Does America Deserve Another September 11th

When I read a newspaper or a weekly newsmagazine, listen to the network newscasters, or hear the captured sound bites of the politicians they promote (mostly those opposed to Bush and his administration), I find it impossible to comprehend that September 11th was only a year ago. Listening to some of the politicians and the liberal media, one might get the idea that it is history from a long time past and that our country is no longer threatened. The horror of that day and what it meant for the future of our nation is obviously lost on these people. And thanks to their efforts, support for the President and the resolve of the American people for what must be done is starting to wane.

I still can’t watch or listen to victims’ families or anyone else recounting how their life was changed by September 11th without a tear in my eye and a pain in the pit of my stomach. While we were encouraged to resume a normal life, we were never told to forget that day or believe that it was a one time event. We were told just the opposite. We were told that more attacks were likely. But now that there have been a few months of relative calm and elections are coming up, many of our elected officials want to go back to “playing politics” instead of supporting the President, our citizens and the future of this country. Contributing to this issue is the fact that the media is giving those critical voices plenty of support and air time.

Have these people already forgotten how they felt that day? Don’t they realize how patient the terrorists can be in planning their attacks? We now know that September 11th planning began at least as far back as 1999. Who knows how many additional attacks are being planned right now for the coming years. The terrorism did not start with September 11th. American armed forces and civilians overseas have been victims of repeated acts of terrorism for many years. This nation’s first major attack was Oklahoma City, for which there is still considerable evidence that there were links to the Middle East. But as with all the terrorist acts during the last administration, including the U.S.S. Cole, President Clinton didn’t have the guts to aggressively pursue those responsible and take appropriate action against them and those who sponsored them.

So what happened? The plans and attacks just got bigger and bolder. September 11th came and terrorists around the world were no doubt thinking; “take that you weak and stupid Americans.” Have we forgotten the pictures of the Palestinians dancing in the streets? But this time the terrorists underestimated our nation and our President. . . . . . . . Or did they?

A year ago we knew and understood that we were a nation under attack and “at war.” Not only did we all feel the horrible pain and loss of that day, but we also felt anger. The spontaneous outburst of flags and patriotism was miraculous. Now, with the passing of time, those feelings and the threat to our country’s future seems to be getting lost by those in Washington and in the media. Worse, they are starting to make other Americans doubt whether or not we must still be at war and pursue the terrorists and the nations that support them.

In spite of all the liberals and those who criticize and second guess the President, I still believe that the majority of Americans do understand what’s at stake. We’re still hurting and we’re still angry. We’re still proud of our President. We remember how we felt when he stood before us and launched his war against terrorism.

His doctrine was simple and easily understood. Any nation that fostered or supported terrorism, harbored terrorists or fed the terrorists would be subject to our nation’s wrath. He also said that he expected all nations to join in the fight against terrorism and eliminate it from within their borders. He tied this all together by saying that any nation that wasn’t with us in our efforts against terrorism . . . . . was against us, and would have to deal with the consequences. I, like most Americans, cheered our President’s courage and bravery in facing up to what our nation had suffered and what needed to be done.

Now, a year later, what do we see? We see the liberals, the liberal courts and the media worrying about the alleged “rights” of terrorists and suspected terrorists whose sole mission in life is to kill us. There are those in our country who are aiding and abetting the enemy by challenging or criticizing the military plans of our Commander-In-Chief and creating doubt among our citizens. Many of our politicians no longer voice support for the “Bush Doctrine” for eliminating terrorism. They and the media want to debate whether or not we should go after Iraq. This is ludicrous. Does Saddam Hussein, his regime and his country support terrorism? Duh?

Salman Pak is but one definitive example of Iraq’s involvement in terrorism and potential involvement in September 11th. In November of 2001 London’s Observer published two defectors’ accounts of Saddam’s training school there for hijackers complete with a 707 fuselage. They, along with one UN Inspector stated that Salman Pak was used for a variety of terrorist training activities. Everyone knows Saddam provides money to the families of the Palestinian homicide bombers. What do these news people and politicians think he would be willing to pay the family of the first terrorist who is successful in detonating a suitcase nuke in Times Square? Or does something else to cause devastating destruction and loss of American life? Quite a tidy sum I’m sure. Debating whether or not he currently has weapons of mass destruction is a smoke screen and is only partially relevant to the threat he poses. He and his regime support terrorism and there can be no doubt that he will support it against the United States. They must be eliminated. It’s as simple as that.

Another shining example of the liberal insanity in this country is demonstrated by the fact that we have the NEA putting out lesson plans for teachers with advisories that they “shouldn’t place blame” for the attacks of September 11th. Instead, they want the students to be reminded of America’s past misdeeds such as the Japanese interment camps in World War II. That is not the America that exists now and it is irrelevant to the terrorist threats facing our country today.

