Terror is the signature of the Islamist: hit, back off; hit, back off — hoping in a few years to erode the will and nerve of affluent and leisured Western countries.
Bin Laden has so far only made one mistake: He took down the entire World Trade Center rather than the top floors, and had the misfortune of having George Bush as president. Thus he lost Afghanistan and ended up with democratic reform from Iraq and Lebanon to the Gulf and Egypt. Train bombings in Madrid and bus explosions in London, like the carnage in Iraq, are preferable, since they are enough to terrify and demoralize the Westerner but not quite enough to knock sense into him that only military resistance and victory will save his civilization.
So the attacks will never quite be of such a stature to convince Western voters that one more such explosion will destroy their societies. The trick is instead to wage war insidiously, incrementally, and stealthily to avoid an overwhelming response. A cooling-off period in between 9/11 and 7/7 in which Western apologists, pacifists, and Islamist sympathizers go to work is essential for the terror to continue.
Also shamelessly use victimhood and pay lip service to 'condemning' terrorism to prevent real retaliation. In other words, harry and hector the soft Westerners into submission. What they shouldn't do is detonate a nuclear weapon and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties which might actually encourage the West to respond as Rome to Carthage.
If they are clever with their demographic advantage they can simply wait the West out. Civilization has two ways to win, stick to the current course and try to aggressively democratize the Middle East by sapping their strength from within or truly engage in a clash of civilizations and hope we have the guts to win.
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