wkmac,
I see where you are going with this... and it makes plenty of sense to me but terrorists do what they do best - terrorize people. They play on the psychology of human nature. We can't give them the power. The more we do, the stronger they get. Two weeks after 911, I had plans to go to Maui. My wife did not want to go, I told her that is exactly what they want us to do. We are going. When we got there the island was a ghost town. Most resorts were around 20% of capacity. People were being laid off by the hundreds. It was very erie and I was extremely worried that the terrorists had won. But as you know, we are a resilient society and out of the ashes the Phoenix continues to rise.
Can very much appreciate what you said Lifer on several levels. As to the subject of fear, I've lived over half a century and I don't know for sure but sounds like you are in or near that ballpark as well and I suspect like myself, you've seen over the years where we are told of threat after threat that faces us. From the Soviet menace, nuclear arms, communist hordes across the Rio Grande (Red Dawn scenario), to drug crazed hippies, remember the AIDS scare (everyone will die!) and numerous economic calmities and now the latest flavor is the muslim terrorist.
Now Osama bin Laden has on several occasssions has said the goal of Al Qaeda was not to go toe to toe with the US as they know they would lose (just as Iraq or Iran would disappear from the planet if they nuked, with their one bomb at the most, the US, think about it) but to get the big lug (the US and European interests) to swing at ghosts and expend itself economically and weaken itself that way from within. This in fact is exactly what has worked for them (they know their world history and how empires collaspe) and in the process of the American drive to democratize the Middle East, average folks are victimized and thus become radicalized themselves and this ever ups the ante over there in the middle of it all. Replenish enemies for more soldiers to shoot at. It's easy to do among a population that in many respects is pre-industrial revolution, pre-enlightenment and ripe themselves for others to manipulate their fears.
Anyone ever take just a moment to even consider the CIA/Military industrial complex connection to Bin Laden,
the computer database file known as Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, Iran and so much else that goes on in that part of the world. Former CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson in his book, "The Sorrows of Empire" had a chapter entitled Iraq Wars but he went into the lengthy history of the region as it's vital to understand Iraq specifically and the CIA's hands in the last 50 plus years is all over it. Before that it was the British and the French. You have to do root cause analysis to even come close to understanding what's been at play here. Same can be said of studying the 19th American century federal public policy and military campaign against the civilian population of the late southern confederacy and then that
same policy against the plains Indians. When you do and look across the pond at the Middle East, the policy looks oh so familar but instead of railroads and continential commerce, it's oil, global transportation and commerce. How does the US gov't service it's debt if ..........? Would a true free market threaten this?
So much again for that myth!!!!!!
Cheryl
posted a Bloomberg story in the UPS Headlines forum (thank you Cheryl) and the very first paragraph caught my attention.
The attempted bombings appear to be the work of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemeni branch of the international terrorist organization that took credit for the Sept. 11, 2001, airplane hijackings in the U.S.
Now if a Yemen Al Qaeda cell was behind the 9/11 terrorist act, why Afghanistan instead of a full scale launch in Yemen? Is this the truth and if so, again the question comes down to why Afghanistan and Iraq in the beginning? Or has the story thus changed again for the sake to fit the political policy as the so-called "war on terror" now wants to expand in Yemen in search of continuing enemies? Google US, CIA, Saudi Arabia, military action, covert action, southern Yemen tribes and see where that takes you.
There are deeper agendas here that are just the tip of the horn!
H.L. Mencken once said in regards to the usefulness of fear by political heirarchies:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Let's see communists, nuclear weapons or WMD in general, global warming, economic crisis, tea parties, militia, gays. illegal aliens, socialized medicine, Obama, Palin, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Pelosi, Reid, and of course Al Qaeda, bin Laden, onward, onward and onward. Seems to me that Mencken had it right all along so it's not just terrorists who use fear to their advantage and this begs a very tough quesion for most Americans to even answer much less even consider. If creating fear works for terrorists and is in fact the main tool of terrorists, would a political establishment resort to fear as a means to a political end, allow events that generate fear to take place, manipulate events to get the most positive effect from fear or just flat out be behind events that cause fear to begin with? Not an easy question to answer nor a comfortable one either. If terrorists main weapon is fear and yet if the main weapon of politics is fear, what then really at the end of the day is the difference?
As to bbsam's comment that he is not afraid or fearful of a muslim attack or some kind of societal overthrow at the hands of muslims, I'm completely with him on that. Do you honestly believe that a few 1000 muslims can take over the US societal structure, starting with a piece of real estate in New York and that several hundred million non-muslims will bow down and do it's will without a whimper? Really? Think it out people, think it out!