>Agreed, but almost everyone believed we would see another 9/11 styled attack within a couple years right after it happened. It could happen at any moment, and I think Bush knows that. But the fact remains that after 9/11 most Americans believed we were vulnerable within the next couple of years and whatever else you say, it hasn't happened.
But that reasoning is flawed (and I can't say I wasn't guilty of the same, at least for a week or two after 9/11 -- it's human nature to wait for the other shoe to drop).
It took 5-6 years of planning on both sides of the ocean, near-perfect conditions, and perfect execution by 19 guys in four different cells, to pull off 9/11.
Al-Qaida has been around for 10-15 years, and even if you buy that the Iraq war has helped increase the size of Al-Qaida drastically (I do), it has managed to amass a total of 18,000 or so members. I'd wager that no more than 1,000 of those are in the States, and that's probably a high estimate. Remember, to be an al-Qaida member in the States, you have to get to a training camp in South Asia or the Middle East for a number of weeks or months, and then back into the U.S.. Shouldn't be an easy task, and becomes infinitely harder when airline security, customs, and the intelligence agencies become even a little bit more wary.
Aside from that, we have managed to dismantle two or three cells over the last three years and pulled the plug on some funding sources -- I don't think there ever were that many cells in this country, and there can't be more now. If there are 50 members of Al-Qaida on FBI lists, that's a significant percentage of its U.S. membership that needs to lie low.
With minimal work on our own part, it's just too hard for them to get off another shot like they did on 9/11 -- they got lucky on that day.
So how about small suicide bombings? Still too much for Al-Qaida to pull off here -- compare the conditions here to those in the West Bank, for instance. They do not have a loyal base of hundreds of thousands home-grown youngsters crammed into a small geographic area, are not encouraged by the government and the culture of death around them, are not able to maintain numbers of bomb-making factories, are not able to have suicide bomber training camps, and do not have access to tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons. So, suicide bombings are out, too.
Attacks on the States will always be very, very, very rare.
>A good argument can be made that enhanced homeland security has had at least something to do with it.
Sure, but as I said above, it doesn't take much.
>At any rate, I don't think any rational thinkers truly believe there is a Democrat who, as president, would have done as good a job as Bush has. There are many who are confused about the importance of the Iraq War to the effort.
Consider this guy irrational and confused.
-Z |
