Meh. Fearmongering. That thing reads like a novel.
DATELINE 2021
Nazi killer apes from Mars land in Washington, taking over the government and forcing us into monkey death camps. The world ends.
What the heck is hard about shooting up a shopping mall?
I couldn’t have asked it better myself. This country is wide-open to terrorist attack from within and without, as has been the case every day since 9/11. There are millions of Muslims in this country, many of whom are recent arrivals who have yet to integrate with the language or the culture. So why haven’t we seen so much as a pipe bomb go off in a Sbarro?
I’d submit to you that the Arabs and Muslims are far more sophisticated than you will ever give them credit for. Muslims may oppose Bush foreign policy, while simultaneously respecting the American ideal and aspiring to it – seeking to join it in record numbers, not plot strikes against it.
In fact, I’d suggest that Clarke’s “Invasion of the Howling Muslims” scenario is more than vaguely racist, evoking the paranoid tradition of the already-mentioned Turner Diaries plus any number of Yellow Menace potboilers circa 1943.
Clarke’s story also offended me because it depicted the US meekly acquiescing to attacks…
Another reason Clarke’s vision is utter bullshit. You want the real nightmare scenario, Jason? If any two of these things came to pass, the U.S. would unleash a total war against every Islamic nation even vaguely suspected of allowing terrorists to operate in its borders. The Wahhabi preachers in Riyadh would be blasted in their mansions. Qaddafi and Assad would be vaporized in bunkers. Aceh would be deluged again, this time with napalm.
And at the end of this cataclysm, the ideology of “militant Islam” would lay as thoroughly discredited as did the Confederacy in 1866 and the Aryan Reich in 1946. (Or, for that matter, as thoroughly discredited as the second intifada is now viewed among Palestinians.)
Thankfully, Muslim nations will choose to avoid this conflagration, by means of progressive politics that marginalize the jihadists. This process is already well underway. After the Bali bombing, Indonesian voters issued the Islamic Party its worst electoral repudiation in 30 years of elections. In Palestine, the dove Abu Mazen won by a landslide over the militant candidates. The umma has already heard bin Laden, and he is being told to fuck off.
Agreed
Also, noun is dead on here. No matter how hard you try, you will never, ever, ever, ever be fully secure from terrorist attacks. I could make a molotov cocktail right now and toss it in a crowded theater, or any number of other destructive acts…, and call it a terrorist attack. Who would stop me? While I do think we can and should do more to protect our borders, think about how big they are.
Frankly, I would like to see more energy be spent NOT pissing off these terrorists, but considering this current administartion, that seems very unlikely.
Bring them on! :roll:
Thankfully, Muslim nations will choose to avoid this conflagration, by means of progressive politics that marginalize the jihadists. This process is already well underway.
With no help from the Bush administration helping drive Muslims to the fringe with the pointless invasion of Iraq, which single-handedly set back the cause of progressive Islamic movements by at least a decade. But otherwise, uh, yeah.
-Tom
JASON IS RIGHT! THE INTARWEB STORY IS RIGHT! IM MOVING RIGHT NOW!
For no real reason, I’m picturing shift6 railing against the tyranny of seat belt laws as he’s ejected through a windshield.
So, like, did the entire law enforcement and counter terrorist community go on strike at the beginning of Clarke’s short story? I mean, cause if you try and walk into a mall with a Kalishnakov, that’s the kind of thing people notify law enforcement about. Hell, the Mall of America probably has it’s own police force. I doubt such an attacker could get out of the parking lot before he has a cop with a drawn gun in his face.
And for no real reason I’m picturing Jason wetting his bed when he hears the paperboy in the morning.
I doubt such an attacker could get out of the parking lot before he has a cop with a drawn gun in his face.
Not really. It’s rent a cops everywhere these days.
So, like, did the entire law enforcement and counter terrorist community go on strike at the beginning of Clarke’s short story? I mean, cause if you try and walk into a mall with a Kalishnakov, that’s the kind of thing people notify law enforcement about. Hell, the Mall of America probably has it’s own police force.
You know, you could actually read the article. :)
Clarke supposes that it’s two pairs of armed terrorists on a suicide attack, one pair opening fire and the other intercepting people fleeing the first pair. I think he also supposes it’s coordinated with a van of explosives going off in the parking lot. In his scenario, the terrorists are eventually taken out by a SWAT team, but only after inflicting signficant casualties.
