He writes:
Personally, I think a series of terror attacks on civilian targets (buses, trains, malls, schools) within the US would effectively end the Islamist project; even an apolgetic anti-war or Arabist left wouldn’t be able to mitigate the cries for retribution that Americans would insist upon in order to regain their quality of life...
Ok, granted, on Sept. 11 itself, there wasn't much of it going around, but by the next day educated temporary Bostonians were printing articles -- which I still have, for posterity and all that -- saying how heartbroken they were that we had brought it upon ourselves and deserved that and more. And he thinks making the US into Israel will make them oppose the US's enemies? (Because, you know, they all oppose Israel's enemies, right?)
Meh. Now back to your regularly scheduled pessimism, doom and gloom, severe headcold, and lack of anything to say.
So here's an interesting question that this has me trying to tackle: Would an American backlash be more or less difficult to muster if they carried out scores of smaller attacks (a la "Siege") or another large-scale one (a la 9/11)?
I'm inclined to think that the people would start getting more impatient with the former. But it's hard to say the kind of affect that another 9/11 would have on our psyche. The biggest example that comes to my mind is if they had bomed the levees in New Orleans.
In either case, though, I think those that are donating most of their concern to the enemy combatant detainees would be in for a pretty rude awakening should it become clear that tougher measures might have stopped the next attack.
Posted by: R. Alex | December 04, 2005 at 01:20 AM