When will the lid finally get blown off the Al Qaeda / War on Terrorism fear mongering?
When will the clarion call "this is a new world in which there are a new breed of enemy that requires a new type of battle"....be realized as a misguided over reaction to a simple problem?
Let’s break down the reality.... see below... 10 points to consider.....
- Terrorism has been around FOREVER!!! I can not emphasize this enough. Through out history....when those that feel down trodden by political forces that they can not control thru traditional political action... and without the means to engage in battle.... commit terrorist acts to get attention and to try to bring about change.
- America has been on the receiving end of terrorism since our inception. (And used terrorism ourselves in our Revolution against the British... as they did against us.) Even during that last 20 years.... there have been continuous cases of terrorist acts... foreign and domestic, un abated, right up to 9/11.
- What made 9/11 seem so different? It wasn’t because it happened on our soil, because so did Oklahoma and the earlier World Center Attack. It was because it was so BIG... so many died... BIG......the damage so massive...BIG....hundreds of thousands of lives were directly and immediately affected in NYC. Big....on TV seeing large commercial jets flying into famous tall buildings in balls of fire. Very Very BIG attack.
- Now.... How and why was this attack so BIG. Was it because of a massive force against us? No. Was it because the force behind it (Al Qaeda) was so impressive, so capable.....such a formidable enemy? No.
It was because America had such incredibly weak protections, complete lack of security proportionate to the risks....zero protections against anyone, American or foreign, terrorist or nut case.... being able to hijack a plane (many have done this)....but most importantly..... able to get into the cockpit and take control of a fully fuel laden commercial jet. PERIOD. Think about this.....Up until 9/11..... any two bit bum.....with a gun (or a razor cutter) could hijack a US commercial airliner..... and open a simple little door to get control of a literally....a flying bomb (a fully fueled commercial jet is virtually the same as as many of our largest non nuclear armed missiles.) How well do we protect our armed missiles? We protect them with our armed forces, multiple fenced and walled areas of protection. In short, massive armed protection. And how much did we (before 9/11) guard our commercial jets? With Suzie the Stewardess’s smile and a cockpit door made of aluminum. This is about all we were using to secure these "missiles".
- What if we had responded to 9/11 by immediately changing all cockpit doors to massively thick metal plating with multiple inside and outside locks. Another 9/11 could never happen. The End.
- Sure, hijackings could occur...as they had previously. But what made 9/11 so BIG was that our absolute lack of security for our commercial jets which made them an easy target for a bunch of misfit terrorists... which allowed several of these captured "missiles" to be used against us, on our soil.
- We need to then take another look at Al Qaeda and really think thru how dangerous these guys really were. In truth they were a small band of misfits...whose leader.... Bin Laden... had been trained by US forces in Afghanistan’s fight against the Russians. Bin Laden never really had grandiose plans. His plans were to get the US out of the Middle East... in particular... out of Saudi Arabia....where we had set up a military base ... and for the west to stop supporting the Saudi monarchy/ dictatorship. He made this clear to those who interviewed him. That was his issue.
Yes, the Al Qaeda "cause" has now been expanded. After 9/11, Bin Laden was famous (because of our stupidity and lack of taking simple precautions against the possible theft of commercial aircraft to be used as missiles.) And he used his fame as a bully pulpit to lash out against the US on many accounts. But it is America who gave him fame.
We then continued to build his fame by not acknowledging that his dastardly act was not a result of his intelligence and capability...but simply because of some easily correctable mistakes of our own...in not securing our commercial airliners properly from being taken and used as missiles.
- The War on Terror.... is basically bull shit. Al Qaeda is hardly a formidable enemy. They were never anything more than a bunch of misfit angry young men looking for ways to express their anger. But the US War on Terror, followed by the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq... made them much bigger in the eyes of the world....and as America slowly began lowering its own standards of civilization (pre-emptive war, disregard for massive civilian deaths, inhuman treatment of detainees, torture and abuse at Abu Grahib) their cause became much larger, with many many more supporters.
- Why has there been no more major terrorist attacks in the US? Because its not easy to do. Now that the doors are locked and much stronger in our jets.... and our captains and crew know that they can never allow the door to be opened, giving the hijacker..not just control of the lives of the passengers and crew....but control over the lives of thousands of people in buildings on the land... it hasn’t happened.
We need to realize...even as simple as hijacking the planes and flying them into buildings was... some flight schools and a simple high school plan for coordinated flying into buildings.... it still took them years of planning to pull this off. Because they were just a little band of misfits.
There never was another major attack in the offing. Cheney’s plaintiff that there were many other attacks thwarted... is probably total bull shit. Am I saying there are no terrorists? No. They exist...as small extremist organizations... loosely connected. With no leader. And they will attack, again.. for ever. There will always be those that feel repressed with no other means to express their angst than to engage in terrorism.
- If we want to eliminate terrorism. We need to look at its causes... in our Country and in all countries. This is not about justifying terrorism... far from it.
Terrorism is wrong, evil, horrific and NEVER justified.
But it is usually the result of a people, group, race, ethnic minority being repressed. When they are no longer repressed.... terrorism subsides. Lowering our moral standards, eliminating some of our human rights and instituting a "1% rule" (try googling: Cheney 1% rule), and deciding that torture is sometimes acceptable.... is total bullshit and is not the way to eliminate terrorism. PERIOD.
BTW: It seems quite clear, if you do your research... that Bin Laden died in Tora Bora... from the bombings... or from his serious kidney condition that required sophisticated regular medical treatment, not available in the remote caves bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan. The audios and "videos" supposedly from him in recent years.... appear bogus. But Bush and Cheney were stuck... if they admitted he was dead (and they couldn’t prove it...with no body) how would they invade Iraq and continued scaring the hell out of us about a new attack? Many in the middle east believe he is dead. The current Pakistan President Zadari, the Afghanistan President Karzai, as well as the recently assassinated former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto...all have said they believe that Bin Laden is dead.
And the War on Terror goes on.... at least in Cheney’s head.