Terrorist who had no conscience about killing innocents (lots of ) doesn’t bother you ? Medieval fanatics want to convert us to their brand of Islam or be killed doesn’t bother you?
Nuclear weapon in the hands of Ahmadinejad and the likes of his ilk doesn’t bother you? No he wouldnt have to set it off, he can hand it off to terror cell maybe even in your hometown.</p>
<p>Are you being insolent that nothing can touch America, so arrogant to think your freedom to live in peace and prosperity is guaranteed ?</p>
<p>Ask Zoosermom when she drives through the Lincoln tunnel does she ever feel a tinge of fear. Is this going to be my last day ? </p>
<p>Don’t compare this to days of the cold war. Even the Soviet oligarchy was no fools. They knew you can’t win if you die. Asking an explosive-strapped suicide bomber today, death equals 72 virgins. And there’s no shortage of fanatic martyrs. Caravans of them, said Bin Laden. You are fighting an enemy you can’t see and are everywhere, behind veils. That doesn’t frighten you ?</p>
<p>Speak for yourself if you don’t find the generations before you had it easy, that they didn’t have to face the post 9/11 reality.
Speak for yourself if you find the world same before 9/11 and after 9/11. Stop talking it’s “just” more of this or more of that.
Speak for yourself if you never cry inside for your children, that they face an uncertain,freightening future.
Speak for yourself if you never feel you want to go back to the world that existed on September 10, 2001.
Speak for yourself if you think you can make fun at everything, or rationalize everything.
Speak for yourself if you think there’s nothing extraordinary about the times we live in now.</p>
<p>yourworld: That wasn’t the gist of what I was saying. Stop making such an egregious straw man argument.</p>
<p>My point was, terrorism has always existed. There are always epople will to die for a cause. The cause right now happens to be better organized, and has better recruitment - largely as a direct result of foreign American policies - than any other in the past. Given that, your statement that these are extraordinary times falls flat. Yes, they are slightly worse, but terroism is nothing new.</p>
<p>The main issue I brought up was this: if these are extraordinary times, when do they become ordinary again? When do Americans get back the rights that they’ve lost over the last few years? Is it when we eradicate Islam, as some (higherlead for example) seem to think? Is it when Iraq is “won”? When?</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s an answer to that. The “war on terror” is really a war on beliefs, ideology, and general geopolitics. That’s just not a war that can be won. Given that, I don’t think that there is ever going to be a time that you would consider more ordinary than the post-911 period, and I think that’s very dangerous. The whole idea of temporary restriction of rights in war is that war is temporary. But this “war” isn’t.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the terrorists are sitting pretty at the moment. They haven’t achieved all their goals (the whole Islamic caliphate thing), but America is so afraid of them that it jumps at every video or communique they release, and I think that suits them just fine.</p>
<p>P.S. As for your long list of accusative “Speak for yourself” lines at the end, the only one that I wouldn’t say outright is that I wouldn’t rather go back before 9/10. Of course I would. Even if 9/11 still happened, maybe if there was a chance to do it again the US wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, shoved the country headfirst into a financial crisis, and recruited more terrorists than ever before, while simultaneously not really achieving much in the fight against terror, and destabilizing the Middle East more than ever before.</p>
<p>Tell me about what rights have we lost ? How many innocent people were siezed in the middle of the night? What negative impact the Patriot Act has on public at large? The enforcers of the Patriot Act don’t just grab anybody. They have to later show probable cause or let you go.</p>
But has it ever happened? Wouldn’t some relative or friend contact the NY Times to report someone being seized in the middle of the night? I’m with those who don’t see any real reduction in our civil rights as a result of the Patriot Act. </p>
<p>What we’ll REALLY never know is how many attacks were averted BECAUSE of the Patriot Act and surveillance by the intelligence agencies.</p>
<p>1of42, I completely respect your well-thought out arguments, but I don’t agree with you at all. I think these times are much worse in terms of terrorism. Technology, transportation, and a porous border have created the perfect path for people inclined to get here and attack civilians at home. That, in itself, is unprecedented. I also disagree with your assertion that US policies caused the 9/11 attacks or the prior WTC attack. I think there is a group of people in this world who have an actual agenda all their own that they choose to carry out and what we do or don’t do isn’t very important. It’s a shame that so many smart people of great goodwill on both sides of this issue choose to attack the other side over small details and have lost sight of the big picture. I was not a fan of the Iraq war for many reasons and am much less of a fan of the occupation period, not the least because I think it was always clear that Iran would use Iraq as a proxy war against us. I also think it’s very clear that the day of reckoning with Iran will come a the time of their choosing, not ours, and we will have a weakened military and decimated national resolve. I’m not happy about that. I do know, however, that recent events in Syria are concerning, that events in Iran are ALWAYS concerning, and that folks like Adnan Al Shukrijumah are coming with impunity across our southern border. Meanwhile, we have a president who puts whatever priority he has over national security with regard to the border and a Congress led by two of the most partisan, incompetent, unserious hacks ever to grace the republic. What a sorry state for a great nation.</p>
<p>I think that there is a a very natural human tendency to think everyone else is just like us. For example, when I meet another mom who has kids around the same age as mine, I make certain assumptions. Sometimes those assumptions are valid, but occasionally they’re not.</p>
<p>It seems to me that there is a subset of Americans who think that the Islamic Fundamentalists are pretty much just like us. If we just left them alone, gave them economic aid, stayed out of their way, they’d leave us alone. WRONG! There is a group of fanatics whose sole goal is to destroy western civilization and create a caliphate where shari’a law rules the land.</p>
