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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (80763)	3/12/2003 1:49:51 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

In many ways, the Islamic extremist threat is more dangerous to America then communism was. We've already suffered through one of their attacks. The Soviets never dared attack an American city and kill thousands of our citizens. They knew we would respond militarily. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), prevented them from taking aim at America with their strategic missiles… a nuclear bomb, or biological agent unleashed in a major city could cripple the world economy, and create a climate of fear, whereby our liberties are severely threatened. Don’t kid yourself, they took aim. They were aimed, locked and loaded, and so were we. One wrong step and the human race was history. It didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean the danger wasn’t there. It was there, and it was a danger far in excess of anything the Islamists can do. I should point out, also, that I was not speaking solely of danger posed to America. Islamic radicals may have killed more Americans than communists did (the fascists were way ahead of either, if you count combat deaths), but if you look at the total number they killed as a better indicator of the threat they posed, the Islamists are dwarfed by comparison. I am not saying there is no threat. The Islamists cannot destroy us, as the fascists and communists could have, but they can certainly hurt us. L would say that the threat is being considerably, and probably deliberately, distorted. Paradoxically, some of the distortion is coming from individuals and groups who pose as great a threat to our civil liberties as any foreign power, and who would just love to use this threat as an excuse to shove the bill of rights in the bottom drawer. Oddly, we are pursuing a course that seems calculated to increase, rather than to alleviate, the possibility that terrorists will get their hands on WMD. Why we’re doing this is anything but clear to me, but we are.