Dastardly Plots Happily Foiled

Depends on how you look at it. And there are enough who look at it rather askance. Yes, when terror plots geared to bring death and destruction to their targets are apprehended through sheer good fortune, or good investigative work, or good contacts imparting reliable information, there is reason to cheer. For no lives were lost, no huge damage incurred, no discernible waves of fear circulated within the target population.

Of course when the occasional terror plot has reached a successful conclusion what occurs is a collective rage of disgust and hatred toward the perpetrators. Whose respect for human life is acknowledged to be entirely absent in their dementedly dire dedication to wreaking carnage in the name of terror. A terror in service to a fundamentalist view of a world religion whose violent warriors have dedicated themselves to reap a harvest of corpses to place before the divine alter of Islam.

There is more than one way to strike terror into the minds of those whom jihadists despise. If blood cannot be shed because plans go awry, and buildings do not collapse because the bombs fail to ignite, it isn't quite true that some level of success has not resulted. For each of these attacks leaves behind its own residue of fear - of the prospect of future and further attacks that will strike when no one suspects they may.

Insecurity, uncertainty create an aura of destabilization invaluable to the plans of the jihadists. They take comfort from attacks that have not succeeded materially because they know they have succeeded on another, introspective, deeply-embedded level of inner consciousness. They celebrate each of these incidents as a success because incrementally they represent fear and terror resplendent in their favour.

The al-Qaeda-linked and -centered cells that promulgate hated, revenge, violence and death encourage any and all manner of attacks, from relatively modest single-combatant assaults to group efforts, as long as they are well planned, executed in a timely manner and the assailants are adequately armed to produce maximum effect.

Minimum effect will do, if all else fails. From the needfully enhanced security imposed upon the attacked parties, to the more elaborate and costly attempts to provide protection against those attacks, and the disturbed-mind syndrome that such attacks elicit from among the insecure, even failed assaults have their usefulness.