It would be tempting to just write in reply to today's piece, but that would merely add to the ongoing wallowing which makes my point: that the terrorists have already won.

They didn't win by blowing up the World Trade Center, and damaging the Pentagon, and by hitting the Cole. They won because of our reaction to all those events and others. The evidence is everywhere-- the stupid signs in airports that say "Threat Level HIGH!" and the unending recordings nearby that urge people to be on the lookout for unattended baggage. Even inside the zone of safety, after we've removed our shoes (something no other air passengers in the world are subject to) and had our hand luggage rooted through, x-rayed and swabbed, we here the message not to accept anything from strangers.

The multi-gazillion dollar War On Terror and the fear that the government spreads is the terrorists' prize, their Oscar, their blue ribbon. Make no mistake, if people are nervous it's less because of anything terrorists have done and more due to the incessant reminders by the government of what the terrorists have done.

And what exactly have they done? They've killed around 4,000 Americans, and caused some property damage. In the years since the World Trade Center Attacks, TEN TIMES AS MANY AMERICANS have been killed-- by cars. Where is the War On Automobile Fatalities? Far more Americans have their homes burgled, their cars stolen, find themselves robbed every year-- yet where is the War On Crime?

We lock our cars and houses, and we rely on the police and the justice system to deal with criminals. After 9/11, all we had to do, ALL we had to do, to ensure that something like that never happened again was to change the protocol of letting hijackers into the cockpits of airplanes and to beef up the doors. That's it.

Sure, someone could have snuck something onto a plane that could cause a fire, even an explosion, but they planes themselves couldn't have been turned into missiles against us. And to reduce-- not prevent, only reduce-- the chance of someone menacing a plane full of people, increasing screening measures somewhat would suffice.

But the high-profile, fear-mongering does nothing to make us safe, in fact we all feel less safe, and we find our civil rights compromised at every turn by the government, in the name of security. Sorry, how is that not a victory for terrorists? Whose aim is to force change, to strike fear in the hearts of people who live in a free society?

Everyone KNOWS that if terrorists want to bring down a plane that it's a done deal. Most people who can manage to use the internet are smart enough to think of ten ways, ten simple ways, to bring down an airplane, ways that skirt all the security measures in place.

But why would terrorists even go there, when there are so many easier targets?

No, the answer is to give law enforcement agencies the resources they need to reduce the chances of success of terrorist attacks-- and for the rest of us to put it in the recesses of our minds and to go about our daily lives pretty much as we did before 9/11 and the fear-mongering that followed.

The terrorists may be winning now, but fear will be banished by hope.

Obama ' 08

Utterly ridiculous. Well then, just march yourself right into an oven, or perhaps shoot yourself in the head. They've "won," we've "lost." Freedom, democracy, pluralism and secularism have been completely obliterated while extreme Islamic facism has triumphed. "They won because of our reaction." Even more pathetic. So, the cause of terrorism is fighting against it? Or rather, I suppose your counter-proposal would be that Islamic terrorism is completely a reaction to centuries of Western imperialism...

Anyway, your assertion that "ALL we had to do, to ensure that something like that [9/11] never happened again was to change the protocol of letting hijackers into the cockpits or airplanes and to beef up the doors," are exceedingly ridiculous and incredibly naive. Well, YOU might find experiencing a 9/11-style event or a "mini-9/11" every now and then to be an acceptable price to pay for your cowardice, capitulation and inability to recognize a serious threat that goes far beyond mere hijacking of planes. Or that is simply just more fear-mongering, I suppose. Well, that "acceptable" scenario seems to very much be what you suggested when you wrote, "No, the answer is to give law enforcement agencies the resources they need to reduce the chances of success of terrorist attacks." Sorry, I'm not interested in merely mitigating the problem, or any talk of "minimization" or "acceptable losses" lest we go on another crusade; fortunately, most others aren't as well.

