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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (57518)	9/10/2002 6:34:38 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

The Islamic jihad, as you call it, represents not a smidgen of the degree of danger to the US that Japan represented in 1941. I think X is correct, that by obsessing over 9/11 we give aid and comfort to the jihad. We show them that by attacking three buildings in the entire country, they can cause a major disruption of our lives, dominate the national scene for over a year, and cause us to abandon freedoms we have cherished for over 200 years. Our response to 9/11 has the potential, IMO, to do more damage to us as a country than the attack itself ever did. Two large buildings were destroyed, one large building was damaged but has since been repaired, and approximately 3,000 people died. Those are far from insignificant numbers. But a single tornado in the midwest or hurricane in Florida or earthquake in California can do far more property damage than the attacks did, and as I pointed out in an earlier message, the deaths from 9/11 were less than 1/5th of the number of people killed by drunk drivers on our highways ever year. 9/11 was a tragedy, but it was not a catastrophe. It was a wake-up call, but the reality was that we had gotten complacent. There were more than ample warnings of the attack if anybody had stopped to put them together, but we didn't believe anybody would dare attack us her on our home turf. Obviously, we were wrong. But now, one hopes, we will pay more attention to the warnings in future, and will be less complacent as a society. But I also hope that we don't abandon cherished freedoms because of fear of what is really a relatively small and woefully under-armed group of world discontents.