This entry is a summary of a talk given by Nigel West, at Ground Zero in New York, on July 6, 2010. Disclaimer: Any errors or omissions in the following are totally my own and should not be attributed to Nigel West.
The Al Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001, changed everything.Before 9/11 the world dealt witih threats from nation states, organizations that had a "home," or rebel groups with a home base. Al Qaeda, however, is a transnational threat. An attact from this group can come from anyplace and they may attack anyone. How does this change everything:
1. No threat that can be reasoned with. With radical ideologs it is impossible to find a venue to sit down and reason. Nelson Mandella was able to reason with the South African Government. Even during the Korean War, we were able to find a place to talk with North Korea, and Henry Kissinger found a way through backchannels to talk with the North Vietnamese. Not so with Al Qaeda.
2. There's no "return address" for the Al Qaeda threat." Regardless of chest-beating pronouncements by politicians there is no way to effectively retaliate against Al Qaeda. We have tried proxies in Afghanistan and Iraq without success.
How we will deal with future attacks is problematic.
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