I think Clarke also mentions the size of the security staff at Mall of America, but he points out that malls are notoriously difficult to police because so many people are walking around with large packages.
-Tom
With a mall that big, and with how much money goes through there each day I’m sure there must be a number of armed security personel at the least. And I’m not buying there aren’t cops there too. It’s a fucking city!
Significant is an understatement. Clarke has 300 people killed and 400 wounded. By four guys with nothing more than automatic weapons and a sense of terrorist tactics ripped off from Columbine. Uh-huh. I don’t care if one team tries to drive panicked people into range of the other, there’s no way that four guys are going to be able to kill this many people with handheld weapons. Too many people would freeze, would hide, forcing the killers to hunt them down. Mall cops and SWAT teams would soon be on the scene to prevent this from taking place, or at least ensuring that the hunt wouldn’t last very long.
The van bomb, btw, goes off in an underground parking garage, and just causes confusion, not casualties. And two of the shooters are taken out by off-duty cops, presumably fairly quickly, which would further limit the casualties.
Anyhow, I could easily see 40-50 people killed in an attack like this, but not hundreds. This is just another example of how Clarke has blown everything up to absurd proportions.
Besides, if you really wanted to cause havoc and kill lots of people, you’d go after a small-town high-school football game. No security at all in comparison with a mall, no corridors to deal with, and hundreds of people are crammed together into stands. Four shooters in a situation like that could kill hundreds, as the victims would have nowhere to run or hide. You’d also have the benefit of slaughtering a lot of kids, which would crank the fear factor through the roof and do major economic damage as parents would be afraid to let their kids out of the house after a couple of attacks like this.
It really is chilling what could happen with small arms pretty much freely available in the US right now. That an incident like the above hasn’t happened yet has to make you wonder how overstated the terror threat in the US really is. Or – yikes! – if the Bush war on terror hasn’t been more successful than many of us would like to believe.
I think it’s hilarious that you mentioned the mall rent-a-cops as though they would pose any threat to the terrorists whatsoever.
Re: your last paragraph, I think it’s very much an example of how overstated the terror threat is, and not at all related to the “war on terror.” I mean, it didn’t happen before the war on terror started either. But ask yourself, who is responsible for whipping everyone into a frenzy about terrorism?
It really is chilling what could happen with small arms pretty much freely available in the US right now. That an incident like the above hasn’t happened yet has to make you wonder how overstated the terror threat in the US really is. Or – yikes! – if the Bush war on terror hasn’t been more successful than many of us would like to believe.
You know why these things don’t happen post-9/11? The same reason they didn’t happen before 9/11.
Yeah, totally. It’s like, “do their guns even shoot? LOL!”
Yeah, totally. It’s like, “do their guns even shoot? LOL!”[/quote]
Look, terrorists usually have some degree of training, right? Well if they’ve even played Doom, they’re not going to have much of a problem handling guys whose job it is to make sure kids don’t go up the down escalator.
Maybe living in the South - where everyone, from mall security on down to the paperboy, owns some sort of firearm - has skewed my opinion on this, but I just don’t see that scenario being launched unchallenged.
Rented or not, armed security guards probably have sufficient training to point a gun and pull the trigger (perhaps not quite with the same degree of pinache a redneck has, mind you) and down some Tangos. Hell, for all you know, these rent-a-cops are just champing at the bit for something like this to happen. Maybe they even just finished playing Doom themselves, or even listening to Marilyn Manson.
Anytime you go out in the US public, you’re rolling the dice. IMHO of course.
Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure mall security around here doesn’t even carry mace.
Jason- Uh, apparently a lot, since despite millions of pissed off foriegners and our own home-brewed crazies nobody has done it yet. Terrorist attacks are very hard to pull off. Suspicious people get reported by soccer moms, rent a cop sees part of a gun… There are a lot of ways a planned mall attack turns into nothing.
700 casualities? Impossible with 4 shooters.
We should definitely act quickly to further disarm law abiding citizens who could otherwise deter (or act in) such situations.
WARNING: TOPIC DISRUPTOR DETECTED!