Is Wall Street and the financial market in general prepared for Jihad and capable of defending itself? The time has come for this subject to receive serious attention. The threats are real, ever-present and portend frightening consequences. 9-11 proved that terrorists have changed the nature of war.
Unbound by traditional taboos against using weapons of mass destruction, prepared to attack non-combatants, and using suicide killers as their agents of annihilation, they have gained immeasurable strength against the sovereign states of the world. No longer is the goal to kill as many soldiers as possible on the battlefield, rather, it is to engender fear and chaos among the enemy's citizens.
What better way to do this than to strike at the heart of America and the global economy: financial markets. Because terrorists are willing to break any traditional rule of war to serve their immediate needs, they have forced a reassessment of the meaning of power.
It must be assumed that terrorists will eventually wage an all-out economic war because it would certainly add to their power and diminish that of the enemy. Ominously, whether attacks on America's markets and the global economy are inevitable is less a matter of current capabilities than tactics. Simply put, it is not a matter of if, but when.