Could this be the the kind of future terrorism we’ll face? The cost of an attack is almost zero and the returns in the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. No bomb making or specialist training necessary.
An interesting question: Why haven’t and/or why wouldn’t a terrorist group want to claim responsibility for this. Even if not actually responsible, it would spark another round of terrorism and civil rights debates as well as surely costing a great deal of money if not to better secure against such threats, then at least to endlessly talk about them.
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Tim Harris Blog added these pithy words on Oct 25 07 at 2:09 pm[...] read an interesting post this morning commenting on the plausability of the current CA fires being linked to terrorists and why [...]
Tim Harris Blog » Blog Archive » Why aren’t the fires linked to terrorism ? added these pithy words on Oct 25 07 at 2:18 pm[...] read an interesting post this morning commenting on the plausability of the current CA fires being linked to terrorists and why [...]
PJ Blount added these pithy words on 25 Oct 07 at 2:33 pmIt lacks the drama that a terrorist attack needs. While it is out of control it seems controllable. Terrorism preys on sudden, unexpected attacks that scare everyone, instead of just people in a certain local. In other words, it lacks terror for those of us not directly affected.
Brent Grace added these pithy words on 25 Oct 07 at 3:56 pmFire is highly unpredictable. Forest fires depend on certain weather conditions (e.g. high winds, lack of rainfall, ect) and it might be difficult to plan exactly when and where the exact conditions will exist. I guess you could just toss a random road flare into a random pile of brush each day, but every time you do that you increase the chance that someone sees you and you wind up sitting in prison wondering where it all went wrong. In a similar vein you run the risk of having the fire successfully extinguished before it gets very far, which will also spark an arson investigation which could put L.E. on your case and impede future (more effective) terrorist attacks. And even if the fire gets going, it’s difficult to prove that YOU (your organization or whatever) actually did it. Now that I think about it, the only way it really works well is if you start the fire, leave plenty of evidence, and make sure you get caught (they’re willing to die for the cause anyway).
My .02? If you want to do a G.G. style attack you get a far better bang/buck ratio taking out a key point in the power grid. In any case, I think a good terrorist wants to keep his or her head down until they’re fairly certain you have a decent shot of doing some damage and letting everyone know that the event was not a natural disaster.
Mark added these pithy words on 26 Oct 07 at 2:39 amI thought MeCha (a more militant Aztlan) took responsibility. Whoever did it, they should have hit the water supply through the aqueduct feeding LA from the north.
Michael added these pithy words on 30 Oct 07 at 12:57 amGiven that the government will likely bail many of these homeowners out (as I recall, they and/or the insurance companies have done so in the past), the question echoing through my mind is why we aren’t doing more to either keep people from rebuilding in that area, or mandating fire-resistant construction?
Oh yeah, they’re rich. . .
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