Bush has saved the US from terrorist attacks

Great Debates
1

Yep…President Bush seems to have delivered on keeping the United States (territory anyway) free from terrorist attack. That said it seems to me it is more of an unintended result of his policies than by anything he has actually done on purpose.

Does anyone feel that Homeland Security and better still the Homeland Security Advisory Color Chart has protected us (current threat level is “Yellow”…how many of you knew that, how many of you know what it means, how many of you alter your life based on it?)? Homeland Security was recently given “5 F’s, 12 D’s and 2 incompletes” by a bipartisan panel tasked to look at this. This is 4.5 years after 9/11 mind you.

Has the Patriot Act helped? Well honestly who knows? With their broadened powers to snoop the government is not forthcoming on what they are doing for anyone to judge (and yes I know there are legitimate reasons for them to not advertise what they are up to).

Wiretapping? Does anyone think the government has gotten info it wouldn’t have under the previous FISA system?

So, with an incompetently run Homeland Security organization and less than encouraging reports on interservice cooperation (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc) I cannot help but wonder why the US has not suffered another terrorist attack since 9/11. You look at countries like Israel who are MUCH better at counterterrorism and they still get hit. What is it that the US is doing so well so as to keep us safe?

My guess, and the point of all of this, is Bush has done such a stellar job of ruining the United States’ reputation around the world that terrorists feel no need to attack. Indeed it would be counterproductive for them to attack.

As it stands much of the world, even our allies, are not overly thrilled with US policies. Civilian support for Bush at home is dwindling to all time lows. An attack on the US would only serve to galvanize the populace behind Bush once more and might even evoke sympathy around the world. Better to let the US wallow.

Better still for the terrorists they have a convenient target in the form of the US military in Iraq. This allows them to maintain their indignation and give handy target for their hotheads anxious to martyr themselves. The regional powers in the Middle East can continue to use the United States as a scapegoat upon which all their ills can be blamed. Even better (from the terrorists’ point of view) Iraq, far from becoming a bastion of democracy, is looking to likely become another theocratic state. Maybe Iran-II.

So again, why would a terrorist try to run to the United States to cause destruction? They have all they need right now and best serve their own interests by letting things continue as they are.

Opinions?

2

Your overall assumption here seems to be that terrorists are sophistocated enough to understand this, and centralized and coordinated enough to push through a no attack policy on the US to all their good little boys and girls at the pointy end of the stick. Do you have any proof that this is the case…i.e. that terrorists haven’t attacked the US in the past 3 or 4 years because we are doing more damage to ourselves and it would be counter productive? On the surface of it at least this doesn’t seem very plausable as a reason they haven’t attacked so I need to see something compelling here.

-XT

3

I just think everyone’s looking for US-soil attacks at a higher frequency than they’ve ever happened. It’s only been 4 1/2 years since 9/11. The previous US-soil attack by a foreign terrorist organization was 1993, eight years before 9/11.

There’s no real reason to assume that another attack would occur in the 4.5 years since 9/11. The fact that it took 8 years for them to organize anything after the first WTC bombing seems to say to me that it’s just plain HARD to do something like 9/11, and was even before Homeland Security and the heightened scrutiny that’s come about as a result of it. It’s rather like someone claiming that the lamppost on the corner of their block keeps away tigers, when they live in Dallas. It’s not that the lamppost actually keeps away tigers, it’s just that tigers are awfully rare in urban Texas.

4

Of course his record on terms of foreign terrorist attacks on US soil is actually the no better than Clinton’s… There was were no foreign terrorist attacks on US soil from WTC boming in 1993 until Clinton left office (7 years). There have so far been no foreign terrorist attacks since 9/11… 5 years and counting.

There were of course domestic terror attacks in the meantime (the anthrax attacks in the case of Bush, Oklahoma for Clinton). But that was not I assume the OPs point.

5

One thing the U.S. has done is be very decisive with what it considers foreign threats. Afghanistan was positively linked with terrorism right after 9/11 and the U.S. military rolled through that country like kids playing Red-Rover against a paper-doll chain. That isn’t a small feat considering the once mighty Soviets tried to do that many times and failed. Iraq had the 4th strongest military in the world before the first Gulf War and the U.S. military walked across it like an NFL team against a junior high team.

I am not going to argue that Iraq was a direct part of anti-U.S. terrorism but we destroyed that country’s government with little effort as well under the pretense of anti-terrorism measures. Now there are rumblings about Iran and North Korea as well.

My point is that the U.S. military is so scary powerful that other nations know they absolutely cannot harbor terrorism in any way and they have to become allies with the U.S. in stopping terrorist training activity even within their own borders.

I will call this the “Cowboy with a hair trigger machine gun” effect and it probably has stopped whatever terrorism their might have been even if it wasn’t for the most legitimate reasons. Foreign leaders want to retain control of their country first and foremost and do not want to jeopardize that by harboring thugs.

