No answer

I've been watching the news almost non-stop since September 11. And I have nothing to give myself. No trinket, no bone, no gift. No answers. I'm the kind of person who wants an answer. I'm selfish that way.

There are a couple concepts that kept popping into my mind over the last few days.

• This is not Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was a military installation. The enemy took responsibility for their actions. There existed the possibility of immediate retaliation.
• Colin Powell acknowledges that as a military man he is more used to fighting soldiers that occupy an area of land. That the enemy can be defined in space-time. How do you wage war against a group of people scattered across the globe? Is that a war you can win in the traditional sense?
• There are conflicting, but not mutually exclusive, interests between security, freedom and privacy. Another war between these ideals is brewing.
• Stricter airport security is only a first step.
• The attack was not sophisticated. The most sophisticated part of the plan was training a pilot. If you can train one group, you can train four or six or eight. The thing is, we'd rather not accept an enemy that was any less than sophisticated.
• Fear fear. It is one word repeated, but in two different contexts.
• "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." That seems to be a catch-phrase that's making the rounds once more. But what is the cost of eternal vigilance? What if it is freedom? Do we then have an endless cycle of debt?

Then I read this article by Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle. He conveys most of the ideas above more eloquently than I ever could.

A couple other articles:

A new breed of terrorism
Terrorists of the past used violence as a means to an end. They wanted recognition. They had political agendas. They understood that there was a line that, if crossed, would be counterproductive to their cause.

Metaphor and War by George Lakoff
Written during the Gulf War. In the Fairy Tale of the Just War, the villain, the victim and the hero are just three of the metaphors used to justify war.

A Quick Reaction by Noam Chomsky
In the Middle East the United States is the villain...

How to defeat bin Laden
Treat him as a criminal, a fugitive from justice instead of waging war.

Random thoughts.

I'm too lazy to read anything, but a couple of things comes to mind from danchan's headings.

>With regard to Pearl Harbour. True in terms of the embodiment of the 'enemy' this is no where near Pearl Harbour. The impact as a result of its destruction, however, parallels Pearl Harbour in the sense that, for the first time in our generation, we don't feel safe where we are. To magnify that fear, we don't know who the enemy is or where he is going to attack next.

>It's not a sophisticated attack - I feel that it is quite the opposite, it is an extremely sophisticated attack not in how they carried it out, but the thought process behind it.

Their objective is to take down buildings in a single blow, and using planes is an obvious logical deduction. How to hijack planes is where it becomes tricky; If they were to bring AK47s/bombs on board, they are assured of higher success rate but run into a better risk of being discovered. They realize that, all they need to do is to get into the cockpit and their objective will be reached, so they virtually gambled, put several well trained hand to hand combat crew on the planes, placed seven pilots instead of four to ensure if one of them goes down the other can pick it up, used fast an efficient scare tactics to draw out the pilots, and the rest is history. It is almost Sun Tzu to suppress your instinct to go heavy weaponary, and in return, achieve full surprise.

> How to defeat Bin Laden - US will do nothing by nuking him and claiming a bottle of dust as his ashes. Bush will almost definitely want Bin Laden to be arrested ALIVE, so he'll face the consequence of his actions in court and not in physicality. For Bin Laden as an enemy is not him as th person - there are ten more Bin Ladens in line to take his place, but justice can only prevail when you trial him as the IDEAL, not the PERSON.

It doesn't take a game theorist...

...to plan the hijacking of the plane. It doesn't take a genius to plan the hijacking of a plane without guns. If you determine what your constraints are, it is fairly easy to plan out the necessary moves. The plan of action follows from the knife as a constraint.

I personally can't say how people felt after Pearl Harbor since I wasn't alive then, but I would guess that an attack on downtown Manhattan has a bigger impact.

Logistics

Lots of things have been bothering me about the logistics/success rates of the recent terrorist actions.
On the morning of 9/11, my television woke me up around 9am pst since I forgot to turn it off the night before. My punishment for being forgetful is to wake up to the most traumatic sight I have witnissed so far. I glued myself to the tube, trying to learn as much about what happened.
By about 10am, I learned that there were two planes that were hijacked, and they arrived at their "destination" about 15 mins apart. At about the same time, I learned that a third plane "arrived" at the Pentagon.
Also, about 10am, almost every channel I surfed through, claimed the act is an act of war "not only against America, but against the American people." I find it odd how news anchors of different channels said the same thing at about the same time.
At about the same time, I heard the name bin Ladin for the first time. It might be my own opinion, but I think bin has become the most wanted man in the world without any evidence, without a smokign gun, without much cogent relativeness to connect him to the incident.
I am not sure who made the connection between bin and the terrorist actions first, US intelligence or the media. But it seems very premature to make such assumptions and even more premature to leak this assumption out into the public.
At about the same time, our goverment officials professed to stand behind any steps our president are going to take. And, it is about this time when I first heard the words "act or war" uttered by W himself.
I don't mean to question the loyalty and cohesion our citizens and our politician have for each other and for our country, but it just seems very odd to me how our nation is ready to go to war within 2 hrs of the incidenct. It seems too packaged. too neat.
Logistic mysteries:
As far as I know:
-The pentagon and WTC are some of the most secure infrastructures in the world.
-Airplanes have defined routes and elevation to and from destinations and is constantly surveyed and enforced by FAA.
-Washington DC is military air space.
-The hijacked planes, atleast two, were departed from Boston and supposed to arrive at LA and SF, Ca.
-Ca and Ny are opposite directions from Boston.
-Boston is about 250 miles from NY (took me 4 hrs to drive from ny to boston at average rate of 70mph plus a few stops).
My confusion:
A-Why were we not aware of the planes being hijacked before they were flown into WTC?
The planes that took off from Boston was enroute to CA in a southwestardly direction. At some point after the hijackers took control of the plane, the plane would have to take U-turn and go in a northeasterly direction towards NY. The plane would be atleast 300 miles off course.

