The overarching goal of any terrorist or revolutionary guerrilla fighter beyond the immediate removal of a given target and the ensuing intimidation is to provoke an overreaction by the authorities, to make things worse not better in the short term, to push them to crack down on civil liberties until their repression breeds more support for the revolutionary or terrorist cause.
As the result of a single attack more than a decade ago, Western democracies now as a matter of course engage in the kind of behaviour we once claimed made the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany our enemy: Domestic spying and electronic eavesdropping, indefinite detention without trial or even warrant, militarization of the police, torture, show trials, pass laws, demonization of entire ethnic groups - you name it, we, as a society, have now gone there.
Clearly, Al-Qaida has won.
(hat tip to Dr. Dawg)
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Thursday, February 02, 2012
Congratulation Al-Qaida
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That was the underlying strategy of the Brigate Rossi in Italy and the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany during the 1970s and 80s. But those countries were run by intelligent adults, so they did not fall for the trap. Too bad the same was not true for the U.S., and for that matter, Harpolini's Canada. Imagine the reactionary clampdown if Harpercons had been in charge during the FLQ era! Frenchies machine-gunned against walls in the basements of police stations everywhere, and Quebec would still be a bombed-out wasteland...
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