A Truck Loaded of Idiocy

Yesterday, when I first heard of the French tragedy, I was sceptical about the terrorist angle.

A truck loaded with rotting fish may be an exceptionally apt weapon of mass destruction, if driven at full speed in the middle of a parade, but it is not the kind of weapon that "professional" terrorists would fancy.

For the simple reason... that it is too easy.

It is hard to pump money out of the faithful, if all you do is to rent a truck for a couple of days and stomp on the accelerator through a city festival. It doesn't require training, it doesn't require fake IDs to reach the target area, it doesn't require even home-made explosives.

It requires, literally, jack.

The dishwasher that has given to the organization all his savings, for "the cause", risking also a lengthy stay in jail, would feel quite short-changed.

It was something so basic that it can be done even by a depressed Mr. Nobody, a man really looking for a suicide-by-cop way out and desperate to get a final, terrible revenge on a society that he never felt that he was fit for . Or, from HIS perspective, a society that never cared for him beyond some half-assed lip-service.

Which appears to be, probably, what really happened - the "terrorist"was a screwed, grumpy oddball that didn't care for religion and beaten his wife regularly, till she couldn't stand it any more and chased him away.

But would such a mean suited for the calculations of real, proper terrorist leaders?

Massacre by truck is a bit emasculating, not manly at all - the guy even RENTED the damn truck, for Pete's sake. He didn't stole it and audaciously driven it five hundred miles under the nose of the country's security forces. He rent it for a couple of days.

By the way, the list of things that can be turned into weapons of mass destruction is, really, nearly infinite... the  Los Alfaques disaster (217 died becauise someone overfilled a liquefied gas tanker) pales this madman massacre, by comparison. And someone that suddenly goes nuts is, almost by definition, impossible to prevent - no matter the restriction of civil liberties and the substantial increase in budget for security agencies that many "law and order"  people will propose. It will be some useless money-grabbing on the part of "the services", but it will pass all the same.

But, that was not terrorism... it was just a tragedy. The sudden folly of some "average Joe", that in a bad moment discovers that "there is no reason why he shouldn't take out his anger on the rest of the world", is simply another among the many natural forces that conspire to destroy us. Not, really, any different or any more important than car makers negligence, pharmaceutical companies lewdness, office's chiefs incompetence and our own distraction, when we start the car without our seatbellts. 

As for terrorism... it has never really worked, as a political or military tactic, beyond allowing a bunch of second-rate blokes to make a career in politics, when they shouldn't have had one in the first place.

Despite what terrorist themselves may think, that's all it does - and the more bright of the lot pretty much knows it, in their guts at least.

Terrorism didn't make a dent in the morale of German people, even when it was incarnated in daily - fully terroristic in scope and purpose - bombings from good old "Butcher" Harris' Bomber Command, nor the bombing of Tokyo with incendiary devices (pretty useless against many !"legitimate" objectives like factories and train stations, but very efficient on traditional Japanese wood-and-paper CIVILIAN housings) managed to scare the Japanese out of fighting till a bitter end (or till the USA accepted Japan's pleas for surrender with their 'irrazonable request' of keeping the Enmperor in place... alas, someone needed to intimidate Stalin, and nothing short of a couple of nukes could do that).
 
The "second-rate" nature of most terrorist leader, when confronted with actual politic actions, is exemplified from the trajectory of the few that, for their perennial disgrace, managed to somehow win their battle - usually because it was expedient to someone else.

Thrust in a position of actual power, they most often made gigantic messes - the history of half African countries in the last century is made of this, and the whole Khmer Rouge nonsense, and Arafat starting the second intifada to squelch the malcontent of the then burgeoning Palestinian 11 - or they were swept away by more politically savvy competitors, or both of this and worse.

For one Nelson Mandela - but it can be argued that the man that was freed from Johannesburg's prisons was very different from his younger self, the commander of the armed wing of Umkhonto we Sizwe - that manages to do a good job, for a Castro that messes things but not too bad (by the way, embargoes are just economic terrorism... no more efficacious than the armed one) , we have entire bunches of Pol Pots, Mubutus, Arafats...

Crappy politicians, or outright psychopaths, often ready to do anything to keep their power.

This, I think, is the real problem of those that support terrorists... if "their guys" keep losing, their effort - time, resources and, have I said money? for some, terrorism is a career - just as, for some, priesthood is a career - are wasted. And, sometime, their lives, too.


But, if their guys win... then they have to live with them, which may be much worse.