[ampat]

9/11 wasn't a military screwup. We've been tracking subs for decades, during peacetime. We are pretty good at it. All the military can do is that, and report when it gets within firing range, then await orders from "politicians" to take it out.

[NJ_gent]

"9/11 wasn't a military screwup."

I never said that it was. 9/11 was made possible by the perceived notion of policy-makers that the United States was invulnerable to any attack by its sheer power and might. That's absurd, blind nationalism, and dangerous to citizens - especially 3,000 people who worked in two very tall building in New York. 9/11 showed once again that the US is not magically invincible, and that active defense against foreign aggressors is both necessary and warranted. To simply rely on our defensive capabilities to protect us from any and all threats is to take the inherently defeatest seige mentality to its ultimately destructive end.

We're not playing with airplanes and fanatics here - we're playing with a nuclear-armed foreign state who's a military aggressor, and who's continuing to develop offensive capabilities to threaten the United States and our allies. To allow this to continue unchallenged is to encourage other nations to follow the same course of action. A coalition of anti-American, nuclear-armed states brings us right back to the Cold War, only with a far more volatile situation.