."
Pakistan is invading my border!
Nuke Em! Get them before they get you.
Chris Gerrib @ 78: Last I heard, terrorists are apt to be ordinary middle class people.
P.J. Yes, I had a memoray lapse. North Hollywood, North-ridge, what's a few miles between friends?
Which is, "amusing" because I was on my way to the bank (across the parking lot from that BofA) and stopped by the house to pick somehing up, and the news was on.
So I went to a different branch.
I also saw, pretty damned quick how I'd have done it differently. I don't know that I'd have been able to stay uncaught, but I could have gotten out of the immediate area.
A little bit of planning, and some prep work, with somone on the outside to spot for just the happenstance which took place (cops, at random, stopping by), and they'd have been on the lam. not ducks in a shooting gallery.
You know what I want to know? How come the media don't call this guy a terrorist.
I know why. I just get too angry when I think about it.
A long time ago I was in a minibus with a bunch of wargamers, planning a riot.
One of the gamers was a cop, who had just been through riot training. British style. And he said they did the Zulu-style drumming on the shields to intimidate the opposition.
But the point was that criminals and rioters have no grasp of tactics. You have to keep an eye on the side streets, but most of the people who run that way are going to keep running.
A couple of weeks later I fielded a soviet-style force against his Americans, with hidden movement and such. So this was in the days when the Soviet Union still was the Soviet Union, and maybe the rules we were using werre a little optimistic on their equipment quality.
And I got good die rolls.
A flank attack that takes out 4 M1s also does bad things to a units morale. Maybe the rules underestimated the quality of US training, but the soviet-style force at the NTC was quite able to embarrass the rest of the US Army.
One difference between real bank robbers and the US Army is that bank robbers don't trust each other. So you end up with one vehicle loaded with robbers and loot. It's why the robbery in The Thomas Crown Affair wouldn't work.
Xopher, I'd rather they were called murderers. Serial killers. Criminals. Calling such people terrorists gives their cause a status it does not deserve.
But if we're going to call non-white foreigners "terrorists", white creeps like that should be allowed the same status.
All men are created equal. Right?
Dave Bell: Was that ASqL? I recall playing that as a Micro-armor game. I got the short straw (Russian T-55s).
I worked my way up the wooded flank (because my Plt. could see the M-1s, and there was no way in hell I was going toward that). The guy moving the M-60s in the woods didn't play the same level of "what does my Cdr) know, and was overcautious (if I got the drop on him, I might have come out all right; five to four for numbers... ) and ran away.
So I got to move up on the M-1s from the rear, while they were duking it out with hull-down T-72s and T-80s (this was back in '95).
It was a rout. The Amis had set up poorly, let us (the Soviets) get good ground, and then we got decent dice.
The T-72/80, wel fought, is at a disadvantage against the M1, well fought, but if they can get position, they aren't as ill as all that.
But there isn't anyone on the planet (who has them) who is spending the money to train the crews to be that good.
When I was in Iraq, I saw the remains of a lot of tank fights (we moved north five days behind the lead element). I also got to read the after action reports.
The Iraqis were textbook for placement. But they rarely hit the M1s, and never waited to get shots at the good target points (flank hull-turret seam).
So the best they got were mobility kills. The worst they got was a miss (the boresight was set in the heat of the day, and not re-set when the barrel cooled... the round goes high). Against the crews of the 3ID, they didn't get a second shot.
Dave Bell @ 88
All men are created equal. Right?
Nope. We're just obligated to let everybody prove whether they are or not before lowering the boom on the ones who aren't equal in the respect of simple human decency.
#85 Xopher:
I thought he was universally considered a terrorist. (WTF *else* would he have to do to be called a terrorist? Isn't blowing up random people to achieve political goals enough?) I wonder why they called him an "extremist" instead of a "terrorist." Is this some kind of editorial policy?
