8 Responses to “Terrorists and Politicians: Three Themes”

1. heydan Says:
   August 11th, 2006 at 4:27 am

   So first a guy gets on a plane with a shoe bomb and THEN we start searching everyone’s shoes before they board a plane.

   Next a bunch of people decide to make bombs in flight from liquids and THEN we start prohibiting liquids on planes.

   WHY ARE WE ALWAYS PLAYING CATCHUP TO THESE GUYS??? Don’t you think for the billions of dollars we’re spending we could be the ones to discover the vulnerabilities and prevent them BEFORE a plot is underway? With the army of experts we’ve hired, we should have made a list of every possible attack on a plane including these two long ago instead of providing a false sense of security by doing things that are inconvenient but not actually effective like confiscating nail files.

2. bicyclemark Says:
   August 11th, 2006 at 5:11 am

   The worst part about air travel and the so-called war on terrorism is that the average citizen, anywhere in the world, is supposed to simply believe the testimony of these officials. We are to believe that it was a liquid.. because Chertof and Scotland Yard told us. We are to believe a disaster was averted because Bush and Blair told us. It is difficult if not impossible for us to get real hard facts about these events, we’re told its classified or a security risk to tell us everything.. so they only tell us what they want to tell us and our job is to believe them cause it seems like they’re well informed.
   Seems like this whole relationship is based on faith and wishfull thinking. You have to believe what you see on the news and the words of the department of homeland defense… that they are genuine, truthful, and factual.
   Myself I haven’t been convinced to take this leap of faith, and I think we’ve lost alot when we no longer allow ourselves to travel as free people with rights as opposed to suspects to be poked and prodded.

3. vatsyayan Says:
   August 11th, 2006 at 2:59 pm

   Theme 1: “Terrorists are evil” is equivalent of saying “some children are born evil no matter what”. How can we say that? Rather it is the “conditions” that promt one to become terrorist are evil … namely the dominance, disrespect, and inequality on one side (by the policies of afluent nations); and mis-information, provocation on the other (by the leaders of non-afluent groups of people). Ironically, one feeds on the other, in fact they are partners in this CRIME against humanity. So, readers, pick your side – the Evil 1 or Evil 2, both are equally EVIL.

4. chilton1 Says:
   August 11th, 2006 at 4:53 pm

   But, we buy into to it, we fear
   We are terrorised -even this blog says so
   more people die crossing the road, from bad water, from greed
   (Where is the blog on Poverty?)

   By buying into terrorism we are part of it
   Terrorists need publicity for terrorism to function
   I think we need to put the cameras away and concentrate on why we have terrorism in the first place, rather than how to stop terrorists. It is futile, we cannot ever stop terrorism -there are infinite ways to terrorise.
   Our only response so far is to limit freedom, decrease democracy, and terrorise in return. So, then the terrorists will win –they are winning –and our society will slowly change into some Orwellian nightmare.
   Do we want to be safe – or do we want to be alive?

5. PAXALLES Says:
   August 11th, 2006 at 10:01 pm

   The show seemed very one-sided with rather pompous elites delighting in the fact that they are so above it all. The fact remains that while the rationales for the war in Iraq are suspect and the prosecution of the war seems to have been badly planned and executed at the aftermath, there is also no question that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who murdered and abused his populace at will – and should have been stopped. While the panel seemed to rhapsodize over the United Nations, the behavior of this organization in regard to the Oil-For-Food program, the sexual abuse of minors by those who were supposed to protect them and the ineffectiveness and/or incompetence of this organization to enforce much of anything was glossed right over. It would seem that the panel ignored the millions in Iraq that rolled out to vote, despite great personal danger and that much of the sectarian violence is not being waged by the majority of Iraqis, but by a minority who are intimidating the population as surely as Saddam Hussein did. The elites on the panel ignored the fact that most Iraqis would like the freedoms that the rest of the world enjoys and seeemed to look down on these people – as if they are less than we are, don’t deserve a free and democratic nation – and are tacitly cheering for the violence put forth by the militias. The fact remains that if the panel had been around during World War II, they would have been giving moral equivalence to the Nazis and would have criticized Great Britain for responding to the attacks by Nazi Germany – and would have been incensed that the United States got involved in the European theater, given that Nazi Germany never attacked the United States, despite its declarations of war.
   This smug and self-satisfied panel would seem to never defend the liberties they’ve been accorded and forget at what price they came to us. While diplomacy, sanctions and other forms of pressure should be the first course of action, there are also times when force needs to be applied, much as this sanctimonious panel might be offended by the notion. We need to have continued dialogue on this point in a fair and balanced manner – and hopefully this will happen on Open Source at some point in time. Perhaps the inclusion of some members of our military, police and security apparatus who have had experiences with defending others instead of just talking about it could have a prominent role in the discussion.

6. rc21 Says:
   August 12th, 2006 at 5:48 pm

   A men brother. Actually you probably wont be to suprised to learn that during ww2 most of te left wingers in this country were against getting involved in the war. It wasnt until Hittler attacked Russia that we then started hearing from the left that we needed to do something. You see Communist Russia at the time presented a utopia for the hard left who were living in the states.
   To be fair many conservatives wanted to stay out of the war until pearl Harbor. There reasoning was mainly due to the strong isolationist sentiment that many had.

7. allison Says:
   September 5th, 2006 at 10:12 pm

   Yes, but Saddam Hussein was not invading other countries. The one time he tried, we beat him back quickly. Bush I wisely stopped at the border. I must admit to hoping that he would have managed to get Hussein killed along the way, but invading was not the right choice.

   The fact that he was a brutal dictator doesn’t give us the right to invade. Why haven’t we invaded every other country with a brutal dicator?

   What we have proven is that things are not better by ousting him through a war effort. People are without electricity and fresh water. And hope. Yes, they went to the polls. It probably felt like the only power they had. But the fact that one good moment occurred, doesn’t mean that invading, under false pretenses, was the way to go. The failure of UN sanctions does not mean that the only alternative is invasion. And if we were going to invade, we should have been better informed about the nature of the culture and social structure.

   And where in the midst of all this do we take responsibility for creating the monster that was Saddam Hussein? It’s not as though we are going in saying, “We are so sorry to have unleashed this guy on you. Please let us make up for it. Tell us how we can help.” We accuse him of things he didn’t do (9/11, support of Al Qaeda, and WMD) and we claim to be the fresh and innocent “liberators.” But what have we given them?

   I am no isolationist, and I absolutely beieve in the power of Ghandi’s satyagraha, but I am also a realist about the way humans react and I know that at times force is necessary. I wouldn’t mind if we had an international force that went into every country with human rights violations and actually liberated people. But it has to be done well to be meaningful. I don’t see the point of creating a more complex chaos. I don’t see the point of being so unprepared for how to sew the fabric of life back together. I don’t see how anyone can support what this administration did. If the only positive thing in 3.5 years of war is that Saddam Hussein is out of power and one day people went to vote, it’s not a compelling argument for supporting this type of action.

8. plaintext Says:
   September 6th, 2006 at 12:42 pm

   According to CNN:
   US Iraq War Deaths = 2,658
   US Afganistan War Deaths=329
   for a total of 2,987.

   Compare that to:
   Deaths due to 9/11 attacks = 2,973

   When will they ever learn?

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