I believe we are doing that right now by our withdrawel out of Iraq and soon to be withdrawel out of Afghanistan. It takes time. We have seen in Vietnam what happens when we yank our military out of a military hotspot overnight.
Well, yes, of course, once one has grabbed a tiger's tail one must very carefully plan one's exit strategy.
Another strategy might be to not grab the tiger's tail in the first place.
Well, yes, of course, once one has grabbed a tiger's tail one must very carefully plan one's exit strategy.
Another strategy might be to not grab the tiger's tail in the first place.
So we shouldn't go after a terrorist group who attacked innocent people on our home soil? Not sure what your point is here.
We had to take action to prevent further attacks to innocent civilians from taking place. However, by doing so we put our military at risk. But that is what our military is for. To protect the American populous from foreign threats. Those in the military understand this risk to themselves.
Your mentality seems to be that if we had just waited the terrorists would leave us alone. Correct me if I am wrong.
"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
I've been saying that I don't know the right answers, but people seem to want to fill in the blanks, and when they do they invariably choose an answer few, if anyone, would advocate, maybe something along the lines of, "Oh, so you want terrorists to keep flying into our buildings." I see no need to defend options and attitudes other people think up for me.
Given that the game of "what if" is a highly inexact science one must concede the possibility that we actually chose a pretty good option, but by the same token one must also concede the possibility that we didn't. We'll never know what might have happened had we chosen a different path.
What we do know is that the Arab world hates us more today than before the twin towers fell, and some day that hatred will inevitably find the necessary resources, ingenuity and organizational management to carry out terrorism on an extreme scale, just like 11 years ago. It might not be planes into buildings, but I doubt all the possibilities have been exhausted. Maybe they'll blow our GPS satellites out of orbit. Or maybe they'll bring down the Internet. Or maybe they'll import the pieces of a nuclear weapon into a city where it can be assembled and exploded. Or more likely it will be something we can't yet imagine. But if we don't begin finding peaceful ways of dealing with the hatred then the hatred will eventually again deal with us and find a means of extreme and violent expression.
It only takes one to what? Hijack one plane out of the 93,000 daily flights? Endanger approximately 300 of that day's 700,000 air passengers? Who cares about that? Don't you think securing every one of the world's airports with a full search and patdown security regime, costing more than 60 trillion dollars, is an overreaction?
The difference is the number of people you can take out in one whack with an attack on an airliner and the publicity involved vice a fatal traffic accident involving a few people.
Yeah, but who cares about that? Dead is dead; it doesn't matter if you go in a group or by yourself. Car travel in the US costs more than 40,000 lives a year. Most years have zero air travel related fatalities. If TSA-style security makes even a handful of people drive instead of fly - due to the irritation and inconvenience - then security isn't saving lives, it's killing people.
The issue there is that an explosive carried by a terrorist would have to be pretty large to take out a large number of people on the ground.
No, it wouldn't. It wouldn't have to be very large at all, it would just have to have a lot of ballistic mass. The people in the security line - where, at a busy airport, there can be as many as five planeloads all at once - are quite closely packed together. And there's no security to get in the security line.
I agree though that a person probably has a greater likihood of being struck by lightning than dying in an airline terrorist attack.
And, in your opinion, would the likelihood and danger of being struck by lightning justify spending 60 trillion dollars and killing a thousand people to eliminate lightning?
No, right? The costs are far in excess of the benefits. So why bother with this expensive and harmful security?
When it results in a police state situation like your video shows, it is definately is an issue that needs to be resolved.
The government has used "terrorism" to create a police state that is currently taking hold. American citizens are losing their rights more and more day by day all in the name of protecting us and securing the country from an enemy that the US created and continues to create.
From arresting protesters to locking people up for an unlimited amount of time without trails, to TSA patdowns of children and phone tapings, we are slowly becoming a police state and unfortunately most are either unaware, don't care, or support the cause because they've bought into the propaganda.
So we shouldn't go after a terrorist group who attacked innocent people on our home soil?
Afghanistan did NOT attack us, nor did Iraq - especially not Iraq. Why we are at "war" in both of those countries has to do with oil and control of the region. There's no need to try to pass our invasion of BOTH countries as some kind of right thing to do in response to 9/11. We can clearly see past the fasade.
The plan was in effect days after 9/11 to invade Iraq and follow up with an invasion of Sudan, Libya, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. I imagine you've seen the footage but for those who haven't here it is:
A few conspiracy theorist are claiming the "Innocence of Muslims" video was created by the CIA to create civil unrest in the MIddle East and give us an excuse to invade. I don't fully buy into the consiracy but judging by the history of this country I wouldn't put it past them.
