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Would You Like Fires With That?
My eye was drawn to an article in yesterday's LA Times:
If there's one thing that the War on Terrorism has done well, it's to create a global market for terrorism. Peaceful anti-war protests, not so much. Get a few thousand people together to calmly state their opinions and it gets a few minutes. Send a car with explosives into anything at all, anywhere at all, and you get days of coverage on every major news network.
We're fighting a War on Terror, now, you see. We couldn't do that before, when attacks would happen once every few years or so. I mean, that's not a war, that's scattered skirmishes. But those attacks were designed to get people to pay attention. All terrorists are looking for attention. That's why they often target symbolic buildings on symbolic days in symbolic ways. They're trying to send a message. But now that the message has been received, the careful planning that went into these attacks is getting shoved aside, along with the time available to put a stop to them. Now, we've got prefab attacks that take hardly a few words to pull off.
And long-term training and sleeper agents? A thing of the past. Now we've got "'Kleenex kamikazes,' young men who are rapidly radicalized, used and then discarded." (Id.) Terrorism's not just a message to one's adversaries. It's also an affirmation of the beliefs of those sympathetic to your cause, which makes it the perfect recruitment tool. And now that the War on Terrorism is global, frustrated young men all over the world can have what frustrated young men have had in Palestine, Punjab and Ireland for years: a feeling of empowerment fighting against a perceived oppressor and, if their lucky, the celebrity of martyrdom.
It's gone beyond terrorism. Terrorism is just so eighteenth century. In the twenty-first century, it's terror marketing. Terrorist acts become commercials. They're on all the time, reminding you that Company S is honest and Group T cares about citizens and County U is a faceless Satan that must be destroyed. And the mass media are only the beginning. Terror's going to start showing up everywhere that ads do. It's been in the post for decades; it'll show up along with spam in e-mail. Terrorist hackers will pop-up like porn-site banners. And if this catches on with the Christianity, who until now have focused Terror on minorities and abortion doctors, we can look forward to Terror showing up in strip malls across the nation. Twenty-four hours, seven days a week.
Welcome to the era of McTerrorism. Please drive through and pick up your bomb at the second window. Have a nice day.
Through an evolving and loose alliance of semiautonomous terrorist cells, [Al Qaeda] has been able to export its violence and "brand name" with only limited involvement in the attacks themselves. . . . "It's a movement that functions by franchise," [Olivier Roy of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris] said.— Sebastian Rotella and Richard C. Paddock, "Experts See Major Shift in Al Qaeda's Strategy"
If there's one thing that the War on Terrorism has done well, it's to create a global market for terrorism. Peaceful anti-war protests, not so much. Get a few thousand people together to calmly state their opinions and it gets a few minutes. Send a car with explosives into anything at all, anywhere at all, and you get days of coverage on every major news network.
We're fighting a War on Terror, now, you see. We couldn't do that before, when attacks would happen once every few years or so. I mean, that's not a war, that's scattered skirmishes. But those attacks were designed to get people to pay attention. All terrorists are looking for attention. That's why they often target symbolic buildings on symbolic days in symbolic ways. They're trying to send a message. But now that the message has been received, the careful planning that went into these attacks is getting shoved aside, along with the time available to put a stop to them. Now, we've got prefab attacks that take hardly a few words to pull off.
And long-term training and sleeper agents? A thing of the past. Now we've got "'Kleenex kamikazes,' young men who are rapidly radicalized, used and then discarded." (Id.) Terrorism's not just a message to one's adversaries. It's also an affirmation of the beliefs of those sympathetic to your cause, which makes it the perfect recruitment tool. And now that the War on Terrorism is global, frustrated young men all over the world can have what frustrated young men have had in Palestine, Punjab and Ireland for years: a feeling of empowerment fighting against a perceived oppressor and, if their lucky, the celebrity of martyrdom.
It's gone beyond terrorism. Terrorism is just so eighteenth century. In the twenty-first century, it's terror marketing. Terrorist acts become commercials. They're on all the time, reminding you that Company S is honest and Group T cares about citizens and County U is a faceless Satan that must be destroyed. And the mass media are only the beginning. Terror's going to start showing up everywhere that ads do. It's been in the post for decades; it'll show up along with spam in e-mail. Terrorist hackers will pop-up like porn-site banners. And if this catches on with the Christianity, who until now have focused Terror on minorities and abortion doctors, we can look forward to Terror showing up in strip malls across the nation. Twenty-four hours, seven days a week.
Welcome to the era of McTerrorism. Please drive through and pick up your bomb at the second window. Have a nice day.
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Wow, you're like, a smart Alicia Silverstone in "Clueless". Hahaha.