Terror's primary weapon
The smashing of a gasoline filled jeep into the entry doors at Glasgow Airport hardly seems to make sense. The scale of the attack, the fact that the perpetrators should have been able to gauge that they wouldn't be able to break through the barriers, the size of the vehicle used. None of these add up very well. Just as in the attempted car bombings in London, one would think the perpetrators would have known not to park in a zone where they'd be towed. The evidence suggests that these were not sophisticated plans worked out in every detail by a mastermind.
And that illustrates a dilemma that will always confront us. Terrorists will be able to mount attacks against countries and individuals as long as there are fundamentalists willing to step into the 'martyr' role. Fundamentalists egged on by jihadist voices can always fill a car with gasoline and smash into something. We can't stop them. We can lower the likelihood, perhaps, of sophisticated and complex attacks by groups but we can't stop the human weapon who believes that immolation is the shortest way to paradise. Unless we can make headway in the battle to stop the "martyrs" we will be fighting the everchanging versions of this kind of terrorism for the foreseeable future. This is the weapon we face more than IEDs, RPGS, or other physical armaments. I don't think we've really engaged in battling to win on this front. And that is a frightening prospect.
And that illustrates a dilemma that will always confront us. Terrorists will be able to mount attacks against countries and individuals as long as there are fundamentalists willing to step into the 'martyr' role. Fundamentalists egged on by jihadist voices can always fill a car with gasoline and smash into something. We can't stop them. We can lower the likelihood, perhaps, of sophisticated and complex attacks by groups but we can't stop the human weapon who believes that immolation is the shortest way to paradise. Unless we can make headway in the battle to stop the "martyrs" we will be fighting the everchanging versions of this kind of terrorism for the foreseeable future. This is the weapon we face more than IEDs, RPGS, or other physical armaments. I don't think we've really engaged in battling to win on this front. And that is a frightening prospect.
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