Terrorism and conspiracies

A piece from the Guardian (sent to me by Karim) about how terrorism works. Note the word "terror": the goal is not to kill, but to terrorize. It's a media strategy much more than a military one. 9/11 could have killed far more people if the attack took place a bit later in the day, when more people would have been in the building. The point was to grab a whole day of media attention, and make sure the phrase '9/11' was forever burned into the national consciousness.

Many people see Arabs and Muslims as having a conspiratorial mindset, of always looking for conspiracy theories to explain things. We joke that when it rains in Cairo, people blame the Israelis. There are stupid people everywhere, but insofar as that's true about Egypt, it definitely has a lot of different causes, such as some attitudes towards information. We have:

• a government that constantly lies to its people, prompting massive popular mistrust (I've read reports that the Ministry of Information wants to open a rumor control office; wouldn't it be more effective if the rest of the government just stopped lying so much, or at least got smarter about it?)
  
• the utter lack of authoritative information sources, making it hard to verify information, even about things like recent legislation or the spelling of a Minister's name
  
• official bans on information gathering (AUC profs have been threatened with deportation for conducting basic economic research, which is why I don't even trust most GDP figures; this also prohibits investigative journalism, preventing any independent verification of official information and rendering it therefore more suspect)
• you can't start an opposition without newspapers and other unifying mass communications, but you can't conduct independent investigative journalism on a level that would allow you to compete with official sources in terms of information, so you have to sell papers and all you can really use are theories and speculation
• as a result, it's pretty hard to trust any media source; most Egyptians certainly never become familiar with, or even have the opportunity to develop any trust for, systems of information verification that would ensure a media source's continued reliability; If I grew up in Egypt (of course depending heavily on social class and whatnot), I would be unlikely to trust any media sources on a regular basis
  
• a bargaining culture that makes bluffing almost essential in daily interactions, making most statements much harder to take at face value
• a need for face-saving that causes people on the street to make up directions because they can't admit they don't know
• a frequent hoarding of information because it's a source of authority and power, presumably because information is scarce and therefore valuable

All major difficulties; when you have questions and can't trust the answers, you'll make up some sort of answers.

But there's another side: why do the same questions keep coming up? Egyptians could be focusing conspiracy theories on a million different things.

I think a lot of the questions behind these conspiracy theories, and their particular urgency, are prompted by something simple: incompetence. One example: why did the US military in Iraq secure the oil fields in Baghdad while not stopping the rioting and looting? My best guess: when you stupidly expect to be greeted as liberators with flowers and a red carpet, it's going to be alot harder to pacify a population than it will be to secure inanimate oil fields. But it takes a lot of stupidity to be in that situation, and I'd really like to believe Americans are smarter than that.

Another example: when Israel and the US have precision GPS/laser-guided missiles that can target within 5meters any location on earth, why so many civilian casualties? My guess: they're not so precise as they claim; precision targeting requires much more information than is generally available in the middle of a military operation; precision weapons are obscenely expensive; it's more risky for nearby soldiers because they have less confidence that the target has been hit; perhaps, some military goals are more easily achieved by appearing slightly indiscriminate ("shock and awe" does not attempt to invoke precision targeting); and they figure that the losses in military effectiveness are not always worth the civilian lives saved. Still, Americans have obsessed over the loss of even one of their lives, as Israel has over the capture of 2 soldiers, so this disregard for human life seems a little strange.

So another question, going back to the article linked above: Why would the US administration capture Bin Laden quickly when they could drag this out and profit off it for years to come? I don't even know an answer to this one that doesn't rely, at some point, on simple trust. Bin Laden is hard to find, we thought it would be easier, unreliable partners in Pakistan, blablabla.

A major difficulty, it seems, is that America and Israel are both known for being incredibly competent. Israel, albeit with tons of money and expertise imported from abroad, has made the desert bloom, after all. American business is still the envy of the world in many ways. Ambitious Egyptians frequently look up to American expats for management and technical expertise, seek work in multinational corporations, want to associate with Americans.

So the question becomes: in this incredibly important and risky foreign policy enterprise, why are they suddenly just crap?

Clearly, there must be some other reasons! Secret hidden intentions, or something.

No, they might actually just not be as good as everyone thought they were.

Not sure what policy recommendations come out of this, although sucking less is one option.