re: Do you remember how the world was much calmer before 9/11?
9/11 was the act of a very small group of fanatics. It was one of two acts of foreign terrorism on US soil, EVER. It's not a trend, it's not a symptom. The two acts were data points.
Look at the response. We've changed our constitutional privacy laws. We've killed 100,000 foreign civilians. We've had over 13,400 US soldier casualties. Two wars. We've sent our country into a huge deficit. We've become hated throughout the world. We've marginalized the institutions that have contributed to the building of democracies in the world since WWII. And still, we don't have the guys that did it.
The point of terrorism, is obviously, to terrorize. To take their meager resources and to create a reaction, an over-sized political reaction. Guess what, we've played exactly into the hands of the terrorists. We've changed our entire way of life because of bin Laden and his tiny group of cave dwellers. It's embarrassing what wimps we are.
The proper response to terrorism is sensible defense, and immediate, unemotional retribution. And to NOT have it affect your life. That's their goal, and they won, big time. We even have paranoid color codes for our irrational fear.
9/11 was a singular event by a small group of ideologue thugs. The more we honor them with our irrationality, the stronger they get. Bush has played right into their hands for his own political agenda, at the expense of the country.
John |