<p>The reason there hasn’t been another attack in this country on the scale of 9/11 is that we finally took measures to treat terrorism as an act of war, rather than a criminal action. What worries me now is the tendency for people to revert to the complacency of September 10, 2001.</p>
<p>"The reason there hasn’t been another attack in this country on the scale of 9/11 is that we finally took measures to treat terrorism as an act of war, rather than a criminal action. "</p>
<p>I’m not sure about that. Most of what we’ve done has been good and effective, but as long as the borders and ports are completely open it’s just a matter of time. I’m convinced that there is intelligence (serious intelligence, not just the usual stuff) of a radiological (is that even a word?) weapon because of the security level I’ve been seeing with my very own eyes. Now don’t get me wrong, the Jewish holidays are always a time of heightened security, but the use of radiation detectors on buses on such a large scale is pretty new and not chronologically connected to the holidays. Also, it’s unheard of for the police to stop traffic on 42nd street during the rush hour, but that’s what they’ve been doing. Stopping buses coming in from New Jersey (I think the Hoboken/Jersey City area, which is very heavily Muslim) and going over them very carefully with the radiation detectors. You’d have to actually see it to know how out of the ordinary that is.</p>
<p>As far as the terrorists, my boss is a Pakistani (not a Pakistani-American) Muslim who is as liberal as they come, hates President Bush and is totally anti-war, but it makes him crazy that so many Americans (particularly in New York, which is where he lives) can’t seem to comprehend that there really are people who want to kill Americans and destroy the American economy. He cites envy, ignorance, misogyny and rage fueled by their own failed states as among the reasons. He thinks that many American policies going back decades are fundamentally wrong, but he believes that this is a case of both things being true at once: America has done some bad things AND terrorists have their own reasons that are totally separate. I don’t agree with him about a lot, but I do think he “gets it.” And he would know, because being a Pakistani who travels often between Pakistan, New York and London, he has a national security target on his back and actually lives the things that many of us complain about in a theoretical way, but he still would rather be profiled that blown into oblivion.</p>
<p>“actually lives the things that many of us complain about in a theoretical way, but he still would rather be profiled that blown into oblivion.”</p>
<p>Amen to that. If there were a network of terrorists which were 95% made up of middle-aged white males, I would feel much safer getting on a plane if I and all the other guys like me were given a bit of an extra security check.</p>
<p>My personal theory is that the terror mindset is very similar in some ways to the gang mentality that we see so much. I think that young men who aren’t particularly productive, don’t have good relationships with women and get their self-worth from a group of similarly-situated young men are very dangerous people. Zoosersister did an enlightening paper about China’s rootless males and I swear there are similarities there, too.</p>
<p>“Stopping buses coming in from New Jersey (I think the Hoboken/Jersey City area, which is very heavily Muslim) and going over them very carefully with the radiation detectors.”</p>
<p>I don’t think being Muslim has anything to do with it. My friends in Manhattan are generally concerned about the City being overrun with people from New Jersey, regardless of race, religion or national origin.</p>
<p>“I don’t think being Muslim has anything to do with it. My friends in Manhattan are generally concerned about the City being overrun with people from New Jersey, regardless of race, religion or national origin.”</p>
<p>Hahahaha! Good one! and very true. THe point I was making, though, was that it was specific buses being searched.</p>
<p>If experiencing the affects of terrorism makes people more concerned about security issues, why do you think Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York have not swung more Republican? I’m not challenging anything, just asking out of curiousity.</p>
<p>Hayden, my answer (and I’m not very smart) is simply this: herd mentality. Many people here derive their sense of who they are by being more enlightened, more progressive, more liberal and smarter than the inhabitants of fly-over country. If a position fits those criteria, then taking another would be unthinkable. There is also a group of people who are principled, smart and idealistic who absolutely believe (and live that belief) that being more kind, more understanding and more loving is the answer to any problem.</p>
<p>Well, Connecticut returned Joe Lieberman to the Senate which clearly revolved around Iraq/security. Also, looking at the head-to-head polling between Giulliani and Clinton in Connecticut and NJ, Rudy had the lead.</p>
I don’t believe anyone on American soil was ever seized as enemy combatant. EC’s were captured from the battle fields of Afganistan and Pakistan. They actually aimed a gun at our brave soldiers. Don’t twist the facts.</p>
<p>Despite having been on the World Trade Tower plaza two days earlier, I never felt that safe before 9/11. I’d been on the flight that flew over Scotland, I was flying out of Munich the day after the athletes were killed at the Olympics, I’ve been in both the embassies that were bombed in Africa, I ate at the Cafe in Paris where the wife of one of my college prof’s was murdered by a terrorist bomb. </p>
<p>I believe we did the right thing in going after Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but ever since we let him go in Tora Bora, I feel we’ve just made one huge mistake after another. We have squandered all the good will we had in Europe and the rest of the world. We’ve created a breeding ground for terrorists in the Middle East. And we’ve run up an unbelievable deficit, squandering all the gains we made in the Clinton years.</p>
<p>I voted for the occassional Republican before 9/11, it will be a very, very long time before I will again.</p>
<p>No twisting of facts involved. There is no need to twist the facts - the reality is alarming enough. Read up on Jose Padilla. He is a civilian, US citizen who was seized in Chicago, charged with being an enemy combatant, and held in limbo in a military prison for years without trial. This is exactly the sort of scary erosion of civil liberties and due process that I referred to in post #113.</p>
<p>edvest1–many of the inmates at Gitmo were just rounded up by people in other countries who turned them in for revenge. No evidence of any wrongdoing or terrorist links. </p>
<p>These people have been held for 5 years on no basis whatsoever. If in 5 years we haven’t been able to prosecute them for any crime, we should let them go. Before they kill themselves in hunger strikes.</p>