There’s a whole lotta 'if’s in your theory, seasoned liberally with some paranoia. There’s a percentage of the planet that’s got broken glass and razor wire surrounded houses now…and some places are still like Mayberry.
It’s pretty easy to overestimate the effect of one thing on a society. I think it’d take a whole lot more inconvenience to make society crumble into Mad Max territory.
(That said, all it takes is one Richard Reid to have everybody remove their shoes at security.)
“Originated in” Afghanistan, yes, but not anything to do with the state of Afghanistan. If OBL happened to have been living in London (as he did briefly some years ago) when the plot was carried out, would the USA have invaded Britain?
The London Underground attacks in July 2005 appear to have been carried out by an entirely “home-grown” cell. If a similar domestic cell lucked out and got hold of something really nasty and caused a 9/11-style death toll, who would we use our fancy weaponry on? If the enemy is inside the gates, with the power to create increasing chaos, you can’t fight back.
Oh yes you can.
It’s just messier to do it by hand, rather than by bomb.
My great fear is that such a future attack would lead to genocidal rage. We saw some dark hints of this after 9/11, with a few scattered attacks on people looking ethnically “Arab.” I fear what we might come to if terrorist attacks become a regular occurrance within the US, or if we experience a truly catastrophic attack.
If there’s going to be a ‘genocidal’ attack, it’s going to come from Muslims, not against them.
There has been remarkably little blowback against the Muslim community in the west. I’m constantly surprised by the people who sit around fretting that we’re about to launch a murderous genocidal rampage against Muslims. On the other hand, every time we sneeze the wrong way some fanatics in the Muslim world shoot a nun, or stab a filmmaker in the chest, or shoot a liberal politician, or burn churches, to try to blow something up. And sometimes the same people worrying about our supposed impending genocidal march somehow find it within themselves to make excuses for that or pretend that it’s either not happening or that it’s not widespread. Why is that?
And of course the people today that are under real genocidal threats are facing the threat from Muslims. In the Middle East, in Darfur…
There’s a lot of murderous rage in the clash of civilizations between radical Islam and the west. But it’s not on the part of the west.
That’s a handsome straw man you’ve constructed there, Sam. But you won’t find me making excuses for violent Islamists. I have no patience for warmongers, whether they be Islamists or armchair chicken hawks.
And if you think we in the west in general, or the US in particular, are incapable of genocidal rage, then you know little of history.
We are not in a genocidal mood now, and I didn’t say we were. But let a catastrophic attack occur, and the mood could change very quickly. Maybe you don’t remember the random acts of violence against Arabs in the wake of 9/11 (or maybe you were sheltered from such reports up in Canada).
We like to think of ourselves in the US as good and noble, and we certainly aspire to that even when we go to war. Unlike some historical powers, we try very hard to kill only those who are active combatants against us, even when our opponents use our scruples against us and hide behind non-combatants. (Not to say that we never cause the deaths of non-combatants. We do, but generally by accident.)
I fear that with enough provocation (say, a truly catastrophic attack within the US) we could lose our scruples in the conduct of war abroad. I fear that we could also lose our moral direction here at home. Particularly when there are those among us eager to exploit our fears to score political points.
And this is why the Left keeps losing elections. They regard their own nations and their own people as the real enemy, not the tens of millions of Muslim fanatics who threaten our civilization.
And that is exactly the sort of fearmongering I’m talking about.
Ain’t enough :rolleyes: 's in the world for that one.
I remember them.
In a nation of 300,000,000 people, one that had just suffered a catastrophic attack which left 3,000 people dead (though initial rumors placed the numbers at closer to 50,000), an attack that was being replayed on the news constantly for the week afterwards…
…there were five random acts of violence specifically against Arabs or people mistaken as Arabs in that week.
Five.
There were, however, thousands of people who took time out of their daily schedule to stand at local mosques and to make it known that America did not blame Muslims in general for the attack.