B-Why were we not aware of the second plane being hijacked after the first was hijacked and flown into WTC?
The two collisions occured about 15 minutes apart. This means the second plane was 15 mins away when the first collision occured. This also means the second plane was atleast 150 miles away when the first collision occured assuming the second plane was traveling at the rate of 600mph.
C-How are we going to protect our nation's capital from attack from an army if a single Boeing jet can blow up the pentagon?
I have heard someone on TV say it is impossible for our military to react to the plane that "arrived" at pentagon since the airport it departed from was only 7 mins away by air. However, I also heard, heresey, that our state capitol is protected by anti-aircraft missles.
D-What are the chances that terrorists succeed in hijacking 3 in the same morning?
Hijacking planes seems to be the bread and butter of terrorist just like HTML are to webmasters. However, and it is my opinion that it doesn't seem likely that the numerous terrorists, about 20, can, first, sneak potential weapons onto their perspective planes, second, take over the cockpit (granted one wasn't successfully taken over) while using non-metalic weapons, third, they are able to reach their destination without FAA or military intelligence being alerted to the hijacked planes.
Also to add:
Some experts claim sneaking weapons on board a plane is very easy. On public radio, someone of some importance in relations to airport security claimed it is very easy to sneak weapons on board. He said that the 100% metal detectors have some reasons for being recalled.
I realize this post has lots of incomplete thoughts. But it is for your own vigilante minds to fill in the details, fit the pieces together, and come to your own conclusions.

Etane

My Answer

Saying the attack was sophisticated might be arguable. But the plan was precise and unexpected. This is what makes it SEEM sophisticated. Because it was so unexpected to replace the pilots and turn commercial airplanes in to bombs, it was not possible to come up with a quick response to this new kind of threat. And if you were given a challenge to kill thousands of people and destroy national symbols of america with a few hundred dollars per person, do you think you would come up with a more effective plan than the attack they implemented?

Here is the answer I have come up with:

The 19 people named as hijackers are from our generation but not our culture. Think about this. Instead of growing up with the freedom and inspiration and opportunity that we have experienced, they experienced something close to the opposite. And they obviously think the US is responsible for this. My answer here is that they are part of a generation that grew up with economic depression and war. I can't pretend I am knowledgeable on all of the history involved, but my point is that these people were GROWN by their circumstances, not just ORDERED by some mastermind. My answer is that it won't be very satisfying to capture a mastermind knowing that this generation of people exists. It will be too easy for them to find another mastermind. If we don't find a way to culturally change the life of these people and how we relate to them, I'm not sure if there will be a satisfying resolution.

Powell seems to be taking the right cultural approach to me. The best way to resolve some of this is to have some of the people closest to the terrorists turn them in. I just don't know if that will happen.

Read up on it

> A-Why were we not aware of the planes being hijacked before they were flown into WTC?

We were aware. Up until now, when a plane was hijacked you just waited for them to land the plane and then start negociations for hostages. This is the first time (that I know of) that instead the planes were used as bombs.

> B-Why were we not aware of the second plane being hijacked after the first was hijacked and flown into WTC?

We were aware of both planes being hijacked. We = air traffic controllers etc. So, even knowing that both planes were hijacked, after the first one hit (something completely unexpected) there was no way to get a response in under 15 minutes. On top of which, I'm sure most people thought it was an accident or a last minute decision, not delibrate. Also it's only a 45 minute flight from Boston to New York if that. Not much time to notify the proper authorities so that decisions can be made.

> C-How are we going to protect our nation's capital from attack from an army if a single Boeing jet can blow up the pentagon?

We are not unless we (a) allow no planes with in XX miles of the capital (b) allow no cars or unauthorized people with in XX miles of the capital. (c) put in AUTOMATIC defenses to defend it. This is not likely to happen even if we move the captial.

> D-What are the chances that terrorists succeed in hijacking 3 in the same morning?

Very high. How many hijack attempts have ever failed? It didn't take special weapons, all it took is beating up/killing the flight attendants until the pilots came out of the cockpit to try to stop it at which point the terrorists over powered the pilots and then had control. Pretty simple.

It is unlikely to happen again in the same way at least in the short term because more passengers would be likely to take on the terrorists knowing that the terrorists are going to crash the plane anyway. Also, I suspect pilots will no longer be allowed to leave the cockpit.

What to do?

So I've come mostly off me "Nukem into glass" anger and into a more practical, "How can we really fix this?"

On other words, how do we fix the middle east? Is it fixable? Does the Jerusalem question have to be solved or is there some other way around it.

When we finished World War 2, Germany and Japan were in ruin. We helped them back on their feet. Of course they are both industrious people so I'm not sure similar methods would help in the middle east.

My point is, if they were all living the *good* life like most of America, Europe and Japan would they be able to argue over the other issues in places like courts and politics instead of with guns. AND, is there way to get them to that point "the good life".

Another random idea, I have no idea of the politics and power structure of the middle east but, if instead of spending the money on weapons they spent the money on hiring ChetDay or some other famous ad agency to help try to get the world to help solve their problems, running 30sec commercials during Nightly News, the current hot Sitcoms and Sports shows, I wonder if they wouldn't be more successful.

And yet another random thought

I wonder if there would be a audience for a ER type of series. Think, slightly more serious M.A.S.H., that took place in the middle east and dealt with their issues.