WI: Semi-successful Bojinka Plot?

The Bojinka plot was a planned terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 planned by Al-Qaeda during the early-mid 1990s, involving an attempt on John Paul II's life, bombing attacks on multiple airliners simultaneously, and finally a suicide piloting/bombing attack on the headquarters of the CIA. It failed due to a chemical fire during the preparation of the bombs, which led to the discovery of the perpetrators, although not before they had killed one person during test attacks.

I want to narrow this down a bit, so let's consider what would happen if they focused just on the bombing bit, dropping the "assassinate the Pope" and "blow up the CIA" parts, at least for this attack, and they aren't revealed before they can at least attempt airliner bombings. Their one actual attempt on airliners went reasonably well (the bomb detonated as planned, but structural differences in the airliner targeted meant that it didn't have the desired effect), so let's suppose that most of the 11 aircraft they planned to target are destroyed. The death toll would likely be several thousand, since they were targeting large widebody aircraft, so fairly comparable to the 9/11 attacks. The difference is that this has taken place overseas and probably has a much larger proportion of non-American casualties than the 9/11 attacks did.

Given all this, what happens? With the death toll, the fact that many of those killed probably will be Americans, and the impact to global aviation and commerce (the scale of the attack may mean something like the post-9/11 shutdown happens, only over the entire world instead of just the US), I can't see Clinton and the Republican Congress (this is after the 1994 elections) settling for cruise missile attacks on terrorist training camps (like after the embassy bombings OTL). Since large numbers of non-Americans will likely be killed (from what countries, most probably? China, Japan?), might there be some interest in a global anti-terrorist effort? At the time, Afghanistan was not the major center for Al-Qaeda operations and the Taliban takeover was still in progress; nevertheless, Pakistan was the intended destination of the terrorists after they had carried out the attack, so might there be some pressure on the Pakistani government to assist? At this point, Pakistan is also not an avowed nuclear power (as after the Chagai test series), but they definitely have nukes. What effects will this have on their making that capability public?
 
Myself I would be more curious of the consequences if they actually managed to kill the Pope :eek:

Another pope would be elected, probably in the Benedict XVI vein (if not the man himself). The Catholic church would still have to face the various scandals which have lately been exposed at some point or another.

Bears would continue shitting in the woods.

Okay, the impact would be somewhat greater than that, but after all John Paul II had already had an assassination attempt made shortly after his election, so...
 
Bumping to see if anyone had any ideas about this (I mean, what with it only directly playing into one of this boards favorites, Gore being elected in 2000...)

One idea I had was that this might lead to a somewhat different approach to transportation. IOTL, after the 9/11 attacks the US created the Department of Homeland Security to (among other things) centralize and improve air security (you can argue about whether it actually has, but that was the intent). ITTL, with Clinton in office instead of Bush and high-speed rail, among other things, being developed...might we see a different response? One that also tries to move people off of air transport? Of course, the Bojinka attacks would have taken place overseas, so modifying the domestic transportation system might seem a bit odd.
 

whitecrow

Banned
Another pope would be elected, probably in the Benedict XVI vein (if not the man himself). The Catholic church would still have to face the various scandals which have lately been exposed at some point or another.

Bears would continue shitting in the woods.

Okay, the impact would be somewhat greater than that, ...
That's an understatement. If al-Qaeda goes after the Pope than it would really look like it was a conflict between Islam and Christendom just like how crazy right-wing people were saying all along. I'd expect much, much worst relations than OTL between Muslims and Christians all over the world.
 
Um, I doubt it would be just Christians vs Muslims, remember that in the east there's a ton of Hindus and a fair few Sikhs, plus there's the Muslims in Xinjiang Province, and in Russia, and aren't there a few local non-Christians in Africa etc. Islam is facing some serious issues, because going after the Pope is going to say to everyone else "we're playing for keeps", which is going to get them seriously thinking about how long it will take the Muslims to start looking at them. Of course, I doubt there'd be any open declarations of war, but you could see some very heavy demands made of various Muslim countries.
 
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