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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (23524)	1/8/2004 6:11:43 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 793619

If so, then the options discussed by others are not as ridiculous as they have been portrayed. In that scenario, a case can be made for focusing on defense at home. Remember that what triggered this was that we took a hit on our home turf, something previously never considered. People were shook up by that. That's what changed everything, not the notion that there's an Islamicist movement No, I don't grant that point. If we had taken the hit from a lone demolition expert who had gone crazy and managed to bring down a skyscraper, it would have been different, just as the Oklahoma City bombing was different. It affected us, it was a hit on home turf, but it didn't change everything. What changed everything was the realization that you had an organized plot that had to involve hundreds of people, going on for years of preparation, involving at least a dozen men educated enough to fly jumbo jets yet willing to kill themselves to get at us - and we hadn't caught it. We had an enemy, an organized, military, fanatical enemy willing to use suicide terrorism as their weapon of choice. Who would gladly nuke us if they got the chance, because they didn't have a home address to retaliate against and they didn't value their own lives. That was what changed everything. If the enemy is terrorism rather than Islamicism, though, those tools are legitimate options I didn't say the tools were illegitimate, I said they were ineffective. Not the same thing. Few people have recommended that we concentrate purely on defense because the United State of America cannot operate in a defensive crouch. It destroyes the trust we need to function as an society, as an economy. Again, there is no serious alternative policy being proposed.