Our liberal fanaticism for “political correctness” has our airports searching wheelchair bound 80 year olds and little babies instead of targeting likely terrorist suspects. Let’s see, all the terrorists were of Middle Eastern descent and between the ages of 18 and 35. But God forbid someone would exercise common sense and establish a reasonable profile for airport screeners to follow. It might offend some ethnic group of people. But I am offended that all Americans are being required to pay the price for what could be an easily defined profile of possible terrorist suspects.

Does American deserve another September 11th? Not unless the naysayers are successful in thwarting President Bush’s efforts and it is a punishment from God for national and political stupidity. But, it may be what it takes before some of these people will finally “get it.” And, the odds of more attacks will go up dramatically if the politicians and the media continue to get in the way of the President. We finally have a President who is strong enough and brave enough to lead this country, and too many people just want to get in the way.

If this country does not pursue this fight to the end, there will be another September 11th or probably something even more devastating. It may be this year, next year or five years from now. The world has entered an era unlike any in its history. Thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of religious fanatics are deluded into thinking that they will find a decent life by killing Americans or Jews and becoming a martyr. Unfortunately, they don’t know what real martyrdom is and are deceived into believing that wiping out the American infidels is their ticket to Paradise. If only a few of their predecessors could make the trip back from Hell to educate them. Terrorists and terrorism is a rapidly growing cancer in this world. If we do not eradicate this cancer once and for all, it’s going to keep eating away at our society until our entire way of life is gone.

There is no way to know what might happen when we launch our attack on Iraq. But one thing will be abundantly clear to all those nations who support or tolerate terrorism. They will recognize that this time, our President and our nation meant what it said. If we unleash our tremendous military might on Iraq, destroy Saddam’s regime and bring it to its knees as quickly as I believe we can, the rest of those countries might have to rethink their attitudes. But this will only happen if they truly believe they could be next. They need to know and believe that their only salvation is to take swift action to rid their nation of all terrorist support and activity. And if they don’t, the USA should just keep on truckin’.

First among those nations to get the message should be Saudi Arabia. In spite of all their newspaper ads and PR efforts to try and convince us they are an ally, they’re not. There are real questions as to what they are doing to fight the terrorists and terrorist supporters in their own nation. They want to deny us use of our airbases there. We know they’ve financially supported the Palestinian terrorists. The majority of hijackers were Saudis. They make token arrests but then won’t give the United States access to the people they’ve arrested. Why not? Are they too afraid their own nation will be incriminated?

Right now, if these terrorist nations are watching our media, they can only conclude that our nation is losing its resolve and becoming divided. There would also appear to be some question as to whether our President has the level of support he needs to ensure ultimate victory. From the very beginning President Bush and his administration has tried to tell us what will be required to win this war. We were told that it will take years because the terrorists and those who support them are all over the world. We were told that we would have to pay a price. No victory will come without sacrifices by our citizens. We can’t stop pursuing terrorism because we’re afraid that gas prices will go up. These people and these nations must be taught once and for all that you don’t mess with the USA. The consequences of doing so must be so great that no nation would dare support the fanatical groups within their society that seek to attack the United States and kill our citizens. These nations must take responsibility for weeding out the terrorists within their country. And, they must know that if they don’t, they will face the full fury of the USA.

If our children and grandchildren are to have a future, this country must take this war wherever it leads us and stick with it until all nations are willing to do their part to end terrorism. President Bush has demonstrated the leadership and determination required to fight this fight. He is the Commander-in-Chief and he must be allowed to command. This nation must unite behind him. This is a war that we must win and we must win it now. The President and this nation must live up to his words “we will not falter and we will not fail.” If we do falter and fail, the consequences in years to come may be unimaginable. If all those who are trying to stand in the way of the President are successful in undermining his efforts, then I hope they are prepared to take responsibility and accountability for the future blood that will be on their hands. This nation must not allow the 3000 victims of September 11th and those in Oklahoma City to have died in vain.

Here's a good starting place:

