I’m actually ashamed of my government today. We are closing nearly two dozen embassies because of threats from terrorists. Horrible call by all involved. Closing the embassies sends the wrong message. It empowers terrorists by showing them that we can be intimidated, and they have the power to make the most powerful nation on Earth hide under the bed whenever the scarey man says “booga-booga”.
What’s next? Are we going to cancel the Super Bowl because some asshat makes a threat? Because if terrorists see that they can disrupt the way we do business without actually having to do anything, they’ll be issuing threats all the damn time.
I say beef up security where possible, have air support on standby where possible, pass out extra ammo and tell the boys to lock and load, but otherwise run up the flag high and proud, and get on with business as usual.
We are the United States of America. We don’t fucking hide from terrorists. We stand and fight, and we track down those who attack us to bring them to justice.
Guaran-damn-tee we would not be closing embassies and hiding under the bed if Reagan was in the White House.
Look, evacuating and closing these embassies – until the danger is past, nothing in the story suggests it’s permanent – will prevent al-Qaeda attacks instead of putting our staff and soldiers in the position of having to fight them. It’s both safer and cheaper. It’s the only common-sense way to handle it.
I do tend to wonder what kind of specific, credible threat they have that would lead to embassy closures. However, by questioning this, you’re setting yourself up for a rousing round of “Well you’d be even more critical of the Obama Administration is an attacked happened and the embassies had remained open”.
Seems to me that if they had so much specific information that they’d only close those embassies that were specifically targeted, unless they all were, in which case - wow. That’s a lot of manpower, coordination, and planning.
I don’t really know what to make of this, but I’ll say it smacks a bit of "See how on top of things we are, we announced that we knew an attack was imminent and then nothing happened, so behind the scenes, we’ve got it under control!’
It’s essentially a no-win situation and the government is responsible for protecting these people, so if they have credible evidence of a threat, I think it’s the right call.
What? They can’t just reschedule their attack? So then we hear “chatter” again in a few days. Do you close the embassies again? How many times does that go on?
There must have been a real threat and a very serious one. US Embassies are fortresses, I am pretty sure most embassies could hold up even a fully armoured division if so confronted.
I’m not afraid of being killed by terrorists in my day to day life. But if someone told me a specific building I was going to be in might be targeted by terrorists at a specific time, I wouldn’t insist on showing up to work just to prove an imaginary point. I’d say ‘take care of this and I’ll be at work Monday.’ On an individual level and a policy level, you can only take ‘do the opposite of what the terrorists say’ so far before it just becomes ridiculous.