Ok, so I don't really know Peter Bergen (CNN terrorism analyst, author) but I did go to listen to him talk at DMACC last night.
His 45 minute talk was chalk full of information about Al Qaeda, bin Laden (in 1997, Bergen was the first to do an on-camera interview with bin Laden), and 9-11.
I was up to speed on much of what he said, but he brought up a couple interesting points. One was that Al Qaeda isn't very interested in hitting targets like shopping malls in the midwest because no one in the Middle East knows where Des Moines is. It isn't impressive to hit Des Moines. When you hit a passenger plane, you are hitting one of the (arguably) most difficult targets out there. Your success is impressive. Their goal isn't entirely to instill fear in Americans going about their daily life as to send a message to us and their people back home that they know what they are doing. If they wanted to spread random terror, they would have done it by now.
He also said pulling out of Iraq right now would be extremely dangerous. About as dangerous as invading to begin with. Yay!
During a 15 minute Q&A, he was asked what America could do to avoid future terrorist attacks, he replied (paraphrasing), "Well, not invading a Muslim country is a good start." Too late.
Posted by alangage at September 13, 2007 02:00 PM
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