The other weird thing about the article was the apparent shock that this guy, who spent several years going around murdering and trying to murder people, is now writing letters with nasty things in them. What a shock! Wow, you know, maybe his willingness to say mean things about the nurse he maimed has something to do with his willingness to try to blow her up.
albatross 91, that editorial policy is the thing that makes me angry. And I think the shock is that he's allowed to write these things.
I don't believe in locking people away in Gitmo, but sooner Eric fucking RUDOLPH than a bunch of innocent Afghan farmers!
Dave, #88: Calling such people terrorists gives their cause a status it does not deserve.
Two thoughts:
1) Call them what you like, but when they resort to using terrorist tactics, then they become terrorists Q.E.D. It doesn't do the rest of us any good to whitewash it, which I believe is the point of Xopher's argument.
2) "Their cause" is a religious jihad, in support of which they use terrorism. The problem is that because it's a Christian religious jihad, it gets a free pass from too many people. A slight variation of IOKIYAR.
mostly people are not called "terrorists" when one supports their cause. in that case, they are "activists."
maybe "extremists" are when one could go either way on their cause.
Making Light has been quite clear: Eric Rudolph is a terrorist.
If Homeland Security wanted to get serious about terrorism in America they'd be coming down on middle-class white male conservatives.
Because that's who our terrorists have been.
miriam beetle @ 94
mostly people are not called "terrorists" when one supports their cause. in that case, they are "activists."
Or, if they're Nicaraguan, "freedom fighters". This is why I said upthread '"terrorism" is a political term for the way your enemies fight'.
dawno,
do you mean keffiyeh?
i've never seen osama bin laden in a keffiyeh. yasser arafat wore a keffiyeh.
i don't know what the head wrap (not the woolen afghani hat) bin laden sometimes wears is called.
Out here, one night some bloke broke in and stole
A whole em one one three - the Aussie marque,
The thirty mill up top - out of the park
The local A res had. He used a pole
To jump the wire, soaring like a lark.
No battery, but he could simply bring
A generator. Made the engine bark,
And nobody could do a bloody thing.
He drove it through the gate. It made a hole
Of that, and of the fence. A splendid arc
Of blue, the live wire snapped. But just to cark
A fence was nothing. The base was not his sole
Objective. So he floored it. Being stark
Insane, he went to town. No bulldusting -
Drove down the highway in the midnight dark,
And nobody could do a bloody thing.
He reached the cee bee dee. By then, the whole
Police force was escorting him. But hark,
They couldn't stop him. What with? For a snark
He trashed a roadblock. Then he took his toll
On Treasury, and Law. Struck like a shark
And tore great lumps from them, demolishing
Their fine facades. They still display the mark,
And nobody could do a bloody thing.
Prince, what would you do? Would you embark
On calling tanks on to the streets? The sting
Is that we cannot tell what that might spark,
And nobody could do a bloody thing.
Lee (93): "[W]hen they resort to using terrorist tactics, then they become terrorists Q.E.D."
As I understand it, they become terrorists when they use terrorist tactics for terrorist reasons. It's an unwieldy and error-prone concept.
Now, please explain why the President shouldn't declare a Global War on Spammers. They fit (or could be made to fit) the definition of terrorists pretty well...
;-)
I think it's worth pointing out/mentioning that the FBI is a law enforcement (and not an intelligence) agency. I'd wager it'd be more useful if it were more like Britain's MI-5, and not the government's Keystone Kops.
ChrisTheRed @ 103
law enforcement (and not an intelligence) agency
Ever so true. AFICT their organizational culture has excluded both intelligence and initiative since the beginning (not that they're so great at law enforcement either; it's why they so often fish with dynamite).
Terry, the rules were "Challenger 2000".
If you made up a set af vehicle-specific file-cards, they weren't so intimidating, but there were details for everything. I once managed to field a tank regiment, advancing along an 18-feet-long table. Ground-scale was 2000:1, so the front was about 3.6km, and some of the artillery deployed on-table.
