Attempted Airline Bombing

[SirNitram]

So AQ expends one 'connected' idiot, and they get the news on repeat for days, new restrictions to upset and demoralize people on airplanes, ridiculous actions which cause further harm to any good standing the US has with allies, and, of course, another drumbeat of war from the perpetually bed-wetting conservatives. Link

The only thing they didn't get is a personal address from the POTUS, which means it's not AS successful as during the Bush years.

[Lord of the Abyss]

All for the sacrifice of one expendable idiot; a bargain from Al Qaeda's viewpoint.

Yet it doesn't achieve their fucking aim, destroying the great satan;

Which they can't do. So there's no point in trying. What they CAN do is make us flail around hurting ourselves.

and it's tipped us off to yet another tactic; explosive underwear -- imagine if it had succeeded - we'd have never known what caused the flight to go down somewhere over the atlantic.

But they want it to be known as terrorism. And having it known helps impel us into harassing would-be passengers more. And, it seems that it wasn't a very good tactic anyway.

Besides, they can always come up with something else; that's the problem with preparing to defeat the last tactic. People can always come up with something new.

[weemadando]

In other words, the poor man picked a bad weekend and a bad flight on which to have an epic level of the shits.

Yup. Poor guy. Not only gets the shits, but also gets wrung out by the FBI. I really can't imagine a more unfortunate time for him to get food poisening...

As soon as I heard this story on the Beeb overnight I was certain that it was just going to be a case of
1) Perfectly innocent undertaking being misconstrued because he has the misfortune to be profiled...
or
2) [what I was secretly hoping for] as per 1, but other passengers freaking out and attacking innocent man in a storm of racist rage and thus forcing him to hide in the toilet.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I really am amazed we've had such bloody morons for enemies. Well, i guess it helps if you have a 7th century education for most of your leaders and footsoldiers.

Would you perfer the IRA or the Weathermen?

[Simon_Jester]

Yet it doesn't achieve their fucking aim, destroying the great satan;

What makes you think that's their aim*? Or that even if it is their aim, it is anything less than a grand-scale strategic aim that they fully expect to spend the next hundred years picking away at before they make any real progress? Do you think Osama bin Laden really believes that he can sneeze on America and make it shrivel up and die with a couple of random exploding idiots? If he were that stupid, he'd have given himself away long ago.

Remember that they are not a superpower. They should not (and, I suspect, do not) kid themselves into thinking that they can crush entire nations overnight. Instead, their best strategy is to pursue more limited objectives and try to create opportunities to promote their ideology and expand their networks into new territory. They're not really even strong enough to be guerillas against us yet; their hope is to become that strong but they need conditions in the Middle East to change in their favor before that can happen.

*Or, come to think of it, that their aim is fucking?

and it's tipped us off to yet another tactic; explosive underwear -- imagine if it had succeeded - we'd have never known what caused the flight to go down somewhere over the atlantic.

Tactics are cheap, unless they have such a ridiculous 'attack passenger planes' fixation that they can't ever imagine doing anything else. What is priceless (or at least more valuable than anything their budget would normally cover) is the result of getting the American government to:

1)Look inept for failing to stop attackers who are then stopped by luck,
2)Harass its own citizens further by tightening airport security,
3)Harass everyone else's citizens further by patting down everyone who comes to the US on a plane or whatever they're planning to do now,
4)Give Al Qaeda major news coverage that keeps the public (both in the West and the Middle East) aware that they're still out there and still plotting.

[folti78]

and it's tipped us off to yet another tactic; explosive underwear -- imagine if it had succeeded - we'd have never known what caused the flight to go down somewhere over the atlantic.

Tactics are cheap, unless they have such a ridiculous 'attack passenger planes' fixation that they can't ever imagine doing anything else. What is priceless (or at least more valuable than anything their budget would normally cover) is the result of getting the American government to:

1)Look inept for failing to stop attackers who are then stopped by luck,
2)Harass its own citizens further by tightening airport security,
3)Harass everyone else's citizens further by patting down everyone who comes to the US on a plane or whatever they're planning to do now,
4)Give Al Qaeda major news coverage that keeps the public (both in the West and the Middle East) aware that they're still out there and still plotting.

5) loss of business, thanks to people not going to the US due to 3. OK it won't hurt the US economy as much as say IRA's early 90s bombing campaign in London, but it's another thorn in the US's side.

[Darth Yan]

I thought the guy was turned in by his own father. at least one jackass who tried was ratted out by his dad.