The Goldman Sachs Theory of International Terrorism
"From a technical point of view the London bombings, when compared to their counterparts in Iraq, the West Bank or Beirut, have the look of marked poverty. The quantity of explosives employed was in the tens of kilos max . . . . If we had seen a car bomb used in London, then we might say, 'aha! An Iraqi insurgent has come to mentor the British Al Qaeda cell'. That might still be true; but there is no obvious way one can get from Iraq to the London operation. Occam's Razor urges a simpler conclusion: that Al Qaeda's British minions either didn't have enough explosive to do worse or they didn't have the know-how to assemble a bigger bomb."[LINK}
This blog entry reminded me of my Goldman Sachs Theory of International Terrorism. I expect that an established global terror organization is much like an established global investment bank: its biggest asset is its people, and the key people are not easily replaced. The Wall Street truism that "our most important assets walk out the door every night" is even truer, it its own way, of a terror cell.
We frequently hear how it is not so important how much of the Al Qaeda leadership structure has been killed or captured, because others will just fill the vacancies, while meanwhile countless Muslim youths are being galvanized to the cause, swelling terrorist ranks. But are the new terrorists and hastily-anointed new terror-managers equal to the task? If Al Qaeda is like most other "elite" organizations, it's reasonable to think that the most capable people available were generally filling the pre-9/11 slots in its hierarchy. A lot of those people are gone now. If you did the same thing to Goldman Sachs, and replaced the departed with a bunch of untested junior bankers, it's unlikely the firm would remain in the top rank of international finance. And last I checked the U.S. military and intelligence services play even rougher than Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.
Al Qaeda takes a notoriously long view, so the absence of follow-on attacks on U.S. soil in almost four years since 9/11 might just reflect that. Or it could mean that the organization's ability to mount such attacks has been heavily compromised. If so, we must hope it becomes harder and harder for the "junior bankers" to make a go of it.
posted at 12:28 AM
1 Comments:
your blog -- social commentary and international issues
my blog -- kissing strangers from the east coast
you -- responsible active citizen
me -- ho
I am shamed...tp
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