Originally Posted by Teacher49
My point in post # 11, Dovster. I am sure that even people as unhardened as Americans would eventually toughen up and carry on. But there would be huge dislocations if many small or even several middle sized attacks of the kind I mention do occur.
The device by the Amtrak rail in the middle of the country taking out the Oakland - Chicago traing is impossible to prevent. Safe for the perpetrators, very low tech as well. A couple of these and chaos would prevail for some time.
Again, there is no indication that there are people with the will and the resources to do this.
GUWonder, would many attacks like these cause Ameica to turn inward, ? Quite possibly. This a chance at OBL taking the objective you attribute to him: get America out of the lands of Islam.
I doubt many small attacks or one, a few or many big ones would cause America to "withdraw" -- short of any near total biological or nuclear holocaust type scenario "going live" and being seen as a real possibility on a national scale. [It's just not a way people react when they believe they have military superiority and it's not a way political leaders find to be a marketable approach to the majority.] This scenario of a near-total/total national-scale holocaust is not currently realizable by non-state actors. And no state actor with such potential resources -- even 10 years from now -- is going to gamble without a belief that it can take out the other player in one quick blow with no possibility for trace back when off-shore second strike capability exists at certain levels.
OBL, according to his own sons, knows that America won't withdraw due to pressure from outside forces. OBL's only hope is that the US goes the way of the Soviet Union by following a path of imperial hubiris and overstretch that leaves it no choice but to withdraw. His sons know that he believes that to be the only way to have his objectives advanced in any realistic fashion.