Posted on 09/12/2001 10:51:44 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too
We are a Superpower and it's time that we start behaving like one.
Maybe Americans have lost the proper perspective on this, but consider these numbers:
What is it going to take? What else has to happen?
What if the terrorists had hit the Statue of Liberty instead? That would have involved a lot less deaths, but would still have been a slap at America. An irreplacable icon would be lost forever.
What if a plane had hit Mt. Rushmore? That would be a scar on the country that would never go away. It would always be there as a reminder of the hurt. Sure, we could tear the rest down or restore the destroyed parts, but we'd always know, and remember.
So, what would it take? What more has to happen? A suitcase nuke or another plane at the Super Bowl? 100,000 people obliterated on national television?
2,200 soldiers were killed at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and that was enough for us to enter World War II. This is 10x that, and still it's not enough?
This has to stop, now!
Consider what the airport experience is like. You check in at the counter and check your luggage. You get your boarding pass, and pull your carry-on towards your departure gate.
The security checkpoints have you place your carry-on luggage on a conveyer belt to be inspected at an x-ray machine, and you walk through a metal detector, and maybe you're scanned by a wand. You never really get beeped, so you grab your stuff and walk on.
But wait a minute. Take a step back and look closer. Who is running that checkpoint? I recently traveled from San Francisco to Hawaii and back. Who ran the checkpoints that I walked through? High school graduates and retired old men. Girls with fancy hairdoo's, smoking cigarette's at the fast food court. Not that there's anything wrong with that! These are good, decent jobs. But this is our first line of defense in the terrorism war?
The president should call up the Military Reserve. Currently, the reserve reports to training, what, maybe a couple of weekends a year? What if they, instead, perform airport duty, maybe 20 (or 50, or 100) days a year? With pay. How many reserve soldiers would it take to patrol a regular airport on any given day? What would the shift structure be like? Also, re-instate the Air Marshals. Maybe the marshals can be the elite troops from the Reserves, so that there is a career path to follow for soldiers who show extraordinary potential.
But, make no mistake -- things have changed.
What is it going to take to finally wake up Americans to stand up for this country and put an end to this madness once and for all?
-PJ
The United States government, its bureaucrats and politicans, are responsible for this mass murder by their utter failure of leadership.
Every security-tightening method I've heard in the last few days is laughable - our country is so wrapped up in things being the solution that they forget that the problem is minds. EVERY object-control solution will fail.
Passengers on the fourth plane had the solution: individual mindset. Dozens lost, perhaps, but hundreds/thousands saved. If hijackers knew from experience that a significant number of passengers would fight back and do anything necessary to make the attackers fail, the problem would vanish.
The problem isn't objects, it's SHEEPLE.
The United States must go through the motions of a full declaration of war against the country of Afghanistan.
It will take several months for the USA to fully mobilize before invading Afghanistan, and the world will watch as we do so. This will put more pressure on the Taliban government to negotiate a surrender than will waiting to declare war until we are mobilized first.
Then we move the troops in and overthrow the government that supported and housed Bin Laden. When that is complete, we will have an overwhelming military force sitting in Afghanistan, primed and ready for more action. Then we go after the rest, one at a time. Gadaffi, remember Pan Am 103? You're next. Arafat, you blew up school buses and pizzarias? You're turn's coming.
We should go into the West Bank/Gaza Strip and level all the buildings, and then relocate everyone to Afghanistan and say, "Here is your new home. Settle it." End of the Middle East problem. Oh, but the Saudi's and Egyptian's will complain? Let them. Can they stop us? We're a superpower, right? Oh, they'll close off the oil supply? Guess what, everything's changed, life is different now. We'll deal with it.
In the end, total enemy casualties will still be less than the civilians who were killed in the WTC. What about Afghan/Libyian/Palistinian civilian casualities? I believe the word is collateral damage.
I know this sounds harsh, threatening, and scarey, but this is the definition of war.
-PJ
Correct. The only response is to cut out the cancer befoe it spreads. After we get the specific bastards involved in Tuesday's attacks, we need to go after all known terrorist operations until no nation-state is stupid enough to host, hide, and support them anymore.
There will always be some terrorists -- but if we can keep it to disaffected loners and prevent the state-sponsored terrorism, the world will be a safer place without having to sacrifice liberty to get there.
And now you're ready for WWIII to begin, right?
That place is landlocked, shares borders with Pakistan, Iran,China and others, and is nothing but mountains. There is not US military culture for fighting in mountains... Everything we know is geared to the central plains of Europe.
You are are stark raving mad!
Maybe not.
Here's something very strange to think about. (Strange in itself, and strange that I haven't seen anyone else bring it up...)
1) These terrorists have _four_ planes full up with jet fuel.
2) These terrorist _knew_ how much damage such planes could do.
3) Specifically, these terrorists _knew_ how to inflict _structural damage_ with these planes.
4) Why didn't they target nuclear power stations? America makes no particular secret about where our plants are located. Because of all the bizarre debate over nuclear power, the designs of our plants are relatively common knowledge.
Imagine the grotesque and long-lasting damage that would have resulted in the containment structures of nuclear power stations were breached near major cities!
It wouldn't have been as photogenic an attack as what they did, but it may have killed _more_ and in a more insidious, disruptive manner. (Heck, why not do two planes for New York for the photo coverage, and two planes for nuke plants for the terror damage?!)
I don't get it. There's lots going on here that doesn't meet the eye, and I haven't even heard any good tin foil explanations that go toward explaining things.
But I doubt we'll see any nuke attacks now. This attack was _so_ successful that I'd imagine they simply need to step back, play rope-a-dope for a while, and, months or years down the road, do it again... Mark W.
Remember, there were companies and offices from many countries in that building, not just American ones.
And no, I'm not mad -- just angry.
-PJ
It's really quite simple.
The goal was two-fold: 1) kill Americans, and 2) disrupt or destroy the world markets (and economy).
This attack did both. Do you think the NYSE will be open by Monday? What will it do? Whole companies no longer exist. Those that still do have lost their braintrusts. The world's elite traders and financiers were in that building. Even if their computer systems are backed up somewhere, who is left to restore them?
-PJ
I would slightly alter this statement to say that this is a failure of American government, which has been concentrating on printing food stamps and Elvis stamps and completely disregarding its basic constitutional duty to assure the security of the citizenry. The gubmint has its paws in everything nowadays, doesn't it, and 8 years of midnight basketball programs and other such nonsense have only exacerbated the problem. And the failure is a failure on all levels of the government - when was the last time you've seen foot police patrols working to prevent criminal activity? It's nine-one-one now, reactive actions only, and the aftermath of the attack shows that we are indeed very good at handling the cleanup and recovery phase. Good, but not enough.
We're All angry, sir... and frustrated, and we all want to lash out and strike someone.
But the rules have changed... and the battlefield is not the same any longer.
Rumsfeld made that comment yesterday... We've seen the first battle of the 21st century... and it's not pretty.
And we don't, in our culture, understand the rules.
I hope we are very prudent in what we do... and I hope we will look long and hard at what makes these people so angry at US.
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