The U.S. is running up huge debt by occupying Iraq but we had no trouble overthrowing it and we still have immense resources to overthrow countries 3 and 4 if we want to on a whim. They know that and people in power don’t want to play games with that kind of thing.

6

Perhaps that’s because those situations are not the same. The Soviets were against an enemy that had not only some domestic and regional support, but also support from the U.S. (who trained Bin Laden?) and Pakistan. The U.S. was up against a force that had barely any domestic support, and certainly no international support after 9/11. Makes your adversary a bit different than the ones the Soviets faced, doesn’t it?
As it is, the U.S. is seeing how even the slightest support (Waziristan province) today can substiantially change the nature and length of the conflict.

“4th largest” is probably a little misleading in this scenario. This was not some mighty country with an advanced military industrial machine. It was a country under a psychotic dictator and used as a dumping ground for obsolete weaponry from other countries. It may have been an extensively used dumping ground, landing it a 4th place ribbon, but let’s not read any type of viable strength into that. If you literally go to war with your main supplier, it’s going to be a little tough to fight a war for very long. Especially since nobody’s stupid enough to sell you the really cool stuff in the first place. 4th largest… I don’t think even Saddam Hussein believed that much of his own propaganda.

Good luck.

7

Of course I do not have proof. Do you have proof that terrorists are just a bunch of directionless mad bombers who just individually blowup any old thing that strikes their fancy that day?

You may be correct that their version of Joe Sixpack terrorist who gets a bug up his butt and decides to blow something up may not be sophisticated enough to consider geopolitical realities. However, I think the leaders of the organisations that tend to find and fund these guys and point them at something are sophisticated enough to think about it.

I agree it probably is hard to organise the hijack of four planes simultaneously but why must we assume that any new act of terrorism must be something writ large? It seems to me a can of gasoline and a match could suffice. It does not take a creative genius to cause mayhem short of getting your hands on a 767. Of course if an organisation only has a few mad bombers available you may not want to squander them on something “small” like burning down a church so there is that I suppose.

Huh? Has anyone told Iran that?

8

It is of course difficult to prove causation when something doesn’t happen. However, was there anything involved in the 3/11 attack in Madrid or the 7/7 bombings in London that indicated those kinds of attacks would not be possible here? Do you know of any security measures that have been put in place to essentially remove those kinds of attacks from the realm of possibility? If not, then it seems like it’s only a matter of time, not administrations.

To cause terror and weaken the already weakened morale of the nation.

9

How many people died in the attacks on September 11, 2001?

How many people have died as a result of protecting America from further attacks?

10

And, given that this is a “global war”, how many terrorist attacks have taken place against the United States’ Western allies (such as the UK and Spain)? Or involving the deaths of innocent civilians from those allies (such as Australians on holiday in Bali)?

11

Although there is some factors that push Clinton’s time in office up the scale:

1993 WTC bombing: Arrested perps and planners

1995 OKC bombing: Arrested perps and planners

2001 WTC bombing: One arrested perp

2001 Anthrax mailings: Nada

12

Casualties in his war are well over 2000 US dead, largely in homemade bomb attacks.

It would be more on the mark to say that Bush has brought Americans to the terrorists.

13

While an attack indside the US would cause terror I think it would not weaken morale. Indeed, Americans have shown themselves to be rather disinterested in world affairs till someone attacks us at which point the country rallies and goes after whoever attacked.

14

Or somebody who looks and talks like the ones who attacked, anyway.

15

I was thinking that another attack in the US would weaken morale by undermining the already ebbing confidence in the current administration and our policies in Iraq - specifically that we’re “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” Administration officials have tried at certain points in the past to pull the sting a bit and assert that another attack is a matter of when, not if. In reality, however, it seems like many people expect the government to do something to prevent attacks. So, “when” another attack in the US does happen, not only would it expose the relative hollowness of reforms at Homeland Security but also undermine the justification for many of Bush’s policies designed to prevent terrorist attacks - from the Patriot Act and non-FISA wiretapping to Iraq.

16

I put rocksalt on the sidewalks to keep bears out of my neighborhood.

It works.

17

I’ll give you ten dollars for that rocksalt.

18

Irak never had the 4th strongest military in the world. That was just as much PR bullshit.

19

How does one define overall military strength? They certainly had a large standing military, with huge milita support; and VERY modern equipment (including WMD’s, US and Soviet style tanks and planes, ballistic missiles (soviet and chinese ), etc). They were also battle hardened (from years of war with Iran, then taking Kuwait).

I’m not sure what is being used for comparision, but they DID have a VERY strong military; though no where in the league of the US+allies.

20

Nyeh, I disagree. I think the net result of another large attack inside the US (say a school bombing or something) would force a ‘rally round the president’ cycle that would lead to more of the ‘we can repair the constitution later’ talk and a search for an easy scapegoat to punish.