that realy said it all, this sentence is not necessary.
Against who?
I didn’t think we knew who was responsible.
If it’s a terrorist group, it would be covert operations and cruise missiles. If it’s a country – which I highly doubt, because any government would surely expect a major kicking after something like this – then war may be likely.
I doubt it’s war.
I saw it reported on cnn that one of osama bin laden’s (sp?)lackies turned him in. don’t know how true it is though…
The report was that a cell phone conversation between one of the terrorists on the plane and a Bin Laden associate was intercepted.
Are we going to war? It won’t be much of a war. There won’t be any massive mobilization of our military, there won’t be huge fleets of ships traversing the planet. I think, at worst, our “war” will consist of a squad of Navy Seals sent on either, A: an assassination mission, or B: a kidnapping mission.
After something of this magnitude…there must be a war.
Even if a state like Iraq is not directly responsable, there is no denying that they very openly sympathise with the goals and objectives of these attackers, and openly foment the sort of hostility that makes such an attack even imaginable.
Lets say we launch cruise missiles and send in the Navy SEALS or Delta Force to attack Ben Laden or whoever, as long as we have rabidly anti-American, anti-Israel regimes in the Middle East, we will have large scale terrorism like this.
I am really starting to think a state was responsible. This may have been too big for Bin Laden.
NO.
WAR.
While lobbing some cruise missiles, or sending the F-117s on a night raid seems like a terribly paltry response, even if we find out that it was bin Laden, and have the address of his summer villa, any full scale military intervention into any country will quickly seem like too great a response.
The swell of injured pride on which Dubya could capitalize wouldn’t make it through the mobilization period. He’d never have the public support necessary for invading and occupying a “harbor” country, and if we did find out it was Libya, or Irag, the worst we’d do is bomb the shit out them.
The American public has no stomach for its own bodybags. That may save us from exactly the result the terrorists are looking for.
“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
- President George W. Bush
Jaimest…
What’s so big about buying 4 or 8 or 12 or 16 plane tickets and giving them plastic knives?
That means nothing except that we’ll go after the “harbor” countries with the same long-distance, precision guided munitions we’ll use against the actual suspect.
Hmmm…the fact that it was done so precisely (the pilots knew exactly where to fly to achieve the greatest structural damage). These were people with flying experience, and were very well funded.
If it were so simple it would have been done before. Actually there have been botched attempts to do this before. But this time it was a much more intricately planned operation. This wasn’t a bunch of nuts with a few ‘plastic knives’. It was an intricate operation.
And I wasn’t wishing for a war, but given what we know about the Bush administration (most of whom launched a war on Iraq 10 or so years ago), the hawkish mood on Congress, and the national outrage over the loss of so many civilians, I can’t see this being satisfied by a few bombings. Some regime will be accused, targeted, and toppled - maybe one only tengentially linked to this.
According to Bush, basically, we are at war. According to people in the street, the bombing was an act of war. Bush had vowed to find the killers and to take care of them and any nation which harbors or gives them succor!
So, I figure the rulers of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Syria, Iraq and Iran as well as the Arab Emirates just shit their pants. Remember those nukes we were supposed to have gotten rid of, well, I figure they’re being dusted off right about now and I think you might want to look for the draft to reappear.
It appears to me that the Holy Islamic War against us and nearly everyone else is about to be stopped and hopefully beaten back to the stone age. I want blood for this action and lots of it. Even the Japanese did not kill as many in their attack, actually considered by them to be a defensive action, on Pearl Harbor. Their attack was almost understandable, an effort to scare us off, but this attack is not for we are not on war footing nor were we supplying food and supplies to any nation involved in a war like we were with Britain.
People, I can respect your desire to snipe at the President given any opportunity, but seriously, can’t you show a single ounce of respect and at least wait for 24 hours?
The “Holy Islamic War” is hardly a united effort. While we don’t get along with many of the countries that RdBl2 listed, plenty of those countries don’t get along with each other, either. Iran and Afghanistan, for example, can’t stand each other. Iran apparently condemned todays actions! Any war that we might get into will likely be carefully orchestrated to exploit Arab disunity, not inspire it.
Perhaps this bears repeating- this attack does not represent all Arab countries. Not all Arab countries are at war, terrorist or otherwise, with us. We will not fight against all Arab countries. While some Arab country may have done this, plenty of other Arab countries have behaved.
and he is hoping that this will be pursued through diplomatic channels and world courts, so that no more people will need to die. He says this is how the Brits handled Lockerbee.
I am ambivalent about this; if it would prevent more destruction like this on home soil, I might be pursuaded that some sort of military operation to root out Bin Laden, (or whomever was responsible) would be a lesser evil than allowing terrorism to reign unchecked. But perhaps if I had sons instead of daughters, I would be thinking differently.
Hansel,
You underestimate the severity of the attacks and terribleness of our resolve.
No, I don’t think that I do. I understand the level of shock and anger and horror: I was standing in the Target TV department, and when the second building collapsed, I saw it live on 30 TVs simultaneously. The man on the left of me and the woman on the right cried.
What I believe is that this will never become a situation where a clear-cut war is possible. I doubt we’ll ever be able to point to a single group and say, without a doubt, that they’re responsible, and we can damn the consequences in our pursuit of revenge.
I suspect that the largest part of our response will be a series of measured attacks that try to live up our current need to see someone else’s blood shed over this. I hope that’s the case anyway, because it may prevent us from fueling the kind of hatred that spawned this attack in the first place.
Count me among those who fully appreciate the horror, and still don’t want us to lash out blindly and powerfully out of some unfillable need for vengeance.
I was reading this morning that a Senator stated that he believed that we should take more pre-emptive actions with terrorists. We can no longer count on our intelligence and preparedness to save us every time. These terrorist pose a clear and present danger to the very freedoms that our society is founded on and we can’t sit idly by and wait for another bombing run like yesterday.
I believe we need to take more direct action than just monitoring them. Yesterday has shown that in itself it’s not a complete solution.
Hansel,
I certainly do not wish to lash out blindly. But I believe that we are already making progress on finding the source of these attacks. We shall simply have to be patient and see what the future holds.
I’ll make any wager that the government already knows who did this. First, they probably already recovered the black box from flight 93. Not to mention all the cell phone calls they received from the planes. Plus that intercepted communication. I think the government is just deciding how to handle things now.