One would hope that the fact that, despite doing all that after 9/11, we were still attacked, would be enough to discredit both the idea that rolling back our civil liberties is a necessary step in national security, and that the Republicans are the best choice to protect us from foreign threats. But, I fear you are correct in your suspicion that we are, as a nation, too dumb to learn from past mistakes.
Which is, of course, exactly what the terrorists want. Americans are such collective morons.
As Carl Schurz paraphrased Stephen Decatur, “Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”
That is the country I love, Der.
You are an American, I assume you include yourself in that statement
No. That’s why I used the phrase collective morons. There are exceptions.
Y’know, it must be really great to be well nigh perfect :dubious:
There’s quite a lot of middle ground between “moron” and “perfect”.
It’s not as if I think there will never be another terror attack on US soil although its something to hope for.
I do not think there will be one at least until the next election and they get a sense of what direction we take in Iraq. At least not an action initiated by the major players.
And then, a couple of years later, people will calm down again and wonder what they gave away in the course of overreacting. I can imagine that process repeating itself a number of times, actually. It’s not a fun picture. Would that validate your views on national security policy?
I agree with you completely. It happened in the aftermath of 9/11 and will happen again in the wake of another catastrophic attack. But if (when) another 9/11 scale attack comes, I foresee a backlash against those who are (or can be painted as) currently obstructing national security efforts.
It’s silly to imagine terrorists planning terrorists attacks and playing American public opinion like a fiddle.
They aren’t that organized, they can’t plan operations that tightly, they don’t understand Americans any more than we understand them.
Are we playing the North Koreans like a fiddle? Are the French playing us like a fiddle? Did the IRA play the British? Fact is, no country can be manipulated like some people in this thread imagine the United States is being manipulated.
Even the best experts in the manipulation of the public–advertisers, media people, politicians, and so on–are operating in the dark. And you expect Theocratic peasants living in caves to understand the American political system and American psychology well enough to make us dance?
To those who are going to assert that Americans are so stupid that it’s easy to make us do stupid things, please. Are Iranians so stupid that it’s easy to make them do stupid things? North Koreans? Turks? Kurds? Irish? French? Canadians? Chinese? El Salvadoreans? Why is it that only Americans can be lead around by the nose? And if Americans are so dumb we can be lead around by the nose, then why in hell haven’t smarter countries already done so…why did we have to wait for a bunch of cave-dwelling Jihadis to lead us around by the nose? Why didn’t the French do it first?
It’s hardly silly, since they’ve been doing just that.
Because only Americans have Bush and the neocons in power. Only Americans can be stampeded in a panic, with foreknowledge of where that panic will take them.
Because such crude methods can only push us in certain directions, which the French have no interest in.
Do you even listen to yourself anymore?
You’re honestly asserting that no other countries are lead by greedy and incompetant sociopaths? Have you ever traveled outside of the United States in your life? Have you ever met anyone from outside the United States in your life?
See, it’s not stupid to be cynical about America. But you’re not cynical about America, you’re not cynical about how our political process works, you’re not even cynical about human nature. You simply don’t understand anything about other human beings. It’s one thing not to like other human beings, but you are simply so totally socially isolated that you can’t understand why anyone does anything. And your attempt to attribute motives to other human beings is simply laughable, and all it does is reveal your own personality (hint: Psychological projection - Wikipedia).
The sooner you admit that you’re not competant to understand why humans do the things they do, the happier you’ll be. There’s no shame in suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, or whatever social disorder you suffer from (disclaimer: shockingly, I’m not a mental health professional). But surely your years of trying and failing to understand the rest of us should have led you to a spot of humility about your ability to understand us typical human beings? You’re not stupid, you should be smart enough to realize that when your hypotheses about other humans are disconfirmed over and over again that you’ve got a flawed mental model of the thought processes of other human beings.
Greedy, incompetent sociopaths, who have a plan they’ve been trying to push for years and years and who were just looking for an excuse like 9-11, and said so. And a general population that is self absorbed, amoral, and xenophobic - unlikely to oppose the sociopaths in charge. And the sociopaths in question were highly unlikely to tolerate any apporach that would hurt Al Qaeda, and highly unlikely to refrain from doing things that would help it.
When they are, but they aren’t. When it comes to America, especially since Bush took over, assuming the worst and stupidest behavior is quite effective at predicting American behavior.
As noted in an off-board discussion, we can do better without personal observations about other posters, so I expect to see no continuation of such observations in this thread.
[ /Moderating ]