SmokingTarpan

An actual question for debate; hopefully one that won't earn a plethora of "you're stupid" or "way to be unpatriotic" responses. Let's keep it civil, as I'm honestly wondering what others think about this.

If you think about it, what is a terrorist really out to do? Disrupt society. Whether through actual or perceived violence, a terrorist seeks to bring about some sort of detrimental (from the victims's point of view) change to the populace.

We haven't had a major (even minor?) attack on US soil 9/11. While this could perhaps be credited to increased security, I wonder if this was the only attack that was going to be made to begin with. Look what has happened since the attack:

-Patriot Act
-US is set to war against Iraq
-Various "security" measures installed in public areas that add hassle to/slow down civilians
-People (no one specific) expressing the view of "I'll accept anything if it makes me safer" and "if you're innocent, then you shouldn't care"
-Citizenry/media scrutinizing most everything the government does as untrustworthy/secretive

I don't believe that you need to be the subject of a warrantless police raid on your home to see that there have been some major changes in our country over the past 4 years and that our freedoms, if sometimes only on paper, have become more limited. We certainly haven't become a police state, but things have definitely changed.

Could this have been the real goal of the terrorists, as opposed to wiping us capitalist heathens off the map? One major attack to force us to paranoia up and change a myriad of things, while they sit back and laugh as we do exactly as they desired?

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Trooper

i have actaully never thought about it that way. Ill have to think about this some and then post my comments.

great post ST


ps..did osama surrender conditionally today?

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
-Vulcan

leejo

I don't think you're stupid but I don't believe that the point of the 9/11 attacks was to cause us to enact legislation that curbs our civil liberties. Why should they care? I do believe that 9/11 was an attempt to provoke a larger fight and to affect US foreign policy, not domestic policies.

My personal theory is that there are certain nations who seek to undermine our economic, and therefore military, power over a couple of decades by targeting our relationships with allies and by forcing us to spend money in ways we ordinarily wouldn't. For example, keeping a modern army in the field DRINKS oil, which costs money. Over 20 years can we sustain the $500 billion annual expense? Who benefits?

If they can inflict another Vietnam-style retreat in the face of victory, what impact will that have on US foreign policy? When will the next President choose to dive into that pool? Who would take advantage of that development?

I think answering questions like these gets closer to the true terror aims than any suggestion that the Federal government checking in on what books I read at the library pleases Mr. Bin Laden.

KeithMann

The disruption is a means to an end, not an end in itself. What is the end?

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leejo

Of course all of this assumes that the terrorists have a rational strategy. It may in fact be much less interesting than that and more akin to the people who burn down black churches than the moves within moves of Mr. Spock playing 3d chess.

As I said, I think that the nations supporting the terror groups are the real threat. They are using to terror groups to shield themselves from any retaliation, but are providing material, training, funding, and political support. Unless something changes, we're heading toward a pretty large scale showdown with these nations. It'll take another hit here and several in Europe, but that's how I see things developing.

Trooper

i completely agree, Spain will take some more hits and im actually surprised that Russia hasnt been attacked, but then again they support them too by not getting rid of their Iranian and saudi relations.


I agree with leejo, we are gonna see alot more attacks on europe, i just hope more countries take more actions before it happens.

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
-Vulcan

Addict

True.

Maybe it wasn't their goal, so maybe they havn't "won" so to speak.

But even if the effects listed in the first post were unintended consequences it makes those consequences no less potentially dangerous in my mind. (the ones that concern me most are the personal rights and liberties ones, ala the "Paper's Please" thread going on)

icky

The only goal of the terrorist leaders is to hurt people and make themselves appear more powerful than they are. They create the illusion of power in the same way as a mass murderer hiding in the trees, grabbing victims who have no hope of defending themselves. The media reports feed their egos much like the mass murderer who thumbs his nose at the police. They are little more than a larger version of Charles Manson and company. An organized group of mindless killers.

To credit them with any great accomplishment aside from killing innocent people is ridiculous.

If they had a real goal, they would use their publicity to do something other than threatening more murders.

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leejo

UBL was a commander fighting, and beating the Russians using no armor or air support. I think he is probably a very skilled tactical and strategic thinker and without a doubt has many such minds volunteering their support.

They may be insane but they seem to be pretty savvy fighters who don't waste their tresure. If they do something, it's done to achieve a strategic or tactical goal. I question their judgment and the cool heads of their junior "officers" in the field. There was that recent letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi in which Zawahiri had to tell Zarqawi to cool it a tad.

Still those field officers are attempting to connect their terror attacks with an overarching political goal, just like our officers are taught to connect tactical decisions with strategic political objectives. They just do it poorly sometimes.

Mjr Doodie

The attacks had significant economic repercussions for the United States and world markets The New York Stock Exchange ,the American Stock Exchange and NASDAQ did not open on September 11 and remained closed until September 17th.Customers and markets were unable to communicate due to major damage to the telephone exchange facility near the World Trade Center. The stock market index fell 684 points, or 7.1%, the biggest-ever one-day point decline. The World Trade Center I believe was a strategic target to cripple our economy. This target is supported by their anti capitalistic views. The attack On the Pentagon I believe was to anger our Government and grantee a launch of a major military strike witch was not done by our previous administrations. Also the lives lost in the World Trade Center would gain American civilian support for a war. This is to gain support and recruitments for their Islamic Jihad.

