Claimed/Unclaimed Terrorist Attacks as Framed Under Uncertainty, Ambiguity

Preventing or weathering an act of terrorism very much poses a problem solving dilemma for policymakers and publics alike in terms of formulating a response to the violence. This study suggests that claimed attacks tend to be framed as situations involving uncertainty, whereas unclaimed attacks are framed in terms of ambiguity.

Claimed Attacks as Problems of Uncertainty

Claimed terrorist attacks are discussed as situations of a familiar nature, with defined boundaries that demarcate the scope of the terrorist threat. The targets of violence are therefore able to understand the threat in its entirety, including the set of possible resolutions. There is no

“surprise element” within a claimed attack; the perpetrator, able to upset the assured purveyance of justice within unclaimed narratives, ceases to exist in claimed narratives upon the arrest of suspects. No references are made to the possibility of an outside “coordinator” or “mastermind”

who continues to evade investigative efforts, eliminating the potential for an unknown outcome to upset the predetermined path of the state in rendering justice and restoring normalcy. The decisive lack of premediation and speculation on future attacks further negates the possibility of an “infinite number” of possible conclusions to the terrorist act, allowing the current disaster to be understood in the singular; the attack is clearly temporally demarcated rather than

compounded by the effects of a future attack realized in the present via state response.

With this definition comes an understanding of what variables are to be included or are relevant to the problem at hand. Al Qaeda and its founder are well-known criminal actors with whom law enforcement officials have an established history; yet even before al Qaeda claimed

responsibility, claimed narratives narrow the pool of possible perpetrators to those practicing Islamist terrorism. More importantly, there are no ambiguous actors within such discourses; states and their allies are unquestionably endowed with ethical authority as just protectors and guardians of Western values in the face of danger; they act as a bulwark against the forces of terrorist barbarism to defend “civilized” society. Detainees are, in contrast to unclaimed narratives, mature criminal actors capable of autonomously plotting and executing skilled

operations and having proven their depravity through participation in previous terrorist activities; their culpability is unquestionable and thus the moral legitimacy of the state confirmed. Even prior to the arrest of suspects, postulations of the perpetrators as superhuman are immediately dispelled by rational explanation, rendering the detainees ordinary (albeit proficient) actors able to be addressed through normal law enforcement measures.

The implementation of a tried-and-true model of police vs. criminal implies that existing resources may be utilized in the apprehension of those responsible, which lends itself to the scripting of particular problem-solving tasks and thus investigative progress. Boasts of state power, technological superiority, and experience in the handling of insurgencies are thus applicable to the present situation, increasing public confidence in authorities’ ability to fulfill their security contract. The nature of past-present comparisons in framing the current attack as the newest incarnation of an old threat implies it will be handled successfully in the manner of its predecessor.

Unclaimed Attacks as Problems of Ambiguity

Unclaimed attacks are comparatively modeled as problems of ambiguity, which is introduced both through conflicting actor identities as well as through challenging the existing model of placating the terrorist threat. First and foremost, unclaimed attacks exhibit a lack of clarity with regard to the primary actors and their associations. As Dingley (2005) notes, “if an agreement is ambiguous, it is not an agreement” (p.176); consequently, if there is not clear agreement on who is or is not a source of threat, either everyone or no one is a danger. Given that an attack has already occurred—along with the ongoing possibility of a repeat performance—everyone becomes a prospective terrorist. Actor ambiguity proceeds among several veins: confusion between “victims” and “attackers” (via the exoneration of suspects and the attacked state-as- attacker through the detaining of innocents and production of terrorists), and a blurring of the “civilized” and “barbaric.” This latter theme is explored through the characterization of perpetrators as masters of “civilized man” and embodying to a greater extent the principles of “civilized” behavior, as well as the moral degradation of Western society and its abandonment of

rational principles. Attacked nations become models of “uncivilized” behavior: untrustworthy, deceitful and foolish, their use of gratuitous violence, support for torture, and unjust

imprisonment undermines their identity as part of the Free World.

With the invalidation of the old framework a new model is required, yet it is impossible to demarcate the boundary of the new threat. The current security insurance paradigm in Western society is based upon “scientific calculus and group profiling” (Aradau & Van Munster, 2007, p.103); this is impossible in an environment where estrangement of the normal provides for anything and everything as suspicious. Unclaimed attack discourses offer an endless pool of possible perpetrators whose continual presence wreaks instability despite suspects’ arrest. Note that the superhuman abilities of the perpetrator and his desire to do harm are consistent and unchallenged throughout the discourse, rendering the identity—according to Hopf (2009)— among the strongest and most salient. Furthermore, the labels used to describe said suspects are indeterminate from the ones employed by the targeted population—family men, brothers, Westerners, sports lovers, charmers—implying that we are a source of threat as well as its victims. Continued references to a “mastermind” at large contribute to the inability to define the problem scope, with the statesmanlike Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda posed in stark contrast to the uncontained and virulent nature of general terrorism. Finally, the use of premediation resists any and all attempts to describe even the temporal boundaries of the danger; the importance of the terrorist act rests in its potential, with ambiguity introduced via the imagination of infinite futures (as imagination is inherently interpretive and thus always open to ambiguity) (de Goede, 2008, p.156,159; Salter, 2008, p.248, cited in Best, 2008, p.7). In turn, states are forced to react to a possible future attack, something that has not, and may not, ever occur; as such, the effects

of a future attack in terms of policy response and popular fear have already been realized, a terrorist attack that requires absolutely nothing on the part of the terrorist. In such a way, premediationbecomes the catastrophe (Countin 2008, cited in de Goede, 2009, p.171) as it mediates multiple futures in a manner indistinguishable from the way the future will be mediated when it is realized (Grusin, 2004, p.29).

This new model, indefinite as it is, requires resources outside of the state’s possession. The threat is new, unique, and wrought by all-powerful, divinely favored perpetrators; boasts of military prestige and previous anti-terrorist accomplishments are irrelevant. Narrative focus is on a present that cannot be linked in any meaningful sense with previous experience, except to distinguish it as distinct from such; as Cooper (2006) notes, “if the catastrophe befalls us, it is from a future without chronological continuity with the past…no mass of information will help us pin-point the precise when, where and how of the coming havoc. We can only speculate” (p.119). What is more, problem-solving tasks towards the resolution of the threat can only be issued in general terms; consequently, states and their allies never appear to make real progress in the investigation as the true attacker, the perpetrator, is untouchable given that s/he is a figment of our own creation. Descriptions of the attack as “extraordinary” and “unthinkable” further depoliticizes the event, as “unthinkable becomes unspeakable, and so we are excused from further enquiry” (Edkins, 2003, p.176, cited in de Goede, 2009, p.167). Consequently, there is no one to be held accountable for the security threat posed not only by the terrorists, but by the state and society itself.