9/11: How We Shouldn't Have Responded

http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/war-peace/sept-11th/6557-our-post-9-11-world-a-ten-year-retrospective.html#disqus_thread

This “alternate world” is really an ode to gratuitous nuclear mass murder, and rabid, illogical Islamophobia. In fact one wonders whether it is a parody of neocon attitudes to the post-911 world but it is deadly serious in arguing that if we had simply bombed Mecca the Muslims would give up in fear for lack of divine judgement. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: What I find particularly amusing is that this comes from an Objectivist periodical, who are all about the supremacy of reason. :dubious:

Yeah, that’s pretty stupid, all right.

Jeez- this is a combination of Ayn Rand, whose fiction I generally enjoy, and The Turner Diaries, which I don’t!

I question our policy on drones anyway. Too much risk of civilian death. I’m for reconsideration of Assassination Squads. Take the war right to the heads.

It is good to see you questioning the rationality of some on the far right. Congratulations. I recall Anne Coulter spewing some similar insanity through the more mainstream media some years back, but I can’t bring myself to search for it.

It sounds like some of the military sci-fi that comes out of Baen Books these days.

The writer knows nothing about technology. Drones don’t operate from submarines. Drones don’t carry nuclear warheads. Maybe he meant cruise missiles, but I think the nuclear tipped ones were eliminated by treaty well before 9/11. I’d have to check on that one, though.

I too have been reconsidering assassination as a more “humane” way of making war. Certainly more so than conventional war. What gives me pause is that it’s too easy, countries could get into the habit of killing individual opponents rather than negotiating for mutually satisfactory solutions. Plus, the angry response of the opposition country if the scheme is revealed, which might end up on a general way anyway. There’s some more bad scenarios I can think of, but none are as bad as a conventional war, certainly not for the ones on the losing side.

Wow, that was kind of insane.

Without searching (hey this is the Pit!) I also remember something like that. But how many minutes do you think it takes to switch out a conventional warhead for a nuclear warhead?

President Galt firmly revoked that treaty.

A lot if they disassembled the warheads and recycled the nuclear material. Not to mention the sub having to return to port and go out to sea again.

History teaches us that war is the most expensive human endeavor, and that it’s outcome is uncertain. Both of those make it a policy choice of last resort. However, if all your experience in the world and all your associates are in the munitions business, generalized warfare might seem like, and actually be for you and your posse, the ideal choice.

9/11 called for a series of raids like the one that killed Osama bin Ladin. As wonderful as the world is without Saddam Hussein, he was either too smart or too cowardly to provoke us with 9/11 and the same analysis can be used as to the WMD claims. We will be paying for the Iraq debacle in dollars and lost good will for the next century. As evil as Hussein was, this wasn’t our job.

I’m not particularly for us getting rid of Gaddafi either, particularly after Iraq. We trashed our constitution to do it, and Gaddafi is certainly evil and certainly more of a threat to us than Hussein ever was. But of the two, Gaddafi is the greater danger to my life and my country.

Come to think of it, I did notice that the sun got a little brighter, yet the breeze got a little cooler, and the food tasted a little better, after Sadam’s execution. And not that Osama is dead, I don’t have to wind my watch as often!

One interesting feature is the declaration that the seizure of Middle Eastern oil fields by American forces is just the rightful assertion of our property rights over our oil. Because no doubt mere subhuman brown foreigners can’t really own anything any more than dogs can. If we want it, it’s ours.

The writer knows nothing about human psychology either. As is common with the American far right they don’t attribute human personalities or responses to their enemies. Nuking Mecca would calm down the Muslims? Yeah, sure; and the Catholics would just roll over and die if you nuked the Vatican.

Frankly the worst problem the writer has is neither with human psychology nor nuclear technology, it’s with writing. My God, was that thing painful to read.
It’s kind of weird the number of writers without the tiniest grasp of what writing requires, that manage to make a living just because they re-hash on and on themes that are popular within certain groups.

Paranoia porn.

I don’t understand the logic that requires the deaths of 6,400 American troops to avenge the deaths of 2,800(?) victims of 9-11. And don’t think I have forgotten the 150,000 Iraqis that have been killed and the millions who have become refugees in this land where “freedom was on the march.” Nor do I understand why we are silent about our secretive government and the torture. Everything seems to have been thrown out.

And endless amount of money is unaccounted for. We will be very securely poor and uneducated.

It’s really sad.

When people start writing shit like that, the terrorists have won. :stuck_out_tongue:

OK, who are you and what did you do with the real Qin Shi Huangdi/Curtis LeMay?

Au contraire. The author has an shrewd understanding of the human mind. He knows exactly what it takes to make his readers masturbate furiously.

I thought they were all about the supremacy of Ayn Rand. You cant fit those two supremacies into the same reality, even with great shoehorning.