Well, like Santayana said, if you don’t remember how they fucked you last time, its much easier for them to fuck you again.
That was on ‘Abraxis’, wasn’t it? Right after “singing winds, crying beasts.”
Its from the unreleased “Live at the Alamo”, right after “Oy! Como Va!”.
Agreed, and I voted for him in 2000.
The TRANSISTION? What about the eight years he was in office?
The first WTC attack occured shortly after he took office. His Adminstration’s response was to treat it as a “law enforcement issue”. :rolleyes:
Then what?
Attempted assasination of President Bush, embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Whatever Clinton did, it wasn’t very effective, and there’s no reason to think a Gore Administration would have acted any differently.
Any particular country we should have invaded? France, maybe? Pretty easy, I hear, and we still have those old maps…
Incidentally, I’ve always wondered why the concept of treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue has been treated with such contempt by the right. It seems to me that when you’re dealing with a group of individuals who move between nations it makes a lot more sense to take a law enforcement approach compared with a military issue. Yet immediately after 9/11 you started hearing “law enforcement approach toward terrorism” used with a sneer. Very strange.
Note that this isn’t addressed to Carol Stream, as I’m not particularly interested in hearing whatever random talking points the keywords in this post triggered. Her post just made me think of it.
If you even have to ask the question, Giraffe, it shows you are hopelessly mired in fact-based thinking.
It seems to me that if said terrorists get significant backing and shelter from a state, a law-enforcement only approach won’t work at all, since that approach depends greatly on cooperation between the law enforcement forces of various nations.
That is why it was pretty widely understood in late 2001 that a military response was needed - since the government of Afghanistan, such as it was, wouldn’t be helpful in this regard. This wasn’t terribly controversial then, and isn’t much now.
None of us would quibble with putting law-enforcement to work on the issue - but just letting them and not other areas of the government (like the military or the intelligence services, which were prevented from assisting law-enforcement much prior to 9/11) is lunacy, not “fact-based thinking”.
I don’t recall anyone suggesting that a police based approach would necessarily exclude any military or intelligence input. You have effectively demolished a case not put forward.
Since I’ve never heard anyone advocate preventing military and intelligence assets from contributing to a law enforcement based approach where it would be appropriate and helpful (I mean, seriously, how stupid and pointless would that be?), it seems like an odd thing to take such a hard line against. Tracking down individuals across borders is what international law enforcement does, and seems to me like it should be a pivotal focus of any fight against terrorist groups. No one has advocated a law enforcement only approach, merely a “holding off on using the military until it’s clear they could actually do something useful” (e.g. Afghanistan, had it been properly carried through) approach. I don’t get why someone would view such a strategy so contemptuously. It just seems like common sense to me.
I think it’s because in many peoples’ minds, law enforcement is interested in prosecuting crimes, not preventing them. People want terrorists thrown into jail, but even more than that, they want terrorist acts to be pre-empted. Law enforcement, with its slow, thorough methods of buildng a case for prosecution, is seen as inadequate to the task of actually keeping us from blowing up.
The military, OTOH, puts prevention first - at least in terms of “kill them before they kill us”, which for many people is good enough.
Really? Never heard of that, did you?
You didn’t know that it was the policy of our government over decades to segregate these activities, and that in the wake of the first WTC bombing, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick reiterated this practice, and in fact made the relevant agencies enforce this segregation far beyond what was legally required?
Where have you fucking been?
Not really sure what you’re talking about here. Are you referring to jurisdictional issues on American soil between different agencies? Do you know of a situation where military or intelligence assets would have been valuable in battling terrorism but were not used because someone wanted to only use law enforcement assets and no others?
Not disagreeing with you, I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.
Presidential elections should be more than personality contests, don’t you think? Al Gore may have been a droning space robot during the debates, but look at what a phony Texas-by-way-of-the-Ivy-League guy who most people find personable got us. Just because someone is boring doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be a capable president, but so many people are suckered in by personality, on both sides–part of why Hillary is losing now is due to personality, with people paying more attention to Obama’s speeches and Youtube videos than their policy differences, or so it seems.
I want a strong and capable leader, not Miss Congeniality.
From the 9/11 Commission Report.
Now, this is largely what people talk about when they talk about treating terrorism as a law-enforcement matter. It is a criticism, and rightly so, of the way we did it in the past. We should have been using far more of our national assets to address the problem - and legislation like the Patriot Act sought to address this.
I remind you that most of the Patriot Act isn’t controversial. This is one of those parts. Nobody wants to return to these bad old days.
Thanks to Dio I will now be using the phrase “don’t taze me, bro” whenever I want to make fun of ultra-liberal nutballs and the ideas that they espouse. That got a chuckle out of me, it did.
Shocking. Positively shocking.
Thanks for the clarification. I still think the phrase “law enforcement approach” is misleading, as the issue seems to be more about the balance between civil liberties and government power to go after evildoers which is a broader issue than law enforcement or terrorism, but I see where you’re coming from.
Balderdash, sir! Tommyrot!
It may well be what “people talk about” if those people are the ones you listen to, but by no stretch of the imagination does it define the issues.
The “law enforcement” approach, oversimplified, means applying a net of intelligence sources, informants, and sympathizers. It means recognizing that, fundamentally, the WOT is a battle of hearts and minds. If it could be reduced to military terms, who has the mostest and bestest armored divisions, we already would have won. When what you got is a hammer, you try to make all problems nails. But a hammer is of scant use to a man assailed by a swarm of hornets. He can flail about in panic, and every once in a while announce that he as smushed the #3 Hornet Operative, and 75% of the Hornet leadership is neutralized. You know, the standard crapola we’ve been served, lo, these several years.
We need informants, not tanks. We need to know what is going on in the slums of Hamburg and Ankara, not a new! improved! stealth bomber.
We need to let it be known that ratting out a genuine terrorist (crucial distinction: “genuine”…) will net you a million dollars, a green card , and a lap dance from J Lo. We need to be subtle and persistent. And most of all, we need friends and allies.
Of course, without the military approach, we would not have embarked upon our Excellent Adventure, to carve the Middle East in our image. How’s that working out for us, Moto?