WWII and modern counter terrorism

[Pekka]

I once again read the story of the munich massacre. I don't know why I keep reading it every now and then, I don't find it particularly fascinating, I find it mostly very sad. As we all know, it was a huge blunder, anyone who has seen the documentaries, read books, researched it more, is aware of how much of a **** up it was.

The question is not what went wrong, it's what went right! Because that list is short.

I think this should light a discussion about the modern counter terrorism, so that maybe next time, we won't be having situations like this.

I'm not going to go into play by play, anyone who is familiar with this story knows it already.

But I find one important question we should ask ourselves. Germany was pretty much submitted after WWII, and had no special experience and .. all that with shooting stuff. So.. they found themselves in a situation with their pants down, partially due to the stripping of their forces.

Now, should this be a lesson, that next time there is war and submitting of forces.. that we should make sure that the lost party still has the capacity to answer into hostile situations like these? Because everyone needs those competent experienced fighting people, you never know what comes up.

What do you guys think?

[Pekka]

What I'm after is that should we be checking our special forces who handle these situations every now and then, I mean I'm sure the US has plenty of competent people to handle kidnappings, and all kinds of threats in all kinds of environments, UK has it, France has it, Germany NOW has it.. but what about those countries that never had to test their capabilities, because they just thought yeah we are ready, but could they be caught pants down too?

Makes me think that EU is in greater danger than we think, in terms of countering direct urban action, where not even the attackers are interested in negotiating. What do we do? We MIGHT have the equipment, we MIGHT have some kind of training from stolen field manuals, but apart from that... I think EU should have few big training centers, exchange programs, so that counter terrorists field squads can operate in different EU countries to get experience when they return to their own country. In the sake of being ready and making sure everyone is tested and knows what they're doing.

[Dr Strangelove]

In 1972 no one outside of Israel and certain hot spots like Vietnam, expected such an assault. I think it would be safe to say that no country had yet developed forces specially trained to handle such a situation. Since then a number of countries have trained special groups to handle terrorist hostage situations. There have been some notable successes since then. Probably the reason we're seeing more suicide bombing and less hostage taking now is precisely because terrorists know that such troops exist and that atempts at protracted seige and hostage taking will fail. Of course they also probably realise that even if they puill off such an operation that by now there are no countries that would accept them if they managed to convince the victim country to give them a plane and safe passage.

I think you'll find that in NATO there has been a lot of sharing of resources and training. Even the Netherlands has successfully handled a terrorist hostage situation.

Unfortunately well trained special forces don't really have much use against suicide bombers.

[Ted Striker]

It's only a matter of time before suicide bombers from Iraq make their way stateside much in the same way Chechnyan bombers have made their way into Moscow.

[Pekka]

Strangelove, right, right... but in case of Germany, we were talkign about above normal level of readyness.. I mean, it's not that it was not expected, but any kind of urban combat troops would have been a huge bonus at that point. They had the squad formed from border-police, with no experience. The snipers weren't really snipers, more like weekend competitors, one of them even descrbied himself as someone who is not a sharpshooter.

I wouldn't have expected counter-terrorism unit ready to assault, but something more than sticks and 'wtf do we do'.

As we can see with SAS, though German GSG-9 was formed after Munich incident, SAS has been around a long time, they have been effective, with Iranian Embassy etc.. I guess they really did put an end to most of these hostage situations, as you put it, they know there are some very good folks to take care of those situations if assault would be the choice, they are so good these days that terrorists would be takign a leap of faith.

And yeah they do it differently these days.. you don't really need those squads because they bomb and it's done and over with.. Intelligence is more important, to prevent it from ever happening.

Ted, I'm not sure, the situation in Iraq has been contained surprisingly well.. I mean it's a mess there, but it's contained mess so far and has been .. I'm not expecting it to happen for sure, but it's always possible.