Treating the problem of apocalyptic nihilism as something that can be solely (or even mostly) addressed with the employment of traditional law enforcement, or beefed up law enforcement, is laughable. Go ahead, let INPTERPOL or the UN or whichever organization you'd like try and serve Mr. Bin Laden and his planners, operatives and apparatchiks with a warrent in Talibanized Afghanistan. They'll have a bloodied knife and a nice spot on the internet ready to go for you. Go ahead, allow an entire country or region to be assimilated with REAL fear tactics, not your bitching and piddling examples of omnipresent color-coded warnings or the the annoying routines at airports, and then try to hall their 14th century asses before the ICC or what have you. Good luck with that.

As far as living in fear is concerned, I don't really know what planet you're living on. In my experience, when I go out shopping, to the movies, out to eat, is very much that everyone is carrying on as though these problems didn't exist. Ah, and to "Wayhey1..." and his lovely "fear will be banished by hope." You're dreaming, wake up. The Senator from the Great State of Illinois will discover this too, once in office, as it is apparently a forgone conclusion.

I guess you don't live in the tri-state area. Maybe if you saw what I SAW that day, the terror we all felt, the anguish of the many people we knew died, then maybe you wouldn't be so quick to say those things. My husband went to at least 7 funerals. He never heard from his best friend again. I watched the second tower get hit, I watched both towers go down. Sadness surrounded all of us. There isn't one person that I know that didn't know someone who died or was actually there themselves. We must never forgot. We must be vigilent in our efforts that this doesn't happen again. For us, for our children, for our children's children. Car accidents happen, are they said YES, but they happen all the time around us. Airplanes used as weapons don't happen. My fear isn't from the government, its from the men that changed my skyline forever!

Yeah, fear will be banished, along with border security, the ability of law enforcement to gather evidence to arrest these fuckers before they blow up targets, and the ability of average citizens to defend themselves against crime and possibly terrorists. It happens in Israel all the time. Arabs get ahold of construction equipment and run Jews down until some enterprising Jew with a concealed pistol shoots his rag swaddled ass. Think it can't happen here? Well, under an Obama administration it could, just not the part where the honest citizen kills the murderer.

The Japanese only killed 3,000 or so at Pearl Harbor. We should have just ignored them.

Dd

I agree. The other party that won here... was the NeoCons who use "terrorism" as an excuse to engage in an illegal war over oil and award no-bid contracts to their corporate butt-buddies and raid our economy for their own enrichment.

In reality... we are too soft here in America. Lot's of other countries deal with terrorism... and in much more reasoned ways... every day. And terrorism is not something you can prevent with a blitzkrieg attack against a whole geographical region... if if you have the geography right... which we did not.

We could have spent 1% of what we have spent on this war simply outfitting some really bad-ass mercenaries and sending them in to find and kill Osama. A simultaneous "Plan B" would be a 10 million dollar "dead or alive" bounty on the heads of his and his top guys. At the very least, these dual activities would have kept enough pressure on him that it would be difficult for him to act... as demonstrated by his inactivity in the last years.

Terrorists should be dealt with like any other criminals. Tracked down, arrested and tried.

Because it's so easy to use the law enforcement model on people who don't fear death. Bounties on Osama don't work. We tried bounties on Al Queda and Taliban in Afghanistan and they just brought us a bunch of innocent people to collect the money. Also, these people see their reward as being in Paradise because they feel they are doing the will of Allah. Don't think they are going to sell their soul for 30 pieces of silver, and the anaology here holds because to them, bin Laden is Jesus. The way to get them is to reduce Afghanistan and its entire population, along with that of FATA in Pakistan to a pile of dust like the Soviets were doing before we armed that crazy ass bunch with Stinger missles.

Have some reading material: <link>

:-)

Inc!-- you're wrong, but that's okay. Terrorists win by instilling fear. Leave a bag outside the bathroom while you go pee in the airport and it'll be blown up and you'll probably be arrested.

And it's "haul" not "hall.

"They've killed around 4,000 Americans, and caused some property damage. In the years since the World Trade Center Attacks, TEN TIMES AS MANY AMERICANS have been killed-- by cars."

I love the simplicity of that. It's just 4,000 people and some buildings. What's the big deal? Stand down people, stand down. It was just 4,000 measily people and a few buildings that were probably had to big of a carbon footprint.

Such a tiring, cliche of an argument (if it can be called that) you make. Honestly. Lets take your idiotic points one-by-one...

