How the Terrorists Win

First a news item:

Crying Wolf On Terrorism?

Jan 4, 2004 12:20 pm US/Central

(CBS) Concerned with terrorism threats in the air and on the ground, the British government delayed a London-to-Washington flight for three hours -- after canceling the flight altogether for two days in a row.

CBS News Correspondent Joie Chen reports Flight 223 only carried half it's typical passenger load, raising the questions: How many more flights can the airlines afford to cancel? How long can this level of scrutiny and security go on?

Even as they demonstrated stepped up security at their airports, foreign governments expressed frustration with U.S. demands for greater scrutiny of their flights.

Terrorism expert Paul Beaver tell Chen, "We've got to the stage in Western Europe where nobody actually takes any notice of American alerts anymore because there's so many of them."

One French police official said that bad U.S. intelligence information resulted in six cancellations from Paris' Charles De Gaulle airport.

The New York Times reported in its Saturday editions that the cancellation of the British Airways flights was not in response to U.S. safety concerns, but was prompted by the refusal of British pilots to fly with armed marshals on board.

The British government has declined to provide details of its security concerns about Flight 223. The department said it took action Saturday following discussions with a variety of sources, including U.S. authorities. Much more at link.

It should be abundantly clear that all a terrorist entity need do is to disrupt any system of large enough scale to be effective. In an township, this could be something as small a called-in bomb threat against a commercial, residential or municipal target. Use your imagination to scale up to the threat of an event that would disrupt a system on an international scale.

Any time that the populace feels threatened by the possibility of a terrorist event, and subsequently changes their behavior to avoid this perceived threat the terrorists win.

I do not wish to make this a manual on how to terrorize a population. I am merely pointing out that ofttimes the mere threat of an attack can be psychically and financially damaging with no expenditure of resources by the terrorist entity.

The real threat of terrorism on U.S. soil post 9/11, has come from our very own homegrown terrorists in tragically underreported stories.

Unless you're name is Mohammed or you practice Islam, apparently the media deems you unworthy of coverage. As I wrote in an earlier piece, Jose Padilla -- John Ashcroft's "dirty bomber" -- is/was far less a threat than the media coverage he was given would imply. I am of the opinion that Padilla was used by agents sympathetic to al-Qaeda, or perhaps al-Qaeda itself as a cheap and easy way to instill fear in the populace.

This opinion dovetails nicely with the fairly obvious fact that terrorists would much rather do their harm without the expenditure of capital. Why fly jets into buildings in expensive long term operations that remove valuable assets, when well placed faux information can be used to similar effect? This is essentially a large part of what state sponsored actors(militaries) do when they employ 'psyops.'¹

Of course, after a time, a successful operation must be conducted or else the threats not followed through by actions lose their value to the terrorist. This is precisely what is happening in Europe and to a lesser extent in the U.S. In the U.S. we have been subjected to only two alert levels post September 11, 2001. These levels are two out of a possible five.

The five threat levels from highest probability of an event to lowest are: Red -- Severe, Orange -- High, Yellow -- Elevated, Guarded -- Blue, and Low -- Green

I asked dozens of people earlier today what the threat levels are, both color and value, and what the current threat level is. No one, and this includes two members of the national media, could answer all of these important questions.

Currently we are at "Threat Level Orange," the second highest threat level. It is unknown when this threat level is going to be changed. The only other level that we have been subjected to is, "Threat Level Yellow." Threat Level Yellow is the level that which we have spent the most time since 9/11 2001. I think it reasonable that most Americans now view "Threat Level Yellow" as the common background level.

It is not known by this author the financial costs of the latest update to "yellow," but numerous flights have been cancelled, and rescheduled and there is evidence that the current series of flight disruptions will further hurt an already weakened airline industry.

Speaking to the Toronto Star, Dexter Koehl, a spokesman for the Travel Industry Association of America, said the cancelled and disrupted flights are "bothersome and worrisome" but he predicted the effect on the industry will be short-term. With the exception of cut-rate Southwest Airlines, the immediate outlook is bleak. U.S. airlines lost more than $18 billion in 2001-02 and are expected to post losses of another $3 billion in 2003.

One can only hope. The airline industry does not operate in a vacuum, and the hotel and tourism sectors are certain to feel this pinch as well. One can see how inter-related the economy really is. When one industry is directly effected, all of the adjunctive industry groups are effected as well, and this trend continues in a snowball effect.

I need to wrap this up. Anytime the terrorists disrupt systems it can objectively be said that their goals have been achieved. If terrorists can do this without using valuable assets, all the better for the terrorists. This leaves them with two future possibilities to further their agenda. The first, and much more preferable is to stage another mock attack, and if successful, continue this until no one believes in their threats. The second obviously, is to conduct a true attack expending assets, and 'resetting' the terror threat so that mere threats illicit the same manner of response as an actual attack.

1. Psyops. Shorthand for 'Psychological Operations'

Planned psychological activities in peace and war directed to enemy, friendly, and neutral audiences in order to influence attitudes and behavior affecting the achievement of political and military objectives. They include strategic psychological activities, consolidation psychological operations and battlefield psychological activities.