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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (185051)	3/17/2004 8:37:34 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578452

Ted, The Germans and the Israelis catch people all the time before they do things. You have to be good at it. We aren't. Still you are avoiding the question. How do they do it? Germany I can't answer, but Israel does a lot of things that would make the Big-Brother-phobes and the ACLU throw a fit. And yet Israel still has suicide bombers making themselves martyrs on a regular basis. The bottom line is that no amount of intelligence and law enforcement is going to prevent terrorism, especially in nations as open and free as Spain, America, France, G.B., etc. We have to go to the source of the terrorism itself, which in this case is the unrest in the Middle East. Of course, they don't and you know that as well as I do. Zapatero made clear that was not acceptable. Why ape the sour grapes of the right? There is a lesson to be learn in this mess that the right refuses to learn. Of course Zapatero is going to say the terrorism was unacceptable. What else would he say, that it was just punishment for Spain's involvement with Iraq? But that's not my point. It's what he's choosing to do to reduce the threat of terrorism, which is twofold: Focus on intelligence and law enforcement (which I have already argued is insufficient), and appease the terrorists by pulling out of Bush's "neocon experiment" in Iraq. Whether or not you agree with that decision or even consider that an act of appeasement, you have to agree that it's exactly what Al Qaeda wanted, and it's exactly what will encourage them more. Then why are you not more outraged by the things that our gov't does to encourage attacks against us? Because I believe in crushing the will of the terrorists. Call me a neocon chickenhawk, but I'll take a strong stance against terrorism over a weak one any day of the year. If the terrorists don't like the neocon attitude, they should have never attacked us in the first place. Now before I get flamed, let me say that I also believe in reducing the hypocrisy of our foreign policy and sticking true to our doctrine and our beliefs. Strength isn't always measured by the number of guns or stealth bombers you have, but also by conviction. If we're going to impose a Western model of society and democracy in Iraq, we better stay committed to it and consistent in that doctrine wherever else we go. Or if the "neocon" route is not our cup-of-tea, at least we should stick up for human rights and justice over appeasement of terrorists and dictators. It also wouldn't hurt to put teeth in our resolutions and enforce them to the letter and its spirit. Either way, I believe that anything that smacks of appeasement is only going to encourage the terrorists more. Yup, that's what our paranoia has wrought. When are you going to realize that at least some of it was a needless waste of money.....if not all of it? You're going too far in your assertion. How is the heightened state of alert afterwards a "needless waste of money"? What about the cleanup and rebuilding? How about the impact to the markets and our general sense of security? All of this cost money, and we haven't even talked about Afghanistan yet. All I said was that to ask the general public to just accept that terrorism will happen is to ask for quite a lot. Sure, Israelis have to live like that every day, but I'm sure if given the choice, they'd rather choose not to have to worry about the stranger standing next to them on the bus. And I doubt we'd find many Americans willing to just accept terrorism as a part of their lives like the Israelis are forced to every single day. Tenchusatsu P.S. - I guess I still haven't answered the question of whether our "neoconservative experiment" is working in Iraq. But then again, you already know my answer ...