Delta_Swift

That's a good way to word it.

I don't think the terrorists have won because our foreign policy has not curbed to their whims. However, I also think that the US has not won because we have not changed our foreign policy. I don't think we should give the extremists what they want, but I honestly feel that a change in our foreign policy regarding the Middle East would be beneficial to all. As to what specific changes...I'll save that for another topic.

Icky, here's the way I look at the terrorist attacks. Although I do not agree with what they are doing, I understand what they are doing. Does that make sense? They have political goals, and they've chosen these methods to achieve them. I truly believe that most of them are not all psychotic natural born killers that want nothing but death and destruction. More to come...

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Mjr Doodie

You sound like a politician. LOL

You understand what they are doing, Please explain?
Our foreign policy should be changed, Please explain?
They have political goals, Please explain?

I'm not trying to be rude I am just interested

leejo

Damn. It's always fun to watch two guys on the same team go after one another, but you have to go and be polite.

Delta, Doodie was saying you're stupid and your mommas fat and you don't know what Al Quada's political goals are.

Discuss...

Delta_Swift

Ha ha ha, Leejo

Ok, I'll answer in brief because it's late and I need to get to bed, but whatever is unclear or you want clarification on, let me know Your Doodieness.

1) All Middle Eastern terrorist groups should not be generalized into one category, but I'm going to do it anyway for the sake of simplicity. If I had to define one goal for the majority of the terrorist groups in the Middle East, it would be to get the US to remove its foothold in Middle Eastern political affairs. For example, our support of Israel (including supplying them with arms, etc). I'm sure they're pretty upset with our relationship with Saudi Arabia and their oil too. Use your imagination, and I'm sure you can add plenty to the list.

They basically want the right to deal with their own political affairs without the US meddling in the process. The individual nations aren't powerful enough to take us on conventionally, and it sure doesn't look like they are going to form some sort of union any time soon. So it was kind of a natural progression towards terrorism. Now, not many nations officially support terrorism, but I'm sure many do unofficially (again I have no proof of this). They can't attack us officially, so unofficial state supported terrorism is awfully convenient. I'm sure this makes the extremists absolutely delighted. Anyway, I don't think terrorism is going to help them achieve their "end goal," but that's kind of like telling a Marine to go down without a fight. What's the likelihood that he's going to listen to you.

2) I'm gonna get flamed for this like there's no tomorrow, especially since we have a decent amount of Jewish people in TG. But personally I don't think the US should be involved in the Israeli/Palestentian conflict/struggle. Even though we have not technically chosen sides, our support of Israel is clear. I think we should take an active role in encouraging and supporting the peace process, but I think we deffinitely show favoritism to Israel.

I'm sure many of you are thinking "well duh, Palestine is full of nothing but terrorist murderers." That's not true. In my opinion, (I can feel the heat already) the reason why you don't hear about Israelis blowing themselves up in Palestenian markets is because a) they have a home and b) they have an army. Although I do not agree with the extremists in Palestine, I can understand how their tactics would progress and eventually end up at terrorism. Please note that Palestenians are not terrorists. There are terrorists who are Palestenian. Did that make sense?

Anyway, that's one thing that I think the US could change. The second is a little tricky. I'm really not sure what an alternative would be but, I don't like how we are handling the oil crisis. If we look at it from a manifest destiny perspective, it would make sense that we were excercising such control over oil prices and control in the Middle East. However, I don't like that train of thought. I think that all sorts of political sabotage and conspiracies go on to maintain that foothold in the Middle Eastern oil market. (Note that I said "I think," as in I do not have an article to refer you too, but I may have read some, etc.) I don't think we're promoting democracy over there for the betterment of the Middle Eastern people, but for the betterment of ourselves. The more democratic they are (note that installing a democracy does not necessarily equate to democratic practices), the more control we have over them and the resources we need.

I think that democracy in the Middle East could be greatly beneficial to them, but they have to want to do it. And I truly belive that some parts of the Middle East simply cannot function as democracies (at least not anytime soon), and they shouldn't have to if they don't want to. It's their country. If they want to remain tribal, let them. I don't think we should force feed it to them. Democracy in North America didn't just happen out of the blue. It was a progression. That's a whole other discussion though. We really could take this back to the beginning of civilization and point out some causes as for why democracy was reached so much earlier in western Europe and eventually North America.

Again, I think the US could greatly promote peace and cooperation between the East and West by supporting the development of true democracies in the Middle East, but we would have to do so without such a vested interest already (aka oil). But right now we need it and can't function without it, and I'm not really sure what an alternative would be to the way we are handling the situation over there. But then again, I'm sure there are plenty of brilliant minds in these forums and in our government that have new ideas and alternatives to the way we are handling the oil crisis, but I don't see much effort being made to flesh those out.

3) I kind of already answered that I guess.

There ya go. That's my preliminary reply. See ya tomorrow.

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Mjr Doodie

Now thats a great post. Nice job