U.S. Ineptness Invites More Terrorism

Whether the bioterrorist attacks against the U.S. were masterminded by a state-sponsored foreign terrorist organization or have a domestic origin, there is little doubt that they will have an impact on the thinking of the United States’ enemies. In the Gulf War, the U.S. failure to remove Saddam Hussein convinced radical regimes such as Syria, Iran and North Korea that mass destruction weapons and surface-to-surface missiles were the new Praetorian guard. As a result, the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them accelerated.

Today, the fears of bioterrorism infecting a significant segment of the U.S. public, and Washington’s ineptness in the face of what must be seen as small-scale anthrax attacks, have likely convinced Osama bin Laden anew that the U.S. is a paper tiger that can be defeated by Islam. Unfortunately, the anthrax crisis has come on the heels of the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which, in Bin Laden’s mind at least, shattered the image of the preponderance of U.S. power. The U.S. proved unable to protect its own soil, and its president, the so-called most powerful man on Earth, was chased around on board Air Force One. Not only was a band of cave dwellers able to demonstrate that the king was naked, but the U.S. economy was pushed deeper into a recession.

Now, whoever is behind the anthrax letters has unearthed a potential lever that could trigger an economic depression in the U.S. It appears that the original idea was to unleash via the mail “selective” terrorism aimed at specific public figures and highly visible targets to instigate fear. The fact that congressional staffers and postal workers became victims should be seen as collateral damage. Yet the resulting impact on the U.S. mail system unexpectedly exposed a true Achilles’ heel of the economy.

Worse, the economic dislocation wasn’t the result of a high-tech cyber attack but rather the outcome of resorting to the most rudimentary means of dispersing biological agents: mailing a few contaminated letters. In fact, it could well be discovered that a single letter, the one to Sen. Tom Daschle, caused all the havoc in Washington.

Thus, even if Bin Laden’s past practices have shown his predilection for brute force and causing mass casualties and destruction, the anthrax mailings have revealed a vulnerability well within the reach of his type of low-tech terrorism. Indeed, if Bin Laden’s followers mailed the letters because they could not master a more effective dissemination technique for the high-grade inhalation anthrax they acquired, their leader must be convinced by now that Allah is truly on his side. How else to explain that the technologically primitive raids of Sept. 11 went so well and even the limited anthrax attacks that followed ended up as a potential strategic threat to U.S. national security?

In addition, whether he is involved or not, there should be little doubt that Bin Laden sees the unfortunate consequences of the United States’ encounter with bioterrorism as a window of opportunity. In a May 1998 TV interview, Bin Laden defined the goal of his war against the U.S. as “the end of the U.S. as united states, and [instead it] will be separate states.” In other words, he is seeking the destruction of U.S. global power by undermining its political foundation. It may be expected that he will now escalate his struggle since he probably believes that he is closer to victory than ever.

Bin Laden might further calculate that, given the current U.S. offensive in Afghanistan, he must act to force a victory now or die trying to as a martyr. Thus, the most dreadful scenarios could be anticipated. The immediate aim would be to finally topple the U.S. or provoke the U.S. into a spasmodic retaliation that would ignite the war with Islam that Bin Laden has been unable to instigate.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told USA Today that it is imperative for his department to think about the possibility that, “a year from now,” the U.S. would be attacked with nuclear or chemical-biological weapons, and that “not thousands but tens of thousands of human beings” would be affected. “What would I, as secretary of Defense, want to have done over the coming 12 months to either find a way to deter that from happening or to defend against this--if that is humanly possible--or through preemption, prevent it?”

It would appear that Rumsfeld might have to find the answers even sooner.