July 21, 2005, 10:40 a.m.
Fear Factor
Terrorists knows that a series of small-scale attacks is most effective.

Have the terrorists finally gotten smart? If today’s incidents in London are what they appear they might be — a second wave of attacks by al Qaeda — then it appears they have (unfortunately) learned a dangerous lesson about modern-day terrorism.

Al Qaeda’s chief dysfunctionality as a terrorist group has been its inability to translate local attacks into strategic gains. For the most part al Qaeda attacks are one-offs. The terrorists used to think this was sufficient; Osama bin Laden has often mentioned Beirut 1983 and Mogadishu 1993 as models for breaking the will of the United States. So they executed well-planned, simultaneous attacks that killed innocent people, caused damage, disrupted life, and dominated the news, but there was no follow-up, and often the results were not what the terrorists planned. (The Madrid bombings were a rare case of attacks getting results and even that is debatable.) For instance, the May 2003 Casablanca bombings caused some panic but resulted in rolling up much of the terror network in that country with no other evident effect. And the classic example is 9/11, which while a tactical masterpiece was strategic folly; far from intimidating the United States, it unified and motivated our country to wage unlimited war on global terrorism and violent extremism.

But the 9/11 attacks were only the first part of what was to have been a multi-phased operation, three waves of attacks, 12 to 14 total, on various major cities. Fortunately al Qaeda had planned them all to be similar to 9/11, so when the air fleet was grounded and security measures implemented the latter stages of the operation were thwarted. Al Qaeda was not able to generate enough momentum to create panic in this country, and our collective fear was translated into anger and determination. This was true also of the 2002 Bali bombing that brought Australia into the war with both feet. But today’s apparent attacks in London show that al Qaeda is finally learning a lesson. Single, dramatic attacks or series of attacks over a single day will not get the job done. But a series of attacks, weeks or days apart, random, unpredictable, and persistent — what effect will they have?

The October 2002 D.C. sniper attacks are a good model of how to do terrorism correctly. Two men armed with a rifle and a mobile gun platform made 15 attacks over several weeks, killing ten and wounding three others. By some measures the story received media coverage at a pace and density equal to the 9/11 attacks, especially in the Washington area. The reason the operation worked so well from the terrorist point of view was that the violence was sustained and random. Anyone could be a victim at any time. The body count, which some people like to focus on as a measure of the effectiveness of attacks, was relatively low. But the fear factor — a true measure of effectiveness — was high. Luckily, polls showed that public anger ranked higher than fear, which mitigated the morale effects. But how long can anger sustain community will if small-scale attacks continue unabated? Likewise, today’s bombings may have resulted in few or no casualties, but that does not mean they were not successful. They news coverage is wall to wall right now — and who knows if this is the last attack? Will the public be as determined to strike back at the terrorists after the fifth attack? After the 50th?

Finally, it is worth nothing that the investigation of the July 7 bombings is beginning to show that it was a much more centrally planned operation than some analysts at first suspected. It was widely reported initially that we were facing a “new generation” of al Qaeda, that there was probably no foreign involvement, that it was “home grown,” and other such things. But evidence now shows that the bombers and their controllers had close ties to the al Qaeda core, attended the Pakistani training camps, and that the go orders for the bombings came from bin Laden himself (if he lives) or someone manning the al Qaeda ops center. In other words, the enemy is more centralized, more adaptable, and more dangerous than suspected. And perhaps now they are smarter.

— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and an NRO contributor.

*   *   *

YOU’RE NOT A SUBSCRIBER TO NATIONAL REVIEW? Sign up right now! It’s easy: Subscribe to National Review here, or to the digital version of the magazine here. You can even order a subscription as a gift: print or digital!