Some ordinarily smart people are saying some extraordinarily silly things, to try and spin some sense into the Homeland Security Department’s decision to cut funds for New York and DC. The argument goes like this:
If I were a terrorist… I’m not sure I’d hit New York or Washington. Too obvious. Been done. Besides, both probably are reasonably well fortified. Therefore, I could easily imagine a scenario in which the next terror attacks occur in, say, Wichita.
Okay, sure. You can imagine all kinds of doomsday scenarios. Let your mind roam free. But if you want figure out where Osama & Co. might attack in the future, your best bet is to look at what they’ve done in the past, not daydream darkly. Because terrorism is an evolutionary art. Al-Qaeda doesn’t hatch brand new types of strikes out of the blue; it develops them slowly, over time, taking what it learned in one attack and applying to the next. Even seemingly “out of the box” plans, like 9/11, were test-marketed years and years before.
So let’s look at the record. Have Al-Qaeda and its affiliates hit any cornfields? Any small towns? Any exurbs? No, no, and no, actually. Instead, they’ve focused on three main types of targets:
* Big cities (New York, London, Madrid, Istanbul, Amman, Riyadh, DC)
* Military and government installations (Pentagon, USS Cole, East African embassies)
* Resorts (Sharm-el-Sheikh, Bali, Kenya)
Once it’s tried an attack in a given place, does Al-Qaeda give up on it, and move somewhere else? ‘Fraid not. In fact, they tend to revisit the same sites, over and over again. Take my home town, for example. As Police Commissioner Ray Kelly notes in today’s New York Post:
New York remains a target-rich environment nonetheless, as a cursory review of terrorist acts here would indicate.
The iconic Brooklyn Bridge caught al Qaeda’s eye after 9/11 when its operative Iyman Faris was tasked to see if it could be taken down. Another Islamic radical, Rashad Baz, was drawn to the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994 to shoot up a van with Hasidim occupants, including 16-year-old Ari Halberstam, who was killed. A like-minded radical picked the Empire State Building to spray the observation deck with gunfire, killing one tourist and wounding six others there in 1997.
The terrorists’ first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center resulted in the deaths of six innocent people in 1993. Al Qaeda returned in 2001 to finish the job.
Then there was the al Qaeda “landmark” plot of 1993 to destroy the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels and the United Nations. The New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup Center in Midtown made al Qaeda’s list of inviting targets in another plot exposed after 9/11.
More recently, a federal grand jury convicted the suspect in a plot, foiled by the NYPD, to bomb the Herald Square subway station in 2004. A terrorist bombing of the Atlantic Avenue subway complex in Brooklyn was narrowly averted by police intervention in 1997. Then there were the anthrax attacks against The Post and NBC in New York…
We had hoped that DHS would rely on the intelligence community to assess the threat and make funding decisions accordingly. Instead, DHS abdicated its responsibility.
For a while now, we’ve been focusing way too much on what security guru Bruce Schneier calls “movie-plot threats” — scenarios that sound completely scary, but are beyond unlikely. So countless millions get poured into protecting cows from Al-Qaeda and stopping jihadist cropdusters. When he first took the Homeland Security gig, Michael Chertoff promised to end the farce, and protect the places that Al-Qaeda might actually attack, no matter how, well, hum-drum, that might seem. Unfortunately, he — and others — can’t seem to resist the Tinseltown draw.
UPDATE 5:28 PM: Here is Rep. Peter King’s letter to Chertoff, asking how this risk-analysis process went FUBAR.
Chertoff’s the worst thing to happen to America since his boss. What an administration.
Al Quaeda is not the only terrorist group out there. Terrorism is not limited to New York and DC. I lived in DC when 9/11 occurred, so I am sensitive to the concerns of the city. But I’m an Oklahoma City native, and was there in ‘95.
Smaller cities can be hit as well.
no doubt, but leaving NY icons off the “national icons” list and scaling back NY/DC funding to among the lowest per-capita isn’t covering all your bases, its re-state pandering.
Let me get this straight: NY still gets the largest cut(18% now vs. 19% the previous year), more than people who face larger risks, and it’s ‘red-state pandering’?
I get so sick of NYers and their self-centeredness. Other places face serious and momumental risk too, you know. (http://www.scpr.org/programs/talkcity/listings/2004/09/totc_20040927.shtml, or this from Rand http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG388.pdf, with this juicy tidbit measure ranges from a high of 0.076 of total risk (Los Angeles-LongBeach, CA) to a low of 0.004 (New Haven-Meriden, CT), get that? Los Angeles faces the highest threats. Yet NY recieves far more money for anti-terrorism. Is this evidence of Western US hatred by DHS? So quit your whining).
I also don’t think it’s too much to consider a shift from a hard target to a softer target. Why hit London then? Why not keep hitting NY? Because there are gains to be made in hitting other areas. Lets follow an incremental evolution line of reasoning: hit large cities elsewhere to increase sense of fear acrossed the country(Indianapolis for instance). Same template. Just a different location.
i few since know the thrut about that, is a long story but is so interesting and courious!.
ok, let’s go!
