Why Doesn't Al Qaeda Watch Discovery Channel? If you saw Sopranos this week, you are familiar with the shipping container terrorist threat. (My sister is watching Discovery Channel right now, and they had some of the same clips.) It's been in and out of the news ever since 9/11. The idea is that so few of these containers are scanned, and they are so vital to international commerce, that if a terrorist blew up even one, shipping would shut down worldwide. (If it sounds unlikely, remember the effect of 9/11 on air travel and that the economy is a lot different now than it was then, and that on average businesspeople are more conservative than travelers. And that the explosion could be a nuclear one--the first terrorist nuclear attack, contaminating the latest Gap shipments from Asia!)

If you're like me, your first thought when seeing these sorts of reports is "what the hell is wrong with Al-Qaeda that they haven't done this yet?" (Not that I'm complaining you understand, but if you want to fuck things up...) Well, whenever I think this I flash back to an article that I read around the first anniversary of 9/11 called
Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology. It's long, but utterly fascinating, and when you are done you will know the answer to that question. It's not straightforward. But it's very important if you really want to understand why Al Qaeda does--or doesn't do--what they do.

I haven't read it since 2002 (perhaps I will tonight), but if I'm properly remembering its points, it highlights how this blind spot of theirs has given us a golden opportunity to prepare and defend ourselves against terrorism after the warning of 9/11. I wonder how it will look with a few more years of hindsight. The shipping containers, for example. Something like 5% of them are scanned now, which, considering how few were before and how unlikely Al Qaeda is to capitalize on the opportunity, is an improvement.
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