It’s not just terrorists who can use terrorism as a tool. Here's how those in power can use the threat to get to their goals....
Example Number One: Avoiding Responsibility
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been in the news a lot recently, of course, with no relationship whatsoever to the autobiography he is pushing.
Taking a break from book signings, Blair offered a speak at the conservative Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His headline was a warning that the West was failing to challenge an Islamist extremist “narrative” that Islam was being oppressed by the West.
What Blair failed to acknowledge was his own contribution to that narrative. Apparently, in his eyes, the invasion of a Muslim country that had no connection to the 9/11 attacks was designed to counteract the narrative that is now concerning Blair. However, statistical evidence makes clear that the 2003 war in Iraq fuelled terrorism and served as a recruiter for al-Qaeda, a point even admitted by a report from a British military think tank.
In other words, Tony Blair --- who may or may not have profited from the 2003 war as British Prime Minister, who may still be profiting from it as author and speaker --- is directly complicit in fuelling the very narrative that he now presents as a primary threat to the world.
Example Number Two: Justifying Counter-Terrorism Strategy
Then there is the current terrorism warning issued to Americans travelling to Europe.
Ignoring the pointlessness of such an imprecise warning, there is the question of the agenda behind it. Part of it clearly represents the US government covering its backside by putting out a broad alert: should an attack occur somewhere, sometime in the future, it can say that it warned Americans of the danger.
But there may also be a political agenda at work. According to the Guardian of London, the warning was a useful way for the Obama administration to justify an increase in drone attacks against targets in Pakistan. Already 2010 has seen almost as many drone attacks as those in 2009 and 2008 combined.
The spectreof those plotting Mumbai-style attacks in Europe helps justify the drone attacks, even if most occur against non-al-Qaeda related targets.
Example Number Three: Preserving Budgets
There was a strange occurrence the other day. For the first time ever, the head of GCHQ, the British electronic intelligence agency, made a speech. In it he warned of the threat of cyber attacks against the UK and left the impression that GCHQ was needed to fend them off. That both a strategic defence review and a major spending review are underway in the UK are, like Tony Blair’s public appearances when he has a book to sell, purely coincidental.
At least the head of GCHQ had a measure of subtlety in his lobbying. Not so with Air Marshal Tim Anderson, director general of the Military Aviation Authority, who warned that if fighter aircraft are eliminated through defence cuts this "would leave [the] UK open to 9/11 attack". The assertion might be ridiculous, but that's not the point, as long as one get media attention for a budget and influence government policy in the process.
Terrorism is regularly invoked not only by the terrorists but by those charged with combating terrorism because it serves as a means to an end. Deploying the threat has become the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Steve Hewitt, who returns to the EA staff as our Terrorism Correspondent, is Senior Lecturer in American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham and author of Snitch: A History of the Modern Intelligence Informer and The British War on Terror: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism on the Home Front since 9/11