Phi Beta Iota: There are two competing narratives, neither of which is properly researched and documented. Narrative A (our tentative preference) has all of these Al Qaeda stories as part of a contrived joint Israeli-led but US supported disinformation campaign to justify armed force against Iran. Narrative B (equally plausible, but the point is we do not actually know) has Iran — these are Persians, not ragheads — well-prepared to do asymmetric attacks via multiple channels including the remnants of Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda posers. This would including exploding apartments in Tel Aviv. We really don't know, and it is a rather important question.
Can science predict where terrorists will strike? Not quite. But researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMB) have created a detailed map of where terrorism attacks have occurred since 1970 – and it reveals some big surprises.
The map's accompanying study, conducted at the UMD's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), found that while certain areas (those surrounding Manhattan and Los Angeles, for example) have endured as terror ‘hot spots' throughout the study, others have come and go. In the 2000s, for example, there has been a higher-than-average rate of attacks in Maricopa County, AZ, Phoenix's county. King County, WA, on the other hand, was a terror hot spot in the 1970s and 1980s, but has been largely quiet since.
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The START researchers called 65 of the nation's 3,143 counties hot spots, although that only means that these counties experienced higher than the national average of 6 attacks from 1970-2008.
The study, which looked at all 3,143 U.S. counties, also found that terrorism hot spots and motivations have changed dramatically from decade to decade. Where do terrorists come from? In the last decade, many politicians have conjured the image of Islamic fundamentalists from the Middle East. But in the 1970s, many attacks classified as ‘terrorist' came from left-wing groups in Berkeley, San Francisco and surrounding areas.
The research showed a strong association between the county in which a terrorist attack occurred and its motivation. “For example,” a University of Maryland statement notes, “Lubbock County, Texas, only experienced extreme right-wing terrorism while the Bronx, New York, only experienced extreme left-wing terrorism.”
Similarly, particular ideologies' inclination to terrorist attacks varied over the years.
“The 1970s were dominated by extreme left-wing terrorist attacks,” co-author Bianca Bersani, assistant professor of sociology at UMB, said. “Far left-wing terrorism in the U.S. is almost entirely limited to the 1970s with few events in the 1980s and virtually no events after that.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, domestic left-wing terrorism overwhelmingly took place in the San Francisco Bay area during the Vietnam War.
Other interesting findings include the fact that “religiously motivated attacks occurred predominantly in the 1980s, extreme right-wing terrorism was concentrated in the 1990s and single issue attacks [‘e.g., anti-abortion, anti-Catholic, anti-nuclear, anti-Castro'] were dispersed across the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.”
The researchers hope that the insights from the study can be used to determine the relationship between terrorism and ordinary crime, which has historically been much easier to predict.
Phi Beta Iota: Terrorism is a tactic. Both Israel and the USA have used it to great effect, and evidently continue to use it today, not only as a flag political tactic, but in the case of Isreal, to sell security services (warn of car bomb; car bomb; sell tons of cameras and security services to morons that don't realize they've been had). Terrorists want what we all want: dignity for themselves and legitimacy in any government that pupports to be responsible for their liberty and general welfare. The Preamble to the Constitution is always a useful touchstone–Ron Paul does not get three of the four parts:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
European Intelligence & Security Informatics Conference (EISIC 2012)
The Premier European Conference on Counterterrorism and Criminology
Odense, Denmark August 22-24, 2012 http://www.eisic.org, http://www.eisic.eu
Co-sponsored by IEEE Computer Society
When Mark Perry, writing for the CFR, considered the most conservative and certainly the largest American think tank accused Israel of using CIA credentials for recruiting terrorists, particularly against Iran, I nearly fell of my chair.
I had known about this all along. The operations, based in Balochistan, were done by the Mossad with support from Britain’s MI 6 and operational support supplied by Blackwater.
The project head at Blackwater is a friend who was not briefed that he was supporting an illegal terrorist organization.
In Afghanistan, even minimally accountable democracy may soon be beyond reach. If so, some form of constrained warlord rule will be the most that's achievable.
Success in Afghanistan would not be as difficult or expensive as it was for the United States to win wars in Europe or counter the communist threat. Given the risks and the opportunities ahead, an investment in South Asia is worth making.
The drawdown in Afghanistan may be afoot, but racing for the exits will leave large parts of the country — especially around Kabul in the east — infested with insurgent havens.
The drawdown of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan will proceed rapidly through 2014. As a consequence, the mission will change sooner than many people expect, and that means the fledgling Afghan National Army has to take charge of the fight now.
Judged by any yardstick, Afghanistan has made little progress since 2001. The United States and its allies have bred an overly centralized and ineffective government in Kabul that is hooked on foreign aid and struggles against a resurgent Taliban. Without serious reforms, the next ten years could be worse.
In Afghanistan, the United States faces a choice: either establish a permanent administrative and security presence, or stand back and risk the country becoming a haven for organized criminals and terrorists. Staying forever won’t work, so Washington must accept the risks of withdrawal.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is driven largely by domestic politics. That is a privilege of a country that is both rich and safe. But the United States has security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan that, despite its best attempts, it will not be able to ignore.
Phi Beta Iota: Nowhere in this edition of Foreign Affairs is there any reference to an over-arching strategic model that is reality-based and focused on the public interest. Instead, what we have here are a variety of ideological viewpoints that are totally lacking in any sort of “true cost” accounting analytics.
