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

To: ManyMoose who wrote (217443)	2/10/2007 6:28:34 AM
From: SARMAN	Respond to of 281500

Learn to live with your phobia.

To: ManyMoose who wrote (217443)	2/10/2007 8:56:44 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

There are 7 to 8 million Muslims here. If they wanted to kill us, they could easily be doing it, or have done it. What, one wonders, are they waiting for? A sign from Spot the Wonder Dog? Who had to come over to attack us? 15 guys from Saudi Arabia and 4 others. Why no American Muslims? Could there be American Muslim attacks? Well sure. But at the moment you are a lot more likely to get killed by an American gang member, or another kind of American criminal, than an American Muslim. Do you have the same level of fear about being murdered by a "regular" American criminal (and by all statistical probability, someone who probably calls himself a Christian? Remember, they aren't perfect...just forgiven.) I don't know what the problem is with loud speakers on Mosques. Churches have church bells, and could certainly install loud speakers too, if they want to. I would think that's a freedom of religion problem. I am confident that small threats are small threats. That a minority ( even in the ME) of fanatics want our destruction is annoying, but hardly worthy of panic. We had a lot more at stake during the nuclear arms race/cold war, when the world really could have been destroyed. But I never saw the use of worrying about that either. You do what you can, and you do what makes sense. You try to put in fail safes, and do what is rational, and then you hope it works. This is nothing like that level of threat. Even with a suitcase nuke this isn't the cold war. This is a continuing fight with terrorists, and it will go on as long as there are humans. There will be homegrown American terrorists, and there will be foreign terrorists. Terrorism will never go away, because there will always be underdogs who feel it is there only route to "victory". We will always have to be on our guard against home grown nutter cults, home grown political fanatics, and foreign political fanatics. In the end good police work, and the well coordinated working of the FBI, CIA, foreign police forces and US police forces will stop much terrorism. The 9/11 highjackers weren't geniuses, they were just very lucky our policing agencies were not working seamlessly. There were points at which these guys could have been caught. I don't think you need to have any fear at all of large Muslim women rushing in to Walmart. As far as I know no large Muslim women have blown themselves up in the US, at Walmart or anywhere else. Granted, there's a first time for everything, but shouldn't we spend more time worrying about the things that are quite likely? In the end everything I say here just comes down to risk assessment, and planning for the most likely things, and not wasting out time obsessing about the unlikely. I see a lot of strange comments on SI about Muslims "bringing us to our knees" and "taking over America". I just find that ridiculous. How exactly is this small minority going to take over? Heck, people probably said similar things about the Black Panthers when they were active- but at least the Panthers were actually grown in America. They didn't take over either, but there were riots, people died, and they said stuff like this "When you talk about black power, you talk about bringing this country to its knees... of building of movement that will smash everything that Western civilization has created" I'm not going to tell you terrorism won't kill you, but it's unlikely to kill you. Your likely death (statistically) will include one of the following tobacco, poor diet or lack of exercise, alcohol consumption, microbial agents (this one almost got me this summer), toxic agents, car crashes, firearms, sexual behaviors and illicit drug use. I think medical malpractice ought to be there too- if I remember another study I just read correctly. sixwise.com I want the US to continue to work hard to protect our borders and catch terrorists, but I'd also like to make sure the greatest threats to our well being are logically addressed with the same proportional enthusiasm. Doesn't that make sense?