Terrorism by Moslems in America and Europe cannot be stopped. If attacks do not occur, it will be because nobody tried very hard. Stopping them would require excluding Moslems, deporting them, or controlling them by totalitarian methods. Or, improbably, minding our own business in the Middle East.
What you think of the foregoing approaches doesn’t matter, since none of them will be used. In France the result would be a civil war. America is too divided to do anything about anything.
The notion that the government can prevent terrorism suggests studied inattention to the obvious. To begin, the intelligence agencies have proved useless. NSA did not prevent the first attack on the Twin Towers in 1993, nor the successful one. French intelligence did not prevent the recant attacks in Paris, nor Russian intelligence the downing of the airliner over Syria. On and on.
The idea that terrorism can be prevented must include the idea that a package containing ten pounds of C4 (or Semtex, or RDX, or….) and a blasting cap can be kept out of a country with long and almost open borders. America can exclude neither tons of prohibited substances nor tens of thousands of prohibited people. C4 is not hard to use. I learned in infantry training at Camp Lejeune long ago. Nothing to it.
Exercise for the reader: Think of five ways a terrorist cell with the resources of the Nine-Eleven attackers could get a small suitcase into America. Think how you could do it.
What goes on at airports is not security. It is Security Theater. When the government’s own agents try to smuggle “weapons” aboard airliners to test the system, they succeed ninety-five percent of the time.
Further, a terrorist doesn’t need to get aboard an airliner to blow up spectacularly. At many airports, hundreds of people line up at ticket counters during peak hours. A carry-on bag of explosive would easily create enough slaughter to shut down air travel and to make international headlines for weeks.
The willingness of a suicide bomber to die makes him almost unstoppable. If he has assembled enough explosive for a car bomb, he has only to find a large number of people together, pull up to them, and push the button. An AK, a thirty-round magazine, and a Fourth of July crowd would serve well. Ten pounds of C 4 in a shoulder bag in a crowded movie theater would also work. Suicide would not be necessary: “Would you watch my bag for a minute while I go to the john?”
Warnings at airports that unattended vehicles will be ticketed, towed, and perhaps destroyed are also Security Theater. By the time the vehicle was noticed, and somebody sent to check it out, an easy five minutes would have passed and the driver would be somewhere else. Boom.
Tim McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma using ammonium-nitrate fertilizer. He didn’t need to smuggle anything into the US. How do you watch fertilizer?
Large numbers of people are easily vulnerable in large numbers of places. Restaurants, kindergartens, churches. It is impossible to secure tens of thousands of soft targets. The only question is whether a terrorist can get his hands on explosives. Or a gun. Or gasoline.
Exercise for the reader: Think of three spectacularly horrible things you could do with five gallons of gasoline and a cigarette lighter. Especially if you were willing to die doing them.
