# Posted 8:11 AM by Patrick Porter  

AMATEUR HOUR: I just posted this at my other blogsite, and thought it might be of interest to our readers here:

In public and professional debate, the overriding issue in domestic terrorism is ‘why they dun it?’

We can debate motive forever. But we can now make a more modest point with confidence: most budding extremists aren’t very good at it. Clearly there are still scary exceptions and moments where luck, skill and creativity can result in a spectacular attack.

But more common are things like this:

Saeed Ghafoor said he was going to bomb Europe’s largest shopping complex using three cars containing gas canister explosives. But when questioned further, he said Bluewater was in Exeter, the Old Bailey heard. When told it was in Kent, Ghafoor said he had not “finalised” his plans.’

Or this:

Mr Reilly was arrested after the explosion at 1250 BST on Thursday in the Giraffe restaurant in the £230m shopping development, which is one of Exeter’s main attractions. CCTV footage taken from a nearby camera appears to show him emerging from the cafe with blood pouring down his face before his arrest. No-one else was hurt in the explosion at the restaurant, which was busy at the time and is popular with families.

Why? Not knowing a lot about the internal technicalities of terrorism, I’ll suggest three reasons and see if readers want to kick them around.

First, state paranoia. 9/11 and 7/7 got the authorities’ attention. With all the abuses and incompetence and heavy-handedness that came with it, its now a much harder environment to operate it.

Second: its harder than it looks. Mohammed Atta, a highly talented engineering student with a cool focus and meticulous ways, is atypical. Most seem to be flustered, clumsy and indiscrete.

Third: We must be getting decent human intelligence from somewhere. One thing we are learning quickly is that Al Qaeda and its affiliates and imitators are fast alienating Muslims everywhere. This is known about Iraq, but could it also be happening here? Muslims were among the victims of the 7/7 atrocity. They don’t want to be persecuted at airports or harassed for downloading from the web. But neither do they want to be blown up by co-religionists.

Widening the focus to broader questions of international relations, the modern nation-state still seems fairly resilient. For all the talk of fifth generation warfare, cyberwar and super-empowerment of small groups of radicals, visiting mayhem on the streets and shops and trains of First World states is still difficult to do, takes training, patience and skill that the internet alone can’t teach, and on the rare moment when it does succeed, can backfire.

As Rod Liddle chuckles,

I suppose that many years hence the terrible destruction of the twin towers will still be lodged in our minds, the image of the buildings crumpling, the video of Osama Bin Laden sniggering in his cave. But a similarly iconic image would be of the moron Richard Reid trying desperately to set his training shoe on fire on a plane, having forgotten to bring a lighter. They are either extraordinarily useless or Allah has got it in for them.

The trick for terrorism studies, it seems, is to explain exactly why this is the case, and propose policies and measures to sustain this success of counter-terrorism. In the meantime, the rest of us can empty rooms and bore listeners with talk of root causes, alienation and social decay. (2) opinions -- Add your opinion