Hi John, RE: "Do we continue to sacrifice our...privacy laws"
What history did Baby Boomers experience that makes them more concerned about privacy issues than say Gen X? I ask because I think history has a way of repeating itself.
RE: "do we ruin the peacetime economy"
It's a shame to ruin a recovering economy with more war.
RE: "in the early 70's...terrorists that were much more successful on a frequency basis, if not a scale basis"
What terrorism occurred in the 70's? Do you mean the college riots?
RE: "Whats the realistic, non-emotional, detached bottom line response to 9/11?"
People follow. So, convicting the leaders responsible for terrorism would remove the potential for it to repeat itself. If John Walkner (Sp?) was able to penetrate a terrorist camp and talk to bin Laden in only 6 months, I think trained agents could penetrate terrorist groups. I think Intelligence gathering is the main way to attack the issue, combined by job programs in areas known for plucking unemployed kids into terrorism.
For effective Intelligence gathering, the communications retrieval structure would need to be overhauled. You can't prosecute about-to-attack terrorists based upon unspecified "chatter." However, if raw data was collected in large amounts (technically not hard to do, though huge upfront costs), then indexed for future potential sorts on an as-needs basis, the gov't would at least have the basis for prosecuting. Currently, it doesn't, so suspected terrorists just keep redoing their attempts until they get it. The gov't has to fix that. They also have to allow agents to go to public places to do intelligence gathering. Currently, agents are not allowed to go to libraries, websites, or other public places, which is a huge handicap in gathering intelligence. (What happened in history that made public places off-limit to agents?) They also have to empower their field offices, allow them to perform computerized index searches of other field agent reports located in different offices (possibly the two field offices Phoenix & MN would have found each other's work, had this been in place.) They have to work hard at convicting drug kingpins whose illegal trafficing businesses that are aided by unemployed kids they've plucked by inciting them with any type of cause that would attract them into the terrorist group, which reportedly was the case with one terrorist/drugking convicted in Pakistan. But I don't think the US has the resources to go after every terrorist group in the world, at least not overtly, but probably covertly through intelligence communication technologies. To do so overtly, would probably mean every terrorist group in the world would turn their ugly energy onto US. This isn't the 70s where countries were much more isolated, now things are more globalized and more people have the ability to fly, including terrorists. Terrorism in the US is to a certain extent associated with open-door globalism, but getting rid of globalism obviously isn't the answer because that would negatively impact the stock market. The solution is probably about getting less dependent upon oil by building the relationship with Russia, enhancing the tracking of money flow and convicting drugkings in South America and Pakistan, asking Israel to create a job program in Palestine, at some point, so kids are too busy to be plucked into terrorism, likewise for the US with Afghanistan and working with Saudi Arabia on creating job programs in the very poor area that was responsible for spawning the majority of the 9/11 terrorists, enhancing communications retrieval systems & storage & indexing technologies, deploying more security cameras/satellites, and also include enough sufficiently random scenarios in the approach so it doesn't follow a predictable pattern (western world can be so predictable and unrandom in approach) but rather be a bit more like Israel with the use of randomness that can throw off. Possibly even farm out some of the intelligence gathering to Israel to help protect US, or if not, then move quickly to get caught up on some key communications technologies and consider changing the communications act of (1994?) that apparently allowed the potential for sensitive communication technologies to be in the hands of foreign countries & has the potential to be sold/deployed into sensitive US areas that could undermine the US's security. All of this costs money though less than the current cost of war. But the US (US gov't, US corporations, and even US medicine) tend to have the culture of being very after-the-fact crisis motivated rather than intuitive and preventative, and isn't that the US's biggest risk to success on all fronts in the future?
Regards,
Amy J |
