Next Generation of Terrorists Attacking Sources of Power, Not People

Welcome to the next generation of terrorism. You and your family are in luck, because when it becomes dominant, you'll be less likely to be the victim of a terrorist attack.

In a strange synergy between 9/11 and Somali pirates, a tanker owned by a Japanese company was damaged this past week by a what the United Arab Emirates affirms was a terrorist attack in the Middle Eastern waterways that provide 40% of the world's oil. That means terrorists are getting smarter, fast, but it also means that our ways of life are being threatened (or improved?) in new ways, and makes a nuclear war with Iran more likely.

First the good news. The reason why you're less likely to be a victim of a terrorist attacks, when power sources become the targets of terrorist attacks and not the buildings in which you live and work, is that the old saying about striking the tree at it roots rings true in global supply chains, too. Meaning that it makes much more sense from a terrorists' perspective bent on ending American ways of life to attack production capacities more than consumption capacities, already at a low with the economic depression anyways.

Sad thing is, we're learning this from terrorists in this first attack of its kind, rather than from those who are elected, appointed and paid to keep us safe. Then there's also how this kind of terrorist attack can help save the planet, more on that in a moment. Terrorist attacks of this kind also beg the following important question by blurring lines: When do terrorist acts become acts of war? Remember, a similar confusion of acts sparked World War I.

The attack happened within easy nuclear missile range from the coasts of Iran, with an Israeli-Saudi-German-U.S. nuclear attack plan already in place. While no one has yet showed that Iran is connected to the tanker attack, the recent series of counter-productively severe sanctions on Iran are (for me at least) a more reasonable and recent prompt than the generic threat of Islamic fundamentalism we've been pounded with for ten years. Here's why.

The people of Iran, like those of North Korea, are the actual sufferers of economic sanctions, not their leaders, breaking an Obama campaign promise for direct talks. It's not hard to imagine that they are getting desperate enough to become terrorists, in an inversion of the "Terrorist Factories" I've previously reported on through which we create our own enemies by supporting military dictators globally. Except in this case, we create the economic conditions that make their suffering subjects hate us as much or more than their dictators.

Did I mention that China has just rolled out the first-ever battleship-sinking weapon this past week? It's already common knowledge that China defends Iran in the U.N. Security Council and both countries boast of their great economic and political partnership. To what extent this attack is a prelude for things to come, namely a joint attack by desperate Iranians and China flexing its new superpower muscles, is not only a matter of diplomat debate, but one worthy for dinner table discussions globally.

President Obama, hopefully implementing George W. Bush's rhetoric, has been touting U.S. energy independence since the campaign trail. All we've got is an emergency stall on drilling off U.S. shores prompted by the BP Gulf oil spill disaster (and that's being contested in court), aside from an occasional speech at a taxpayer-subsidized Ford plant producing "greener" cars that still use oil, and the whatever of Copenhagen.

Now half-way into his first term, there is a security-motivated reason to believe that Obama has the same motive to eliminate national dependence on oil as Bush had in bolstering a police state after 9/11. Who cares about the environment when there's "national security" at risk, especially when the purposes of the two can be combined to environmentalism's gain? If only peace had such a lucky break.

In Chicago, where Obama and I live, Bush's livid dreams of a police state are becoming the waking nightmares of residents, especially of certain racial groups. The normalization of  disproportionate security practices just waiting to be rolled out on whole populations in an "emergency," like a terrorist attack, is one of the legacies we are leaving our children, like the debts of the little that remains of the American well-being state, Social Security and Medicare. As if personal debts weren't already contemporary slavery, and debts lead to war only for economists. If only Obama were as successful in securing global security from terrorist attacks.

Maybe our addiction to oil and the mass killings we use to get our fixes will disappear thanks to this terrorist attack and those like them, as will doctors-turned-drug-dealers with the hijacking of American medical practices by the pharmaceutical industry will, by magic.

Truth is, all that happens by magic is, well, magic. So we need make our leaders take the necessary steps by not voting for them if they don't, and getting them to meet their mandates once elected. That starts this November with the Congressional election, continues to the next presidential one in two years, and never ends. Democracy, love and use it or leave it and it dies.

Photo Credit: Global X