"So, what is terrorism? A very useful definition suggests that terrorism is planned violence intended to have a psychological effect on politically relevant behavior (Hutchinson 1972.)” In addition to a useful conceptual definition of terrorism, it is also helpful to have an operational definition, as well. According to Martha Hutchinson, there are four key factors that should be taken into account in such a definition.
First, terrorists use violence to seize power from an existing government by influencing its political agenda. The attempt to seize power need not be explicitly designed to overthrow that government, but even so, there is a clear loss of both legitimacy and power when terrorists are successful in gaining concessions from a government through their actions.
Second, terrorists use strategies of violence that are politically and socially unacceptable, and it is the deviance of the action that produces the desired psychological effect. Following from this second characteristic, terrorists select targets that are symbolic and psychologically meaningful to the population and government they are trying to affect. This would explain the choice of targets on September 11th, given that the World Trade Center and Pentagon are not only very useful sites, but also highly symbolic. Fourth and finally, the symbolism of the targets chosen by terrorists is what makes the threat real and tangible in the minds of those they are trying to coerce.
According to H. Edward Price, in his book The Strategy and Tactics of Revolutionary Terorism (1977), terrorism produces three categories of victim (52.) These categories are differentiated mostly by how close or relevant the victim is to the actual attack. The first category of victim is the physical victim, those who are directly affected by attack. Those people whose misfortune it was to find themselves onboard one of the hijacked planes, in the World Trade Center towers or the Pentagon, or near the site of the attacks are part of this category. The second category is that of the parallel victim. These victims are those people who are characteristically similar to the physical victims of the attack. If, for example, a Cypriot terrorist organization bombed a series of Greek cultural centers in New York City, the Greek population of the city would be classified as a parallel victim, because the terrorists intended message to them is, “You may be next.” The third category is that of the resonant mass, namely those people who are the greater populace of the state or actor against which the terrorist act is launched. In that sense, they aren’t victims in the conventional sense of the word; rather they are victimized only to the extent that their sentiments are influenced (and hopefully changed) by the use of force and violence.
As we have seen, terrorists employ their strategy of violence with a distinct goal in mind, and their actions have the intended consequence of making victims of ordinary people for political purposes. However, there is a question that arises when considering these things: Why do terrorists engage in this activity at all? Answering this question is worthy of an exhaustive writing in itself, but a brief and encapsulated answer would suggest that terrorists act in this fashion because they are, at some level, otherwise not empowered to achieve the changes they desire. Whether that disempowerment be financial, political, or a combination of both, it is this sense that leads terrorists to use violence and force to achieve means to an end. Hence,
The attractiveness of terrorism to insurgents who lack the means is the reason it is often called ‘the weapon of the weak’ and many strategic models of insurrection situate it as the first phase in the conflict followed respectively by guerilla and then conventional warfare as the insurgents grow stronger (Hutchinson 1972.)
Because terrorists need to create a change in the thought processes of the population at large, it is important that they create an ideological parity with other weak members of the society (Hutchinson 1972.) In the case of the radical Islamic terrorists who attacked America, the terrorists have sought to create that ideological parity with other fundamentalist Muslims, and the Muslim community at large. These terrorists have chosen to create that parity through the use of TV and other forms of media – most notably through outlets like the Al-Jazeera television network – using those media to spread a message that essentially blames the United States for forcing them to resort to such tactics. As Price argues, this is a classic strategy in the psychological battle to win the war of public sentiment and opinion, and use this victory to justify and legitimize the terrorist organization, their message, and their methods for spreading that message. Ideological parity, then, is vital to establishing legitimacy. (Hutchinson 1972, Price 1977, C.C. O’Brien 1979.)
Like any other group, terrorists must have a way of considering their chances of success or failure. Just as firms consider the relative risk versus reward of a particular ad campaign or merger/acquisition opportunity, terrorists also engage in this kind of analytical behavior. Terrorists, then, must take three general questions into account: First, do they have the expertise to undertake a particular operation – scientific, technical, or otherwise (Hutchinson 1972)? Without this consideration, it is easy to see how an operation like the one used of September 11th becomes immeasurably difficult to undertake. Second, how will the target government react? Will that government bend to their demands to avoid further bloodshed? Will it simply ignore them? Or will it respond with force? The second consideration is likewise essential because the answer to these questions form the basis for anticipating the overall success or failure of the mission vis-à-vis whether or not the target state will favorably change the policy in contention. Third, how will the populace of the target state react to the use of force? Furthermore, terrorists must understand whether or not the people’s reaction will sufficiently move the state to act, and it what action it will produce (Hutchinson 1972.)
Regardless of how much the terrorist organization tries to anticipate the answers to the questions and considerations above, there are still very acute risks involved in terrorist operations, and terrorists engage in a thorough consideration of these things, as well. Hutchinson argues that there are three risk factors that terrorist must take into account before they act, mainly because they have the capacity to greatly affect the overall mission.
Terrorists, first and foremost, run a great risk of arousing hostility in the resonant mass instead of the fear and instability that is usually essential to achieving their objective. Hostility in the resonant mass creates an unfavorable political climate in which to achieve the desired changes, and is therefore to be avoided, if possible.
Secondly, there is the risk that the government will respond with overwhelming force and crush the organization; this consideration is ever-present in the minds of those who plan and implement terrorist attacks. However, like most rules, there is an exception. In some cases, terrorist organizations may actually hope for a reflexive and disproportionate response by the state in question, even at the expense of its own membership, because it allows them to paint that government as violent and repressive, thus further legitimizing themselves and their mission. It has been widely speculated that Osama bin Laden’s larger goal was to achieve this kind of response from the American government in order to do just that, legitimize himself and the Al-Qaeda network as legitimate warriors in a struggle against an aggressive and imperialistic America (Hutchinson 1972.)
Thirdly, terrorists risk losing mental control of themselves because of their continued involvement with the use of violence. Hutchinson concedes, however, that this risk is far less likely than the other two, and concerns terrorist organizations far less as well. While this researcher is not aware of any concrete or scientific study into the matter, it seems very unlikely that terrorists as ideologically driven as those who were willing to smash planes into skyscrapers would be likely to suffer mentally as a result of those efforts (Hutchinson 1972.)
Having considered the analytical process of terrorist organizations, and their methods for evaluating the operational risks of their operations, it is also useful to consider the strategic and tactical considerations of terrorist behavior. There are generally three tactics employed by terrorist organizations to achieve their objective: kidnapping, assassination, and indiscriminate violence (Price 1977.) All three are very useful tools in the attempt by terrorists to bring about the kinds of changes they seek, but each is used in different circumstances and for different reasons, which we will now explore...