I don't claim to be another Rommel or Guderian, but I had a clear, simple, plan, pretty much straight out of the Soviet book. And the other guy never quitegot settled into fighting his battle.
I don't think the rules put enough friction into the tactical movement. Reduced movement was a morale result, and there wasn't much advantage in slowing down while advancing.
#92 Xopher:
I want rule of law more than I care about Rudolph, Kazinski, or any other terrorist. So the laws should be applied consistently, and if the laws don't allow denying him correspondence and visits to silence him, then he ought not to be denied correspondence and visits.
But it's bizzarre not to call him a terrorist in news footage. Similarly, it's nuts to call the guys who blow up 50 people in a crowded market in Iraq "insurgents" instead of "terrorists". What do they call Tim McVeigh? An unauthorized building demolitions expert?
Chris Gerrib (#78):
I eat lunch every Tuesday at Argonne National Labs (nuclear weapons research facility)
One correction: as it happens, I eat lunch every weekday at Argonne (usually in my office), and we're not a nuclear weapons research facility [1]. All of the nuke programs we have here are support for the civilian nuclear power industry, spent fuel reprocessing, nonproliferation, and like that.
[1] However, I was looking through the inventory for one of the storage areas here a couple of months ago, and was impressed to discover that we still have a few pieces of CP-1 on-site [2].
[2] Cue Bill Higgins singing "Fusion Girl."
JBWoodford @ 107... Cue Bill Higgins singing "Fusion Girl."
Is there a recording of that somewhere on the internet?
miriam @ 99 - I certainly can't attest to the accuracy of the Wikipedia article but it notes: "Some wearers wrap the keffiyeh into a turban, while others wear it loosely draped around the back and shoulders. Sometimes a skullcap is worn underneath the keffiyeh, and, in the past, it has also been wrapped around the rim of the fez. The keffiyeh is almost always of white cotton cloth, but many have a checkered pattern in red or black stitched into them. The plain, white keffiyeh is most popular in the Gulf states, almost excluding any other style in Kuwait and Bahrain. The black-and-white keffiyeh is most popular in the Levant."
So as bin Lauden is a Saudi, it's possible what he's wearing is a keffiyeh.
JBWoodford @ 107 - talk about a small world! You're welcome to drop by the Guesthouse on Tuesdays @ 12:15 - the Darien Rotary meets there.
All I (or most of the public) know about Argonne is that they do "nuclear stuff" there. My original point is that Argonne, like many military posts, is a "secured" area - however, once you get to a known routine going, security is less vigorous.
If the intent is to "terrorize" they are terrorists. The US gov't actually has a decent working definition of terrorism; they just choose not to use it on people like Rudolph, or the militia in Alabama, nor yet the people in Texas with the cyanide bombs.
Because, it seems, those were white, christian types. They were also, "lone wolves". Mcveigh wasn't being a "terrorist" he was "making a political statement."
Feh.
Dave Bell: re friction. ASqL does a decent job of it, but there's not really any way to model it (unit to unit tactical friction). In some ways the games have to play much as units do, the will of the commander to press on. The difficulty is to translate the effect of soliders being individual actors, as well as corporate bodies. Morale is what we call that.
I've yet to see a game (esp. with dice) which does a great job of that.
As for having a plan: If you have one, and can keep the other guy off of his (or better yet, if he figures he'll just deal with you as you come) you have a pretty good leg up on him.
Come at me with that soviet plan.... It's what I cut my teeth against. I've been the "red cell" in more than a few wargames (the guys in the Intel section of the Operations Center, who are responsible for guessing what the enemy is going to do), I have lots of practice at putting arty in the Assembly Area.
Serge (#108):
Is there a recording of that [Fusion Girl] somewhere on the internet?
Not that I know of, but you could ask him. The lyrics are out there, though.
Terry, if you ever get the chance, have a look at the "Striker" SF game from GDW. It's the only game I ever came across th
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