Follow the money, cnyndwllr. Terrorist networks don't come cheap! You find a big one, you will also find either a state sponsor or a massive extortion or drug smuggling operation to pay for it. Thus, either a terrorist-supporting state or a failed state. Because there are limited means of raising the millions of dollars that a big network needs. other means of paying for it.
Hello Nadine. There are some important assumptions that are implied in your post. You're correct that "big networks" require big money in the sense of the Bin Laden network but that's only one model for terrorist networks.
The simple fact is that there are few barriers to entry if you want to effectively engage in terrorism. The DC snipers had a modified junker car and a decent rifle. The Madrid bombers were more sophisticated and the 9/11 group was well financed and highly organized. The point is, however, that terrorist networks can be extremely effective in many of their aims without being "big" in a command structure sense, without raising millions of dollars of funding, and certainly without reliance upon a failed state or supportive state.
When I refer to achieving "their aims" I mean that they can alter behaviors of entire populations, can secure tremendous publicity, and can initiate a change in actions that they want altered.
It's the ideas and the popular support that must be addressed if we're to make a long term reduction in an escalating problem with world terrorism. All of our aggressive actions against nation states, all of our use of blunt military force and all of our other efforts to "kill" the ideas or suppress those that endorse them will not "fix" the problem. If we press down in one area the terror will simply restructure and pop up somewhere else.
We'll BEGIN to have a handle on the solution when we convince the world's peoples that terrorism is not necessary for them to get a fair hearing on their grievances against the major powers, when we've shown that the major powers are willing to subject themselves to fairly and justly established rules of international law, and that nations will be left to find their own paths to the future without interference in their internal affairs except for certain well thought out and well defined exceptions.
That's why to say, as Hawk seemed to, that terror is a state sponsored issue that needs to be addressed with aggressive actions against nations, is clearly incorrect.
(As I wrote this I had a mental image of the gophers in the movie "Caddy Shack." Hawk is the crazed guy with the detonator in his hand and the charge right under his feet. Sig and Bill are off to the side hollering "push the plunger, push the plunger, PUSH THE PLUNGER." I just hope I'm not the guy on the third tee that's going to go up with them.) |
