I also think
it is inevitable. Yet the preparations for such an attack strike
me as modest, diffident, even fatalistic, given the scale of catastrophe
in view. The assumption is, we can't really do anything about
it until it happens.
It is what
we do AFTER it happens that is thus the real issue. And that is
what we could more comprehensively discuss, to make an impression
on our enemies. I am not so much thinking of the public health
response, for that will be complete chaos. I am rather thinking,
what steps we will take, after the plague has subsided, to eliminate
“Islamism”. For we have only to imagine 10 million
dead, to imagine a Western electorate prepared to do whatever
is necessary to achieve that end, promptly.
In passing:
I wouldn't necessarily worry as much as the conference delegates
about a "suicide bio-weapon" -- i.e. Islamist terrorists
infecting themselves, and then wandering around densely populated
cities. For as I’ve noted before, they have consistently
selected painless "exit strategies" for themselves.
They have only ever manifested the sort of courage that requires
endurance of pain when placed in the "cornered rat"
position (usually by members of the United States Marine Corps).
I think the postal anthrax attack on the U.S. in 2001 is a better
predictor of Islamist methodology. (In contradiction of the U.S.
authorities, I also remain convinced it was an intended follow-up
to the air attacks of 9/11/01.)
People with
the facility to put two and two together -- and get four -- should
realize that Canada is the likeliest target for such a bio-terror
attack. The United States would be ideal, since the U.S. precedes
even Israel as the subject of Islamist hatred. But it is not therefore
the more likely immediate target. The great effort that is being
made to secure American borders (likely to increase as the isolationist
impulse grows), and the general effort of Homeland Security (however
incompetent) make hitting the U.S. directly a dicier proposition.
Canada has the merit, from an Islamist point of view, of more
open borders and less suspicious authorities. Yet a pathogen would
cross the border easily, no matter what security were in place.
So why take the risks of starting it there, when they could more
easily start it here?
Europe could
be ruled out, as a first choice, because in the Islamist mind,
Europe is already in the process of becoming Islamic territory,
by demographic progression. Of course the fallout from a bio-terror
attack could quickly become planetary -- but THAT is the sort
of hypothetical risk with which Islamists are characteristically
undisturbed.
We now have
large and concentrated Muslim immigrant communities in such cities
as Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and London, Ont., to provide the
necessary cover during preparations. And as the pathetic, “politically
correct” response of Mayor Miller and his police chief to
gang warfare in Toronto’s streets has shown, the possibility
of determined police action can be thrown off by the semblance
of a shadow of the threat of a charge of police “racism”.
Not since Indonesia, in the months before the 2002 attack on Bali
nightclubs, has a country so advertised its desire to be “sucker-punched”
by terrorists feeling the constraints of police action elsewhere.
Canada again becomes the target of choice.
Moreover,
we can provide the terrorists with the weapons they need, without
the inconvenience of crossing international frontiers. What isn’t
available over the counter from pharmacies, or by mail order,
could be obtained from the poorly-secured stocks of a public hospital
via sympathetic or blackmailed staff. The means to launch a smallpox
epidemic -- or to disseminate anthrax, botulism, or an Ebola-style
virus -- are all available locally. The U.S. scientists who ingeniously
re-created the 1918 “Spanish flu” that killed more
people than the First World War, thoughtfully published their
accomplishment so it could be reproduced anywhere in the developed
world. There is really no end of possibilities.
It is from
the contemplation of such facts, that persons of sound mind may
deduce what is necessary to avoid an attack. We cannot possibly
eliminate the means, without also eliminating everything that
makes our society technologically advanced. We must instead find
and eliminate the people who want to kill us. This, incidentally,
is the pro-active strategy President Bush and company embarked
upon, about Sept. 20th, 2001. But perhaps it wasn’t bold
enough.