http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:iG6e2nu92McC:www.usna.edu/NAFAC/Papers/table12/Models_of_Terrorism_by_Simeon_Poles.doc+terrorism+definition+strategies+tactics&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

What a terrorist needs most is a place to hide where the local authorities will not harrass him. The vast majority of nations can be convinced that they should not permit this through a combination of incentives and threats. The reletively few who cannot be convinced that they should not harbor terrorists are few that must be dealt with militarily.

I agree with what you are stating here, which is why the decision to attack Iraq is so confusing to me. The Baath party is a secular party, which the US supported at one time, specifically because we tilted towards Iraq in its war with Iran, because we saw this as the best way to contain the Islamic revolutionary sentiment that was then in danger of spreading out from Iran to infect the rest of the region.

If we now go ahead and attack Iraq, which does not have ties to Islamic terrorism, but does enjoy the sympathies of its neighbors in the wake of eleven years of bombing and sanctions, then it will further destabilize the region, inflame anti-american sentiment and drastically reduce the level of cooperation we're likely to get from in our attempts to capture and/or kill the members of the organization (AL Queda) which actually did attack us!

The arab leaders have told us we should take care of the Israeli-Palestinina situation first, and that if we attack Iraq now they will not be able to control their own population. Well, why should we care, right? Because, if those regimes topple, they are likely to be replaced by "Islamic Revolutionaries," and then we;ll REALLY have ahornet's nest on our hands...

Well, that's how I see it, anyway. Look at Britain - they didn't respond to the IRA by dropping air-fuel bombs all over Ireland, because in so doing they would have killed 19 innocent people for every one terrorist, and then the families of these 19 people wopuld have become terrorists! The British treated it like a police action, which is why they eventually won. That's how we should respond to the Al-Queda threat, IMHO. We have enough enemies already, we don't need to make make more, if we really absolutely feel like its necessary to turn the entire arab world against us, then there will always be time for that later. First, we need to deal with AL Queda! Instead we are just playing into their hands... its very shortsighted.

Hmmm... I guess if you call me a loser that means I'm wrong, that we should take action. Let's look at some other example of action that the US govt. has taken to fight terrorism around the world

1.We backed Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath party and sold them billions of dollars worth of dual-use military techonologiues which he has used to develop chemical weapons. If you think this was a good decision, I would be curious to hear your justification.

2.We started training camps in Afhghanistan for the Mujhadeen "freedom fighters" (including Osama Bin Laden) and so that they could fight the SOviets. Again, If you think this was a good decision, please tell me why. It seems to me that this blew up in our face, but hey. personally I don't like AMerica being made a target.

3.We supported Khadafi, another real winner. I would be very pleased to hear any reasons you could give me any reasons why taking action to support that maniac was a good idea and helpful to the US in the long run.

I could actually give you dozens o9f examples, but these three are a good place to start. It constantly amazes me how many "true blue patriot" typoes think that being a patriot meaning overthrowing third world government and replacing nutball anti-american dictators who torture and kill their own citizens with nutball pro-american dictators who torture and kill their own citizens. The first choice stinks, but at least we don't turn entire regions of the world against us when we leave them alone. ALso, it seems to have an extremely poor track record - ie., this just plain doesn't work in the long run.

Here's an example - we wanted a "regime change" in Iran so we overturned tehir election and installed the Shah. The Shah imprisoned and tortured approx. 10,000 opposition party members, journalists, professors, etc. Eventually the Iranians overthrow the Shah in a revolution and *big surprise* the new govt. is viruntly anti-American. Now, really, how did this all help the US in the long run? WHat advantage was it to us to interfere in a foreign country's elections and install someone they all hated?

WHat is so patriotic about making AMerica hated? That is the part I don't egt. But, if you could explain it to me i'd be very grateful.

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