[neilk]

The article hinges on the proposition that a failed attack still serves the terrorist network's purposes. Seriously, can you imagine a terrorist being briefed like this?

"Well, if you succeed, you may shock the world and rally the Muslim nations to our cause, while drawing the Great Satan into an unwinnable war costing over a trillion dollars. If you fail... well, you're going to cause a lot of air travellers to be a little annoyed for five minutes."

There is this idea that terrorists are like devils, delighting in causing misfortune of any kind. I don't think that's the case. Al-Qaeda has concrete goals, like advancing Wahabbi ideology or ejecting the USA from the holy places. Failed missions don't support that, do they?

[pyre]

Do you really think that they would tell the suicide bomber that he/she might fail?

[neilk]

It was just to demonstrate a certain absurdity. No, that conversation might not happen, but the point was that the terrorist planners have objectives beyond "cause mayhem". And that increasing airline security costs probably don't even rank on their scale of worthy goals.

In Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is bleeding the USA of billions of dollars every month. But the article suggests that merely inconveniencing air travellers -- to the tune of maybe a few hundred million a year, widely dispersed -- might rank as an acceptable second best to a terrorist.

[pyre]

al-Qaeda wants 'The West' to fear them. People get scared of air travel every time there is an incident, even if that incident is a terrorism attempt that was caught before it ever got off the ground. If al-Qaeda doesn't have some sort of media presence, then people will start to think that they are a non-issue. Maybe al-Qaeda doesn't really think of things in these terms, but I have a hard time believing that they are all religious fundamental crazies. For them to be so organized, some of them have to be thinking on a more practical level.