Be afraid, be very afraid
So they just shut off the Reichstag's dome for unannounced visitors.
This feeling of waiting for the terror attack is weird. The media is spinning horror scenarios ala Mumbai or circulating plans for an alleged attack of the Reichstag. Various politicians are clamoring for security, security, security, and asking the public to denounce "strange looking" groups of people speaking only Arabic or an incomprehensible foreign language. (Thank you, Innensenator Körting, for proving one still does not need a brain to fill that job in Berlin.)
I bet the media already have fully written headlines for a dozen scenarios. Somewhere an intern is hovering over the newspaper's twitter/facebook/youtube account just waiting for the go-ahead to push out a prepared doomsday message and head count.
Can you imagine what Bild will pull? Do you want to?
And here I sit in my office and no one seems to care. I don't care beyond a vague queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Living in Berlin post 9/11 was scary. My university was two minutes walking distance from the old US embassy, a few more minutes away from the Russian, French and British embassies. The area where I was daily was packed with symbolic targets, and the train I took to university every day was the target I would choose if my goal was to disrupt public transportation in the city and kill lots of people.
But then the feeling passed. Germany was not attacked.
And now I am supposed to be scared again and it's not working. I am not prone to react to things in an overly emotional manner, but I also have no experience with violence. I lived across the street from a bank in Ireland. Walking past the security guards for the money transports with their big-ass weapons freaked me out every time. I know I have been expecting something to happen because duh, why would Germany be excempt? But it's not really real.
Lacking an emotional reaction I try to make sense of it in my head: What do the terrorists want? What is their goal? How do they want us to react? I try to figure out for myself what I would do.
Would I go for a symbolic act? If so, I would not choose the Reichstag like the media suggests. I don't know about the general population but I have no particular emotional attachment to the building. On the other hand, setting the Reichstag on fire would surely trigger a historical oh, shit response in me.
Personally, I would go for the Brandenburg Gate. Though how one would go about blowing up something in clear sight of dozens of cameras and security personell because of the embassies I don't know.
Is my aim a blood bath and sewing fear among the general population? I would simultanously attack the Christmas markets in large cities. Many people (often families) in a relatively small area. Easy targets.
Or I would go for the public transportation. For Berlin I would choose either Hauptbahnhof, Alexanderplatz or Bahnhof Zoo. For Munich either Hauptbahnhof, Ostbahnhof or Marienplatz.
How do they want us to react? Now this is an interesting one. Would the goal be the end of German participation in Afghanistan?
I cannot imagine Merkel pulling out of Afghanistan in the aftermath of an attack. She does not make snap decisions, she's a pragmatic. She is also not a populist in the sense that she's following public opinion. The Greens would surely clamour for the end of German involvement in Afghanistan again, Die Linke would, too. The SPD might see a way to claw their way out of their abysmal public perception and use Afghanistan opposition to score points for the next election. Schröder did it with Iraq, after all.
Would an islamist attack suck like a sucking thing for German Muslims? Oh, hell yes. I really hope the recent fire in a Berlin mosque was nothing but an accident. It's telling that my expectation was arson when I first read about it in the paper.
Maybe it's morbid to imagine possible targets but that's how my brain works.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth. | Comments so far:
| You can use OpenID to comment on Dreamwidth. |
This feeling of waiting for the terror attack is weird. The media is spinning horror scenarios ala Mumbai or circulating plans for an alleged attack of the Reichstag. Various politicians are clamoring for security, security, security, and asking the public to denounce "strange looking" groups of people speaking only Arabic or an incomprehensible foreign language. (Thank you, Innensenator Körting, for proving one still does not need a brain to fill that job in Berlin.)
I bet the media already have fully written headlines for a dozen scenarios. Somewhere an intern is hovering over the newspaper's twitter/facebook/youtube account just waiting for the go-ahead to push out a prepared doomsday message and head count.
Can you imagine what Bild will pull? Do you want to?
And here I sit in my office and no one seems to care. I don't care beyond a vague queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Living in Berlin post 9/11 was scary. My university was two minutes walking distance from the old US embassy, a few more minutes away from the Russian, French and British embassies. The area where I was daily was packed with symbolic targets, and the train I took to university every day was the target I would choose if my goal was to disrupt public transportation in the city and kill lots of people.
But then the feeling passed. Germany was not attacked.
And now I am supposed to be scared again and it's not working. I am not prone to react to things in an overly emotional manner, but I also have no experience with violence. I lived across the street from a bank in Ireland. Walking past the security guards for the money transports with their big-ass weapons freaked me out every time. I know I have been expecting something to happen because duh, why would Germany be excempt? But it's not really real.
Lacking an emotional reaction I try to make sense of it in my head: What do the terrorists want? What is their goal? How do they want us to react? I try to figure out for myself what I would do.
Would I go for a symbolic act? If so, I would not choose the Reichstag like the media suggests. I don't know about the general population but I have no particular emotional attachment to the building. On the other hand, setting the Reichstag on fire would surely trigger a historical oh, shit response in me.
Personally, I would go for the Brandenburg Gate. Though how one would go about blowing up something in clear sight of dozens of cameras and security personell because of the embassies I don't know.
Is my aim a blood bath and sewing fear among the general population? I would simultanously attack the Christmas markets in large cities. Many people (often families) in a relatively small area. Easy targets.
Or I would go for the public transportation. For Berlin I would choose either Hauptbahnhof, Alexanderplatz or Bahnhof Zoo. For Munich either Hauptbahnhof, Ostbahnhof or Marienplatz.
How do they want us to react? Now this is an interesting one. Would the goal be the end of German participation in Afghanistan?
I cannot imagine Merkel pulling out of Afghanistan in the aftermath of an attack. She does not make snap decisions, she's a pragmatic. She is also not a populist in the sense that she's following public opinion. The Greens would surely clamour for the end of German involvement in Afghanistan again, Die Linke would, too. The SPD might see a way to claw their way out of their abysmal public perception and use Afghanistan opposition to score points for the next election. Schröder did it with Iraq, after all.
Would an islamist attack suck like a sucking thing for German Muslims? Oh, hell yes. I really hope the recent fire in a Berlin mosque was nothing but an accident. It's telling that my expectation was arson when I first read about it in the paper.
Maybe it's morbid to imagine possible targets but that's how my brain works.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth. | Comments so far:
| You can use OpenID to comment on Dreamwidth. |