Admittedly it feels kind of strange to have your regular Jihad Joe stand up and make public threats against Washington.

For eight years the standard response has been to roll your eyes and ask ‘well what did Bush think would happen?’ But under a new as of yet untested presidency you’d be forgiven for riding the winds of caution.

You’re not the only one who might have recently thought about re-assessing how you respond to the stereotypical grainy video footage of masked men threatening the west that may or may not have been shot back in 1876.

As an Australian I was pretty much over the Afghanistan war once it became blatantly obvious it wasn’t going to be as easy as going in, finding bin-laden and getting the hell out of there.

Starting back in 2001, the Afghanistan war has had a season run that would put most of our primetime television to shame. It’s a place halfway across the world where random stuff completely out of my control and with no bearing on my day to day life happens.

One day I read about how our guys shot some some baddies.

And the next I read about how the baddies shot us.

And so it goes. People I don’t know fighting some war I didn’t ask for halfway across the world in a country where all the high level targets fled to Pakistan years ago and continue to fight back across the border for the most part unabated.

Today Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistani Taliban chief, stood up and “claimed responsibility for the attack and threatened to attack Washington”. The attack he’s referring to is of course the Pakistan police academy siege in which 12 died.

While it’s a massive step to go from overrunning some smalltime police academy in Pakistan to launching an attack on presumably the Whitehouse (what else is there in Washington?) it got me thinking about terrorist attacks in Australia again; something I haven’t thought about since 9/11.

I remember staying up all night watching the coverage live on television. I had uni on that day but decided to stay home, my reasoning being that my route took me through Melbourne’s CBD and I didn’t want to take any chances. Following the immediate aftermath of 9/11 anything seemed possible.

In hindsight a little bit of clarity would have suggested that Australia is so inconsequential when it comes to world politics and creating an impact on the world stage that planning any attack on us is a waste of resources, training and well, jihad… “talent”.

Thankfully it seems nothing much has changed in the roughly seven and a half years since 9/11.

The  Australian government has attempted a pretty bang up job of trying to scare us (hands up who hasn’t shaken their heads at the terrorist hotline ads or wished we’d spent the money used to make terrorist fridge magnets on buying Costello some personality instead), but if anything we’re more secure then ever.

Indonesia, arguably the biggest “threat” is too pre-occupied with it’s own bikie gang wars and like everybody else is trying to navigate americans stuffing up the world economy the global financial crisis.

I’m not seriously suggesting Indonesia are a threat mind you, just like everyone else I too giggle when I see some crazy islamists in Asian countries shake their fists at us on tv because they don’t like the latest episode of Neighbours or whatever.

Australia has also recently be downgraded to ‘B grade’ status when it comes to the world economy;

The Foreign Office faced embarrassment today after a secret memo suggested that Russia, Australia and Canada were all “second division” countries at the G20 summit.


If that doesn’t wipe us off the global terrorist map nothing will.

Word stage aside, has anyone actually tried to draw up a list of potential targets in Australia?

Without a doubt the most crippling attack would be on either our public transport system or the power stations. Sure this would have a huge impact on the city it happened in but in terms of ‘terror’ would it be really worth it?

Anyone remember Mumbai? Just a few months ago Mumbai captured the world’s attention as some crazies from Pakistan decided to shoot some hotels up ‘for great justice’ or some clap trap. Sure Mumbai held our attention for a few days but how quickly did it drop off the news radar and when was the last time you heard it mentioned in the news?

If anything ever happened in Australia we’d be the Mumbai of the global terrorist world, counter productive to everything a succesful terrorist attack should be.

If anyone even bothered to attack us the US would probably rock up, make sure Pine Gap was ok and then toddle off home. We’d receive a few video messages from the Queen and her family telling us how brave we were and Indonesia would probably chip in a few million in aid. After 24/7 news coverage for a few days we’d start to rebuild and get on with our lives.

No giant fanfare, no invading other countries and no prolonged international media coverage.

We’re a spread out country with globally insignificant landmarks of which taking out means nothing to the world at large. Population wise we’re too sparse to get enough of us into one place at any given time to actually have any ‘terror impact’ and global economy wise we’re well into B-grade status.

As much as a little bit inside of me dies thinking about how globally insignificant we are I can’t help but feel reassured that we’re still thankfully detached enough from the rest of the world not to count and thus relatively safe from an international terror attack.

So sit back, have a beer and do whatever it is that makes you happy; anything less and we might as well just hand over the keys.

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