We should not have gone after them by invading with the military.
Exactly: the invasions were for domestic political consumption.
And, in particular, occupations with the long-term implications of extensive base construction were colossally stupid.
Everyone in the Middle East understands vengeance, and it can even engender respect, but occupation trumps all with the hate, rage and defiance it provokes.
Osama bin Laden must have watched his script unfold with considerable satisfaction. The invasion of Iraq was a bonus he couldn't possibly have expected--he planned too carefully to count on his enemies being so foolish.
U.S. generals are still trying to figure out how to combat guerrilla/asymmetrical warfare with conventional force structures and tactics, rather than recognizing the error.
In 'Nam, we ended up with "pacified" zones that were actually internal refugee camps, and free-fire zones nearly everywhere else.
Soon, American planes and helicopters were killing anything that moved in the free-fire zones--man, woman, child, animal; friend, foe, unknown--further strengthening the VC's support among the South Vietnamese. Pursue tactics like these, and pretty soon you're evacuating embassy staff from the roof with helicopters, wondering what the hell happened.
Waging conventional war on resistance fighters in an occupied country inevitably leads to "collateral damage". In the early 70s, every peasant working a paddy looked like Charlie from a helicopter, and we hosed them with Ma Deuce like kids at a carnival; now, every group moving under the Predators' cameras looks like Al Qaeda, and we blow them up like FPS avatars.
After 40 years, we make the same mistakes. Only the game analogies have changed. I don't oppose the use of drones, given adequate intelligence, but I'm appalled at how loose the rules of engagement must be.
But the first, worst mistake was to engage in conventional military invasions and occupations.
"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."
I have to come over to your side on this one, sorry.
crashfrlog writes:
Yeah, but who cares about that? Dead is dead; it doesn't matter if you go in a group or by yourself. Car travel in the US costs more than 40,000 lives a year. Most years have zero air travel related fatalities. If TSA-style security makes even a handful of people drive instead of fly - due to the irritation and inconvenience - then security isn't saving lives, it's killing people.
This seems to me one important factor to take into account. You're saying that airport security may indirectly be costing more lives than it saves. I went over to NHTSA's website, looked up a couple stats, did a simple division, and discovered that there are 11 traffic related deaths per billion motor vehicle mile. And looking up air safety at Wikipedia I found that there is 1 death per billion passenger miles.
So if airport security measures increase motor vehicle travel by more than around a hundred million miles annually then they're increasing net fatalities.
But we don't really know the number of terrorist fatalities saved by airport security measures, since we can't know what might have happened were they not there. Without these measures would terrorists be flying planes into buildings once per year? Once per decade? Are the buildings fully occupied? Do the buildings collapse? Just too many variables.
But I bet statisticians could come up with reasonable approximations, so it seems possible to come up with a number. It would be interesting if some organization or agency could do that.
Right. And I think that is part of the problem. You say "the times they are a changin" without seeming to realise that large parts of the rest of the world have been tackling terrorism for decades without needing to redefine the term "war". As you have stated it you seem to think the US is at war with Al Qaeda but that they are not at war with you.
You have, rather bizzarrely in my view, invented a 'one-way' form of war.
CS writes:
Too, I don't think the 9/11 attack provided them with any military advange that would justify it.
The same sort of military advantage that the Nazis got by blitzing London in WW2....?
CS writes:
And do they even have a "military"?
If they don't have a military how you can be at war with them?
CS writes:
I've already admitted that I think we're forced into a double standard here.
Straggler writes:
I'm interested in your use of the term "war" as it seems to legitimise things like 9/11 as acts of warfare rather than terrorism.........
CS writes:
How so?
By invoking a double standard. By claiming to be at war with some entity such that your "strategic attacks" result in "unfortunate" civilian deaths that are a an inevitable product of war but that their "strategic attacks" are simply acts of gross terrorism that have nothing to do with being at war.
Like I say I think the whole "strategic attack" thing is morally dubious. But warring nations do undertake such things and it seems to be broadly accepted as legitimate in war.
To claim that you are at war such that your attacks qualify as acts of war but those of your enemy don't is to invent one-sided war. It means you open yourself up to accusations of applying double standards and hypocrisy. Accusations which those rioting away in the Middle East are keen to point out......
So how about we make a distinction between tackling terrorism and actually being at war?
We, the US, is a Nation State and so it can conduct a war against anyone; another Nation State or any other organization or even individual that the Nation State selects.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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