What do the terrorists want? Who cares?

Matt Yglesias with some analysis of who, electorally speaking, a terrorist attack in the coming months would help. It sounds reasonable enough, although I really don’t think we have any good way of knowing–this is more or less uncharted waters. (And how is a summer/fall 04 terrorist attack a similar event to the capture of Saddam Hussein, exactly?).

I draw your attention, however, to MY’s subtle mockery of the specculation game about who OBL and the terrorists want to win this election:

That means that if an attack comes soon, the terrorists want Kerry to win and you should vote for Bush. If it comes later, they want Bush to win and you should vote for Kerry. Or maybe they know that’s what you’ll think and if they like Kerry they’ll attack late and if they like Bush they’ll attack early. But what if they guessed that, too? Well, then. .

Two points to make. First, this is a silly game of speculation, obviously. I can tell you that if I were Osama Bin Laden, I could certainly see an upside to the re-election of George W. Bush, on the grounds that I like my enemies lead by people who are a) as incompetent as possible, and b) prone to engage in expensive, messy ventures that don’t threaten me but help out my recruiting efforts. However, I am not Osama Bin Laden. That’s not a coincidence. I have a rather different worldview than him, a different understanding of the role of the US in the world, a different set of goals, etc. There is no reason to assume he and I understand the world in similar ways.

This is obvious enough, but there is a second, even bigger problem with taking these sorts of arguments with even a modicum of seriousness. If the assumption is we should do what he doesn’t want, that implies that one of the following guides to strategic action is operative.

1)We should do the opposite of what OBL wants. If we can’t catch him and bring him to justice, we should do the next best thing: spite him.

The problems with this should be pretty clear. It’s a common strategic guide for the behavior of seven year olds, but most of us move on at some point shortly thereafter.

Or, 2) We should assume OBL/terrorists have a much better understanding the the geopolitical ramifications than we ourselves do. Instead of looking to our own best and brightest, or firing up our own brains and thinking for ourselves, we should look to mass murderers for strategic insight, which can cleverly be gained by applying the opposite principle to what they want.

One of the many things I’m not looking forward to in the next few months is idle speculation about what terrorists want to happen. I have no doubt my dear readers are above this debased discourse, but let’s make sure we nip this in the bud whenever possible.

Please note how I avoided any jokes of the form “If (fill in the blank) the terrorists have already won.”