Political Terrorism

We can view the Department of Homeland Security's recent terror warning about Al-Shabaab threatening to attack a mall in the U.S. as political terrorism.  It is no coincidence that Homeland's funding is at issue because Republicans have chosen it to attempt to overturn the Presidential Executive Order on Immigration.  What better way to get the population engaged, than to make a threat that Homeland can count on to get mother's who planned to go to the mall today, to think about the budget of Homeland.  This logic is a little thin, but it will work only if we believe the threat is real and Homeland can actually do anything about it.  It isn't going to hold up on that end either.

Over the years I have seen hundreds of reports about the potential attacks on U.S. agencies or centers made by people who were less than credible.  Some of them had giggling kids in the background, making it easy to rule them out.  Some of them were incredible in their structure, i.e. a nuclear bomb will be dropped on the Washington D.C. mall at 12 pm today.  When this comes in every day from the same phone number, it is easy enough to pass it onto local police.  I had one myself, sitting on a watch desk listening to a woman who was sure aliens had attacked cattle in her back yard and hung their carcasses in a tree.  She mentioned that they had attacked her last week with a electrical charge that penetrated her brain.  I thought there might be something to that one.

For those who might take this as a credible threat, you might read How big of a threat is Al-Shabaab to the United States? at CNN [http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/22/opinion/bergen-al-shabaab-threat/index.html ] and watch the HBO special Terror at the Mall about the Al-Shahaab attack on a Nairobi mall.  They rarely attack outside Somalia, and then only in their African neighbors where they have not always been very successful.  The FBI doesn't seem to think it is very credible.  The Department of Homeland Security doesn't think it is either.  Yet the Director of Homeland said on TV yesterday that we "should be careful" before going to the mall.  Self-serving as it is, this is political terror.

It is political terror, occasioned by the budget of Homeland coming up at a time when the House and Senate are about to debate funding for his agency.  Homeland can find a threat any day that fits the description of an attack against somebody or something to make people think they should be careful.  It is the credibility of the threat and the timing that make this particular one bureaucratic terrorism.