Car Bombs: They're not Just for Terrorists

I was traveling all this week on business, and, as I usually do, I picked up the latest Harper’s at a newsstand in one of the airports: http://www.harpers.org/MostRecentCover.html

There is almost always something in the magazine that surprises me and raises my consciousness. This time, I was taken by one of the "Readings" entitled "The Poor Man’s Air Force" by Mike Davis. This was published last April in TomDispatch: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=76140 It is a brief and fascinating history of the car bomb from 1920, when it was a horse and wagon bomb on Wall Street, to the present day. It was not until 1947, when the car bomb was deployed again, this time by Jewish extremists in Palestine. Since then, it has been a weapon in the arsenal of asymmetrical warriors around the world.

A passage:

"The car bomb...suddenly became a semi-strategic weapon that, under certain circumstances, was comparable to airpower in its ability to knock out critical urban nodes and headquarters as well as terrorize the populations of entire cities. Indeed, the suicide truck bombs that devastated the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 prevailed -- at least in a geopolitical sense -- over the combined firepower of the fighter-bombers and battleships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and forced the Reagan administration to retreat from Lebanon."

A number of car bombers learned their trade at "terrorism schools" sponsored by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence in the 1980s. The most fascinating aspect of the essay for me was learning that not all car bombers are asymmetrical warriors, that powerful states use them. In the 1970s and1980s, Mossad carried out numerous car bombings in Beirut. In 1985, the US contracted with Lebanese agents to kill the leader of Hezbollah in a car bombing operation financed by a Saudi prince. The operation failed, but 75 bystanders were killed and 200 wounded. The CIA continued to abet car bombings in conjunction with the Pakistani government and trained, among others, the masterminds of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In the 1990s, the CIA abetted car bombings in Iraq by the Iraqi National Accord.

I don’t know why I was so surprised at state sponsored terrorism, including acts by the government that claims me as a subject. Why would I have put it past them? I don’t think I will ever look at reported "terrorist" activities the same way. I will tend to suspect the hand of government in every attack.