If you believe at all that wars should in fact be waged over important things (or perhaps you don't, but you're clearly not a pacifist), for example, oil, a vital natural resource to our country and the world, then why must you and your ilk constatly recite the trope of "no blood for oil?" Is oil not worth fighting over? Can you demonstrate that you, as a responsible citizen, have rid your life of the necessity of oil as a fuel and a component of vital products? I highly doubt it... As far being "illegal," at what point should Iraq have been held to account for its violation of more than a dozen UN resolutions? Perhaps a dozen more violations were required before you would have been convinced? And when the time finally would have inevitably arrived that the UN would have decided on a measure of force, which member nation do you believe would have been left with the overwhelming burden of carring it out? I wonder who... But perhaps that still would not have sufficed for you. Perhaps you would have preferred that Saddam's admirable rule continue, maybe even until the point that his noble sons would have taken over, with an ensuing struggle that would have left Iraq ripe for the plundering by the countries around it with their competing interests; i.e., the Saudis vis-a-vis the Sunnis in the west, the Iranians vis-a-vis the shia and shiite in the east and south and the Turks with respect to their minimization of Kurdistan. THAT would have been a much more just outcome and more more amenable to the global interest... Regarding "no-bid contracts," perhaps you're just not news savvy, or up on your current events, but I suggest you research the fact that the freely elected government of Iraq has awarded various oil prospecting and initial development contracts to various international entities; to include the Chinese. Raiding the economy... yet again some more cryptic babble that I don't even know how to interpret. Perhaps it has some meaning in MoveOn.org or Michael Moore cirlces.

Clearly you're in no way associated with the national security or defense establishments, otherwise your fatuous suggestion that we simply hire "some really bad-ass mercenaries" would never have been uttered. There are in fact two categories of action in dealing with terrorism. One you alluded to, prevention, the other, reactionary and punitive in the wake of a devastating assault on civil society the likes of 9/11/2001.

Your "Plan B" has already been in place from the beginning. If you think all it would take were a couple dozen bad-ass mercenaries to capture OBL, you're sadly mistaken, given that an entire regime was protecting him and his organization. So sure, you can only track these guys down so far before you actually have to move in to capture or kill them. Then what? Arrest them and prosecute them? Yeah... sure... Issue your warrant for OBL, go to Talibanized Afghanistan and try to arrest him and see what he has waiting for you. Your statements make evident that you believe the struggle we're engaged in is us versus a handful of bad guys and that all it would take is a couple dozen bad-ass mercenaries to do the job. If only it were that simple; I'm afraid it's much more severe than that and NOT because we exacerbated the situation with the strategies we employed in Afghanistand and subsequently Iraq.

Yes, I'm aware of the haul/hall distinction, pardon my momentary lapse. Perhaps if you were less a grammarian you would have taken some time to address the actual question at hand.

It's good to know that you fear nothing. I don't understand your bathroom point, rather cryptic and nonsensical... please clarify.

But since you brought up the bathroom, let us remain there for a moment. If you think that anyone is scared shitless to the point that they're unable to socialize and carry out there day-to-day affairs, then you're obviously mistaken. There is something to be said, however, for prudence, and say, justice, when civil society is savagely attacked. They do not win by our reaction to it, or perhaps better stated, the cause of terrorism is not fighting against it.

Terrorists win the moment you fear resisting and destroying them. Wake up.

Factually, before Mr. Idiot Bush came along, terrorists were nothing or vastly minimal; they were a pesky joke within the left wing movement, were considered demoralized and idiotic...BS YURW they did only minor damage and were dealt with by infiltration and as a police problem.

Of course, state terror, like our attempts to assasinate Castro, and all the vile assasinations and attempts back and forth, were another matter, but still, a relatively minor part of what was going on.

Consider, if you will, the struggle in South Africa, which was mass struggle, huge, massive demonstrations and political movements and campaigns...and then you will realize that terrorists could only be made important in a world where such struggle was not happening.

Think about that. Its important to an understanding of what is going on...because ONLY the Republicans could find in such a situation a way to invent terror...INVENT, out of thin air, something to make themselves look good funding the military industrial complex.

Your hate even tarnishes your ignorance:

<link>