I think that lame action was a respone to the embassy bombings.Clinton as CIC was to calculate all military action for maximizing domestic political gain. The message sent also was don't bomb our embassies. Again none of these actions by terrorist are in self defence. Arab World Poverty -- Whose Fault? By Larry Elder (November 18, 2001) [CAPITALISMMAGAZINE.COM] "Muslims love to live in the U.S. but also love to hate it. Many openly claim that the U.S. is a terrorist state but they continue to live in it. Their decision to live here is testimony that they would rather live here than anywhere else. As an Indian Muslim, I know for sure that nowhere on earth, including India, will I get the same sense of dignity and respect that I have received in the U.S. No Muslim country will treat me as well as the U.S. has. If what happened on Sept. 11 had happened in India, the biggest democracy, thousands of Muslims would have been slaughtered in riots on mere suspicion and there would be another slaughter after confirmation. But in the U.S., bigotry and xenophobia has been kept in check by media and leaders ...
Again none of these actions by terrorist are in self defence.
Maybe not in reality, but do you think that their "handlers" don't have them thinking that that's the case?
For example, take a look at the REAL reasons for bombing Kosovo:
Roots of Allied Farce Does that not make for GOOD info for convincing a terrorist cell that it is making war
on a country that rolls around the world like a loose cannon?
Is the slant that they put on our actions correct?
Not always (although the fed HAS done things that it shouldn't in various parts of the world
-not to mention at home-), but those actions are certainly used in propaganda against us.
If even a handful can be proven true, then the rest need little -if any- proof to have slant taken as reality.
Then you end up with people willing to die to make their point...
even if it means killing people who were not involved and may not even have approved.
My personal opinion is that, although we might have taken other actions that would have worked
better in the long run, we HAD to take a public stance and show that we will not be pushed around.
OTOH, we definitly need to take a good look at the root causes for all of this and deal with them.
Foreign policy over the last -- decades bit us on this one (again).
We will win this battle.
But winning the war will require more than a "hate and kill them all" attitude.
(Which is what my original post on this thread was trying to say.)