Speaking for us country bumpkins from the Midwest, it is about time someone started talking about alternate targets. The pay off in media coverage and fear would be enormous. “The war on Terror has just gone onto a new front.” I can see the headlines already. In these days of a CNN world the fact that they haven’t done it is mind blowing. Either they are dumb or you are right. Personally I think they are stupid not to hit the heartland, undefended, complacent and ripe for the terrorizing. But at least someone broached the subject.
Omaha does have the Strategic Command….
Other cities that may be targets along the lines listed above with large military bases would then also include Tampa, Miami, San Diego, and Norfolk.
Perhaps Congressman Peter King, the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, could provide more money for the program if he thinks it deserves more instead of whining about it after Congress decided to cut the funds and made DHS divide what was left? And possibly if NYC could actually assign literate people to send out the application and provide more obviously effective uses for the money it might help their success rate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/02/nyregion/02security.html
Well, speaking as someone who lives next to a potentially hugely high risk target I hope that Atlanta gets its share of the funds.
Wait just one minute. Most New Yorkers don’t think we’re at war; it’s just a ruse conjured up by the dreaded Rove! What are they concerned about? They can always add additional restaurant or hotel taxes to cover any problem if it did exist; which they seem to think it doesn’t. It’s all a facade to keep Halliburton in the chips. Relax: “Peace through Diplomacy” Don’t worry, be happy!
Could it be that you – and the outraged NYC/DC politicians who aren’t getting their ice cream cones with their pork sandwitches – are forgetting that there is more than one terrorist group out there? Isn’t there a compelling argument that the other major cities need adequate defenses against domestic terrorists and other foreign groups? Stop being so one-scenario focused. This is a more complex public policy issue than “protect the nation’s major political and economic centers first.” We’re supposed to be protecting people, not monuments.
J:
Guilty as charged, I guess. I’m operating under the assumption that the U.S. has been at war with Islamic extremists since 9/11. Until I’ve seen evidence that we’ve significantly beaten these jihadists back, I’m going to argue that our Homeland Security dollars should be primarily — but not exclusively — used to stop these groups. Guarding against the I.R.A., Aum Shinrikyo, Tim McVeigh, and S.P.E.C.T.R.E. will all have to wait, as far as I’m concerned.
By the way, if you want to talk “protecting people, not monuments,” 80% of Americans live in metropolitan areas, according to the 2000 Census. Do I need to remind you which of those metropolitan areas contains the most people to protect?
nms
First things first…
J, I’m down with you and all and pork is bad, m’kay, right, but ah… most cities who are getting these funds don’t need them. I’m sorry. I’m not worried about Tim McVeigh’s old shooting buddies (See Noah’s comment).
On a side note.. municipalities who posit that they are high risk due to the fact that they have “Military Installation X” in their city/region, well, that’s a wee bit disingen. See, the military has this cool function called “Force Protection”… anyone who’s ever tried to get onto a base has come face to face with it.
That’s in the Pentagon’s budget, not DOD’s. DHS grants for your local fire department’s radios are not going to make the local Fort/AFB/NAS any safer than it already is. Oink oink indeed.
Sic. Make that “that’s in the Pentagon’s budget, not DHS’.”
Perhaps I should have linked my longer argument (see Lance Mannion here.) My point (in short) is this – NYC and DC metro (and Los Angeles for that matter) have had about ten years to work this issue and have gotten lots of federal and state funding to develop good antiterrorism programs. It’s about time for them to go into sustainment mode rather than continuing to build a fortress mode.
Meanwhile, other major cities – as you note Noah, going for the people – have been being neglected by DHS and DOJ funds. Now some of those cities have developed very articulate studies of what they need to develop and what funding they need, and in addition, they’ve established credentials that they can spend what they’re given (unlike DC metro and other cities). Guess what? People who do their homework and put forth a good plan get rewarded. People who sit back and say “But I want MORE! Because I’m SPECIAL!” don’t get a good grade. That’s proper execution of federal tax dollars to me.
And maybe you’re not worried about domestic terrorists. I tend to doubt that logic, but you’re entitled to it. Al Qaeda hasn’t come over here in four years. Are you going to justify running barbed wire around your house and staying home every night with a gun under your bed for the rest of your life just based on one terrorist group that hit you once? Get wise. Al Qaeda’s one threat. There are lots of others out there. We need a general capability that can be sustained for the long term, not just a focus on one boogeyman. There are others out there.
Oops link didn’t work – see here
http://lancemannion.typepad.com/lance_mannion/2006/06/new_york_is_the.html
US terrorist Timothy McVeigh struck Oklahoma city, leveling a government building and killing 168 people.[1] It was the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in the history of the United States and was the deadliest act of terrorism within U.S. borders until September 11, 2001. This would seem to indicate that smaller cities in the heartland can be terrorist targets. By the way, McVeigh’s alternate target was the federal courthouse in Omaha