The Limits of Al-Qaeda on US Soil

In his most recent Washington Post effort, foreign policy columnist David "Iggy" Ignatius informs us that the terrorist threat may prove overrated.

Of course it is--on American soil. To suggest that the terrorist threat is overrated in Iraq, Aghanistan, other similar areas of relative instability defies commons sense, but it is important to note that al-Qaeda has its limits in the United States.

Perhaps I could've entitled this post, "Why al-Qaeda cannot bomb your local shopping mall, sports complex, school, or even the nuclear plant not far from your residence," but that would've required an excessive amount of words. Simply put, there are very few "cost-free" targets in the US, and the terrorist organization already destroyed the most prominent on September 11.

Here is the list: The White House, The US Capitol, The Pentagon, The CIA Headquarters in Langley, The New York Stock Exchange, The Chicago Board of Trade, every military base, and not much else. No sports arena, no museum, not even the subway system on the Eastern coast. Certainly not the Mall of America, O'Hare airport, or the Sears Tower.

Why? Whilst it is certainly true that al-Qaeda doesn't give a fig about your well-being, the organization does however care about the opinions of those who do. Why do you think they targeted the World Trade Center, twice? Arguably no building in the world offered a bigger target for as cheap of a cost. Given their actions in Iraq post-2003 invasion, we should not doubt that AQ harbors something of a self-destructive impulse. Nonetheless, it does not extend to bombing a shopping center in metropolitan Chicago.

Why not? Whenever possible, al-Qaeda deigns to kill individuals that various intellectual strains of thought would not reflexively consider victims. In other words, some sympathetic to the motive though not the means of al-Qaeda's ideology did not find significant distress in the events of 9/11. These folk are anti-American, anti-Western, anti-capitalism, and so on, and most assuredly we can recall the economical background of many (sans firefighters and police officers) that perished on that epochal Tuesday morning. Stock brokers, day traders, and DOD employees are seen in many quarters as part of the world's problem and a hindrance to its solution.

Aside from attacking Israelis (who are rarely, if ever, regarded as victims by media outlets or intellectuals), targeting poor people serves only to undermine the tacit level of acceptance many anti-Western intellectuals afford al-Qaeda and its relations. These twisted minds can justify, to their satisfaction, the destruction of the White House or the Chicago Board of Trade, Ft. Drum, et al. What they cannot easily countenance (most of them) is a burning wreckage of a local community center, particularly if it is teeming with dead, non-white people.

Unless al-Qaeda achieves the capability and willingness to embark on an all-out assault to effectively destroy the United States, college campuses are far likelier to fall prey to a demented gunman (who is enabled by a virtually-unchallenged firearms industry) than a terrorist attack. The same is true for almost every place in America, save for the aforementioned exceptions.

The true danger of al-Qaeda lies in its ambition to forcibly oust governments in the Middle East and Asia (principally), none more so than the Holy Grail of Saudi Arabia herself. If al-Qaeda decapitated a US president (unless it's Barack Obama likely another low-cost/high-reward hit), the American public would fight back with a ferocity unseen since 1945; would the same necessarily prove true if violence were to befell Amman, Cairo, or especially Riyadh? Or would movements in relative agreement with al-Qaeda's Koran-inspired tenets rise to command power and reshuffle the Middle East? And would these governments, due in large part to our failure to prevent Iran from obtaining the Bomb, possess nuclear weapons?

What about Madrid and London? Didn't al-Qaeda target innocent civilians there? Yes, mostly in an effort to make Spain and the United Kingdom re-think their support for the Iraq occupation, in this respect they batted .500. Even so, you did not see a massive loss of life in a poor community, which the organization likely could endeavor to accomplish if it so desired. Remember the deep fears of al-Qaeda cells in Buffalo and other places? Well, unless you are a CEO or something similar, you have scant cause for concern.

The world, collectively, does not view the US military, US businesspeople, or the majority of US officeholders as figures worthy of protection. Terrorists, therefore, are free to murder them to their jihadist heart's content. Beyond those unsympathetic targets (which may well include the writer of this dispatch), there is an invisible line that they will only cross if their desperation reaches a point analogous to one presumed by many a liberal pundit in the late autumn of 2001. Otherwise, like their nihilism practiced in Iraq, they would only hasten their own marginalization and ultimate demise.

It undoubtedly pains them to admit it, but al-Qaeda needs to retain the intellectual backing of the anti-American, anti-Western, anti-capitalist contingent, even if the latter will never partake in suicide bombings or other terrorist attacks.