I was thinking about this over breakfast this morning…
Why, in the last sixSEVEN years, hasn’t there been another terrorist attack on the USA?
Perhaps it’s because the Dept of Home Security are doing a bang-up job keeping America safe. However, knowing what we do about how effective America’s intelligence services are (not very), that seems a very unlikely explanation.
The alternative explanation might be that the terrorists don’t need another attack because they’ve already won.
Assuming there really is a guy called Osama Bin Laden, has he won?
Here’s some questions to ask yourself:
1. Is America’s reputation abroad stronger or weaker today than it was pre-9/11?
2. Is America’s economy stronger or weaker today than it was pre-9/11?
3. Is America’s internal political climate more or less divisive today than it was pre-9/11?
4. Does America have more or less enemies today than it did pre-9/11?
BONUS QUESTION:
5. What would most Americans say the reason for the 9/11 attacks was?
I’m guessing a poll would show most think “they hate our freedom” is the answer. FAIL. I suspect most Americans have learned nothing from the last six years.
Meanwhile Americans deaths in Afghanistan hit a new high, while the US bombs Pakistan.
Meanwhile Russia sends TU-160 Blackjack bombers to Venezuela, reminding me of the Cuban missile crisis.
Before the war, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay estimated the cost at $100 to $200 billion. So the White House got rid of him and “re-estimated” the cost at $50 to $60 billion. It’s going to end up costing over $3 TRILLION.
That’s $3 trillion of taxpayers money that would be going to healthcare, to creating alternative sources of renewable energy, or to developing better relationships with countries around the world. It’s $3 trillion that is, instead, making certain American weapons manufacturers, military contractors and construction companies, very wealthy, while the US unemployment level is at a five-year high and employment growth is the weakest since the Great Depression.
I submit to you that if bin Laden’s objective was to hurt America, he has already won.
I think it was Ben Franklin who said “Those who give up some of their freedom for safety deserve neither freedom nor safety”. I haven’t lived in the US for more than a decade now but it saddens me to see what it has become in an atmosphere of hate, fear and distrust.
Maybe bin Laden didn’t win, but Terror did.
We have fewer freedoms now that we did before the attacks. We have more government goons “overseeing our freedom.” The USA is on the brink of financial destruction. And they are STILL in Iraq.
A friend and myself came to the same conclusion a year back while discussing the all over effect of 9/11, and what consequences are WE (Scandinavians…Australians too for that matter) suffering from this crap.
Something needs to be done, cos if you are someone travelling and moving a lot about you’ve most likely already have had to let some ass in uniform fondle through your stuff every time you enter a flight. So you,v gotten used to it and most likely don’t think too much about it any more.
It’s all just to make us gradually used to full surveillance all over the place.
These guys (the weapon producers and that bunch of shitheads you talk about there)are gaining TOO much here …no way Bin Laden is anything else than a legend.
I mean people even believe in the fucking bible, so why not another long haired guy with a beard flopping about out in the desert there somewhere…I mean…it worked last time….fore 2000 fu&%¤ years?
He’s just TOO convenient for that bunch to be for real.
And just look at the close bonds between the Bin Laden and the Bush family…both private and in business.
It’s just that little bit too convenient, and by now we’ve uncovered these kind of things (read: provoking conflicts on a international level, and letting someone else take the blame while they earn profit) in the past from nations like: Great Britain (Number one in the class), France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the list goes on. And we also know USA has done this before..so why not again?…on a bigger scale admittedly, but that’s just the name of the game….
I say it again…we are more people then they are…without us they’re nothing…yet…let’s take them and put them out of business…I know it can be done (I just HAVE to believe this, or I could just as well go and get it over with).
POS
Bin Laden wants the entire world to be ruled by extremely conservative Islamic law. Now, he really hasn’t got a chance in hell of actually accomplishing that goal, and we act like idiots when we pay attention to intention and not to capability.
Bin Laden views harming the United States as being helpful to his ultimate ends. Did 9/11 result in a weaker America 2008 than would otherwise presently exist?
Almost certainly yes. There was the immediate amplified recession, the short to long term diversion of resources, two wars, and, sigh, the relection of the prolofic vacationer known as Bush who was shot from 40 to 80% in approval ratings as a consequence of the attacks. His burning out was slow process, and it was in the end too slow.
I would submit however, that progress toward Bin Laden’s ultimate end has been set back. The Taliban has lost control of much of Afghanistan and so the the juristiction of Bin Laden’s law has diminished. Expansion of the new extent of juristiction seems plausible, but has major obstacles in its path. NATO, the governments of Iraq and Pakistan, and the US army.
I don’t think Al Qaeda stopped trying to attack the US after 9/11, as there have allegedly been a number of attempts to attack the US in ways of similiar scopes since. The most famous of which was the one involving the two airliners from the UK. Numerous new concrete security measures (particularly at airports-random searching, metal detectors, luggage type limitations, no fly list, profiling, etc), and increased focus by relevant agencies (the FBI, not just the CIA) on terrorism, do I think have a lot to do with why there haven’t been more attacks. In addition, foreign intelligence agencies sometimes play a role. Britian’s pretty much singlehandedly stopped the UK airliner attack. I wouldn’t rule out that foreign, more competent, intelligence agencies funnel us information.