On Sept 12, 2001, I thought an appropriate “homeland security” measure would be seal the borders, and implement a total travel ban with Muslim nations of South Asia, Mid-East and North Africa
The neo-cons instead chose invading and occupying backward muslim countries, $Trillions in debt, mass surveillance, porno-scans, and open borders
Maybe they’ll do something different this time?
Vietnam is still in the rear-view mirror for most of our leadership. They are sooo smart. *spit* They watched all that unfold before them as kids and young adults but, by golly, they were too cool for school and flunked History 101.
Porno scans? What is that?
It never made any sense to build an elaborate security state, that eventually grew to spy on everyone, while simultaneously continuing to import questionable Muslims into the U.S. It was like trying to swat flies with the window open. Just closed the damned window!
My first thought after 9/11 was that rather than occupy all of these Muslim countries, putting our own troops in harm’s way while they tried to figure out who the terrorists were and capture or eliminate them, we should instead have simply threatened the leaders of the target countries. I would have threatened them, via backchannel contact, with total annihilation if they didn’t immediately identify and either kill or hand over every terrorist and terrorist sympathizer in their country. While it was difficult for us to wade into these countries and try to do that, the leaders knew exactly where the cockroaches lived and who they were. We should have made them do the dirty work for us, under threat of death. Of course, this wouldn’t have worked in Afghanistan, since they had no functioning government, but that was the exception.
The other mistake that was made was, as usual, becoming obsessed with only applying a “measured response”, because we were worried about “winning hearts and minds.” That type of approach is guaranteed to draw out any war, and actually lead to more casualties in the long run. The key element it lacks, aside from speed, is a focus on not only destroying the enemy’s ability to fight, but far more importantly on their WILL to fight. Our response to 9/11 should have been so swift and devastating that no would-be Jihadi would ever again think about attacking the U.S. Think pre and post-nuked Japan.