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September 15, 2008
When Fiction Becomes Reality
I have always been surprised at how Tom Clancy’s novels seem to prefigure later events. If a fiction writer can imagine something, criminal groups can too. One of Clancy’s books, written some years before 9/11, imagined a full passenger airliner with a demented pilot plowing into the Capitol in Washington on the night of the president’s State of the Union address. The capitol was destroyed, along with almost everybody important in Washington – congressmen, senators, the president, his cabinet, and Supreme Court justices. The vice president was left to try to recreate the government. On 9/11, I wonder how many people remembered this book?
Another of Clancy’s books featured an Ayatollah-like leader of Iran who manages to get a fatal Ebola-like virus that can be delivered at American conferences by spraying into the air conditioning systems. The attendees then return home, not knowing they have been infected, to plunge the country into a killer plague.
Still another one of his books has a nuclear device smuggled into the country and put into an SUV, detonated outside of the Denver stadium where Superbowl was to be played.
A new movie, playing this summer, Traitor, tells the story of a Muslim man born in Sudan who as a child witnessed his father being murdered in a car bombing. He grows up in America and we see him as he is carrying out a mission in the Middle East under deep cover as a terrorist. The group he joins is planning a special Thanksgiving surprise for America – a number of long-distance busses that will be blown up simultaneously by suicide bombers who have been living in the U.S. in sleeper cells.
In all of these works of fiction, we survive these disasters and capture (or kill) the malefactors. Justice is served and we once more demonstrate our national vitality.
However, life may not be exactly like these fictional imaginings. Every year at this time (around 9/11) there are all sorts of rumors of plots and attacks that al Qaeda will try to carry out. Fred Burton and Scott Stewart of Stratfor (Strategic Forecasts) have written in August about the usual annual spate of rumors of attacks against the U.S. One such is that Jihadis will be sent from Pakistan to conduct coordinated suicide attacks against soft targets in perhaps 20 U.S. cities. (This sounds like the movie Traitor.)
Last year, there was a rumor that al Qaeda was planning a dirty bomb attack against New York. Happily, it did not succeed. It is easier to make threats (and make us all jittery) than to carry them out. So far, the Jihadis have not succeeded – other than against soft targets in Europe – London and Madrid, and a nightclub in Bali.
They understand the significance of dates for us – so there is always some communiqué from Osama bin Laden around the 9/11 anniversary – but so far, they seem to wait until they think they are ready to carry out an operation. To date, each attempt that we know of aimed at the .U.S homeland has been thwarted by policing, both here and in Europe. But it seems inevitable that one attempt will go through.
An election season is in full heat here. If they carry out a successful attack before the election, they could well affect the results – and the American people might elect the candidate who is perceived as tougher. However, if the attack were to come early in the administration of a new president, it could be very challenging to a neophyte.
We need to remember that this enemy does hasn’t the capacity to blow up the world, as would have been the case had the U.S. and USSR produced a nuclear holocaust. All they can do is momentarily frighten us and remind us that they are still here. The most serious damage, however, would be to law-abiding Muslim residents of the US should sleeper cells be a reality and should we grow fearful of our neighbors. That could be an ugly consequence indeed.
Another of Clancy’s books featured an Ayatollah-like leader of Iran who manages to get a fatal Ebola-like virus that can be delivered at American conferences by spraying into the air conditioning systems. The attendees then return home, not knowing they have been infected, to plunge the country into a killer plague.
Still another one of his books has a nuclear device smuggled into the country and put into an SUV, detonated outside of the Denver stadium where Superbowl was to be played.
A new movie, playing this summer, Traitor, tells the story of a Muslim man born in Sudan who as a child witnessed his father being murdered in a car bombing. He grows up in America and we see him as he is carrying out a mission in the Middle East under deep cover as a terrorist. The group he joins is planning a special Thanksgiving surprise for America – a number of long-distance busses that will be blown up simultaneously by suicide bombers who have been living in the U.S. in sleeper cells.
In all of these works of fiction, we survive these disasters and capture (or kill) the malefactors. Justice is served and we once more demonstrate our national vitality.
However, life may not be exactly like these fictional imaginings. Every year at this time (around 9/11) there are all sorts of rumors of plots and attacks that al Qaeda will try to carry out. Fred Burton and Scott Stewart of Stratfor (Strategic Forecasts) have written in August about the usual annual spate of rumors of attacks against the U.S. One such is that Jihadis will be sent from Pakistan to conduct coordinated suicide attacks against soft targets in perhaps 20 U.S. cities. (This sounds like the movie Traitor.)
Last year, there was a rumor that al Qaeda was planning a dirty bomb attack against New York. Happily, it did not succeed. It is easier to make threats (and make us all jittery) than to carry them out. So far, the Jihadis have not succeeded – other than against soft targets in Europe – London and Madrid, and a nightclub in Bali.
They understand the significance of dates for us – so there is always some communiqué from Osama bin Laden around the 9/11 anniversary – but so far, they seem to wait until they think they are ready to carry out an operation. To date, each attempt that we know of aimed at the .U.S homeland has been thwarted by policing, both here and in Europe. But it seems inevitable that one attempt will go through.
An election season is in full heat here. If they carry out a successful attack before the election, they could well affect the results – and the American people might elect the candidate who is perceived as tougher. However, if the attack were to come early in the administration of a new president, it could be very challenging to a neophyte.
We need to remember that this enemy does hasn’t the capacity to blow up the world, as would have been the case had the U.S. and USSR produced a nuclear holocaust. All they can do is momentarily frighten us and remind us that they are still here. The most serious damage, however, would be to law-abiding Muslim residents of the US should sleeper cells be a reality and should we grow fearful of our neighbors. That could be an ugly consequence indeed.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.
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