Folks as long as you can’t realize the truth is somewhere in the middle, you’re never gonna convince each other.
Alas, society as a WHOLE has to figger out there IS no us against them…it’s all just US.
You remember wrong.
Here are just some of the examples that were documented:
Cite. (My emphasis.)
Moreover, I did not say we turned genocidal after 9/11. Go back and read my first post. I said:
(Note to self to revive thread at a later occasion-- which I hope will never arise.)
You are correct. I was wrong.
I still believe that the number of actual incidents was insignificant, and vastly outweighed by the number of people willing to stand up and defend mosques and prove their tolerance.
That was cetrtainly a heartening sign. And I certainly hope that we find it in ourselves to practice restraint and tolerance next time.
'Cuz, as we all know, moral purity is ever so much more important than survival.
You sure do frighten easily.
Well…the sun will burn out in 5 billion years or so but will swallow up the earth slightly before that. So at MOST, I’d say 225 to 230 million generations. Can you imagine a family tree with that many generations represented? My mom would be in heaven (she loves geneology).
Seriously though, I’d say the earth will soon (50 years or so) see the max number of people that will ever grace the planet at any one time. Theoretically, I suppose in a perfect world, the planet could support more people than it ever will but humans are far from perfect, we all know that. The point of that is that when you shove enough people in a room, eventually they’ll get ornery enough to start some ridiculous fight with one another. Lord knows we won’t share resources in any meaningful way, either.
A large number of humans will die, at some point, from famine, war, environmental mumbo jumbo (melting ice caps, blah blah), but we are pretty adaptable as a species. I figure that at least a few of us will be around for a while. If I were to give a number, which would obviously be a flat out guess, but lets say 50 million generations (bringing us to 1 billion years…I figure we’ll beat the Dinosaurs, call it a hunch)?
I’m not a scientician so be nice.
Umm, not quite. I’ll grant you that Afghanistan didn’t have control of the territory that OBL was training his troops in, but you know, the Taliban didn’t EXACTLY hate OBL, in fact, they got along quite nicely. As I understand it, the people on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are pretty much a tribe of their own, and they owe a lot more allegiance to their local leaders than whoever is running things in Kabul or Islamabad. These people are Osama’s buddies, and that is why the US went in with the Northern Alliance when we invaded Afghanistan and took it from the Taliban (which was mostly though not entirely by any means the creature of the Southern Alliance in Afghanistan).
Now, if Britain were a failed state (like Afghanistan and Pakistan, because they don’t really control their own territory) that had terrorists training in Wales that they didn’t want to invade because the Welsh were pretty much running the show in Britain (as the Taliban was running the show in Afghanistan), I think the US might just have some justification for an invasion of Britain under those circumstances.
As it is, the Brits do have terrorists living on their soil, but the British government hates 'em just as much as we do and we know that. There’s no concern that the British would be using ObL or anyone like them to accomplish foreign policy, but there’s PLENTY of evidence that terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah get help from the governments of Syria and Iran, and that they are very much tools of the foreign policy arms of those governments.
If Hamas or Hezbollah bombed us, we’d have every right to bring their masters to account. Otherwise, we’re just setting ourselves up by more bombings and whatnot by terrorist groups whenever their governments found it in their foreign policy interests to do so.
Sure you can. Look what happened to the militia movement in the US after Timothy McVeigh committed the Oklahoma City bombing. Those fuckers pulled their horns in so fast they practically grew udders on the spot, because they knew they’d be facing all kinds of shit from the FBI and the CIA and law enforcement at every level if they so much as made a peep about McVeigh’s actions being justified in any way, shape or form. Look what happened to all those Islamic “charities” that were funnelling money to Al-Qaeda after 911. You can DEFINITELY fight back.
Nah. I just have the balls to face certain ugly facts about reality. Apparently you don’t.
PoleCat Not from where I’m sittin’. You come off as pessimistic and alarmist.