The old Cold War and the new Hot War have very different enemies

I’m reading a thriller written in 1987.  The bad guys are Soviet spies.  They’re really bad.  That was par for the course with Cold War thrillers.

H0w many thrillers can you name now that have radical Islamists as the bad guys? I know there are a handful, but usually the bad guys are either (a) our own government gone rogue or (b) psychopaths.

This no literary approach isn’t simply because writers hate and fear both our government and psychopaths.  It’s because, back in 1987, an author knew that writing such a thriller would not end with an enraged Russian on his or her doorstep, decapitation knife in hand.

Things are different now, in the 21st Century.  As that old movie tag line says, “This time, it’s personal.”

The Islamists, unlike the Soviets, do not wage war against nations or, at least, they do not wage war just against nations.  We’ve already noticed that they are a non-national movement.  To appreciate what this means, consider that on 9/11, which was the largest, most deadly attack ever on American soil, there wasn’t one nation or soldier involved.  Saudi Arabia hadn’t declared war against us, although it’s ideology gave birth to the attack.  Instead, the attack originated with 20 Islamists.  In past posts, I’ve referred to these people as NGA’s — Non-Governmental Armies.

Because they’re not armies, bound by borders, treaties, and the dynamics of traditional battlefields, these armies have augmented the usual wartime target list to add specific individuals.  By this, I don’t just mean that their terrorist attacks seek soft civilian targets, such as office towers, schools, coffee shops, etc.  It’s more than that.  What makes this war different from the Cold War is that, in addition to trying to kill faceless individuals, our enemies also target specific individuals who have offended their sensibilities.  Easy examples are Kurt Westergaard, Theo Van Gogh, Molly Norris, the Comedy Channel executives, etc.

This is the only war I can think of that has the popular culture too frightened to engage in the necessary propaganda (and it is propaganda) of identifying the enemy, describing its goals, and getting the general population to feel that (a) there is indeed a real, deadly enemy out there and (b) that the population can rise up to defend against that enemy.