November 22, 2010
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Terrorism and Travel
It seems to me that Al Qaeda has won its war. The idea behind terrorism is to terrorize the enemy and to date, the enemy (us) seems to be well terrorized. We have fought two costly wars and instituted expensive and irritating domestic airport and other screening techniques in response to vague threats by a nebulous enemy. Al Qaeda doesn't need much membership - all it seems to need is a internet web presence and a few fanatics willing to kill themselves publicly. Our problem seems to stem from the initial decision to treat these thugs as some sort of enemy force and declare "war" on them instead of treating them as criminals and using the criminal justice system. We have over 100K soldiers in Afghanistan and have just begun to deploy our main battle tanks there - It is estimated that there are between 25 and 50 Al Qaeda operatives AT MOST in Afghanistan. Talk about using a cannon to kill a mosquito.....
Here in the U.S. travel has become slower and less convenient because of our official fear of terrorists. Almost all of the arrests and detainments because of this self-imposed inconvenience have been private citizens objecting to some aspect of it - not to terrorists. Those suicidal idiots who succeeded on 9/11 would have been detected by then-existing methods, if those responsible had been alert. Those caught since have been mostly caught because their shoe and underwear bombs failed to detonate - not by screening techniques.
What would happen if we reduced our screening to alert profiling?
Comments (3)
Gotta agree with ya on this one, Dick. I like your analogy to going after a mosquito with a cannon. Pretty near the same situation in Vietnam against the Viet Cong, who "faded into the jungle like ghosts" after an ambush. The last time we fought good guerilla warfare was against the British. Not even the much-hyped Green Berets were effective against the VC (the proof is in the pudding.)
I might differ with you on one point, but only slightly. Treating the terrorists as criminals was certainly a heckuva lot better than the fiasco at Guantanamo. But I personally think that treating them as POWs--according to the Geneva convention--would have been best. Just my opinion, which is worth every penny you paid for it.
BTW, how about this business of killing one man with one missile? Just one small example of why these wars are so expensive. OK, so they destroyed his car, too, but it still was only a fraction of the cost of a missile.
Killing a mosquito with a cannon!! You got that on "right on the nose!!"
And you know,..s'funny,..how many unemployment checks would the cost of that cannon have paid for to feed hungry families,...?
Quite a few,..I do believe!!
Speaking of cannon, the latest gadget the Army has come up with is a "Smart" grenade launcher - can fire a grenade that bursts one meter behind an obstacle - killing a sniper hiding behind a rock, for example. The Army has 12500 of these things beginning to be deployed - one to a patrol - they cost $25-$30K apiece, are handled by one soldier and have a range of almost half a mile. For a while, when I was in the army in the '50s, I was as 40mm recoilless rife gunner - took two men and had about the same range, but I guess they don't use them any more - probably too cheap
Reducing military spending is an obvious way to reduce the deficit - but such a move would increase unemployment. It would, however, probably decrease Al Qaeda popularity - by getting us out of the unenviable role of a foreign occupying army.