To clarify, I was referring to our attack on an uninvolved (in 9-11) secular state (Iraq) as a part of our (over?)reaction to 9-11. Sorry if this was not clear to you.
Alternatively, we could have invested in producing our own oil using a process called fracking. This would have set the price of oil internationally plummeting depriving all of the troublesome countries hundreds of billions in money while making billions for the US while adding thousands of high paying jobs.
That is what actually happened and the result has not been a quiet middle east full of peaceful people singing Kumbaya. ISIS is killing people by the thousand in Syria and Iraq while sending terrorist to kill people in the West. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan and Libya is involved in a bloody civil war.
This! If you ignore a terrorist act, you are just sing yourself up for more. That is why it is imperative that we retaliate each and every time. Make it so costly to the other side that they won’t dare try it again. Sorry, but words, hugs and understanding don’t work.
I can never quite figure out the liberal talking point on Al Qaeda’s take on Americans’ civil rights.
On one hand, Bush is wrong for saying “they hate us for our freedoms,” but on the other hand, terrorists rejoice when our freedoms are taken away.
I’m also puzzled by the dichotomy displayed on the relative view of the worth of American lives. On one hand, losing 3,000 Americans is portrayed as not such a big deal because more people die from drunk driving; on the other hand, 4,500 Americans killed in Iraq is a big deal, even though it, too, is fewer deaths than drunk driving causes. For the record, I think all of those 7,500 deaths is a damn big deal.
That’s what they wanted though, retaliation.
Look where it got everyone: ISIS, a resurgent Taliban, a failed Syria, a still failing Iraq, and an empowered Iran.
Plus $2 trillion of debt, not being able to afford a war, and several hundred thousand dead Iraqi civilians. That was good.
What did they actually want? They wanted the USSR scenario where a superpower gets bogged down in an unwinnable war and then fall as a global superpower. Then the governments in the Middle East fall to fundamentalists and the caliphate is restored.
What did they accomplish? The taliban may be resurgent in Afghanistan but before they had the whole country as a base for Al-Queda. The civil war in Syria has not much to do with the US retaliation, it is an outgrowth of the Arab spring. While Al-Queda would team up with Shiites now and then, an empowered Iran was never a goal and was more likely to be seen as a rival to the Sunnis in Al-queda.
As for the US not being able to afford a war, the US only spends 4.5% of GDP on defense. That could be doubled and it still would not be as much as was spent in Vietnam. The two trillion in debt is only a little more than 10% of the total US government debt so it is not a big deal economically.
I don’t think Al-Queda ever cared about Iraqi civilian deaths one way or the other.
Not to mention it’s ridiculous to bring up the Cole attack at all in a discussion of 9/11. It was a military target in a foreign country.
OP conflates the War in Afghanistan, which cost less than 100,000 lives, much less than a trillion dollars, and was necessary because the extremist government there was harboring criminals, with the War in Iraq, which cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, and inflamed the region, leading to the rise of Daesh. Secular Saddam was already in a box before we attacked, and was not a threat. Fourteen years later why do people still not grasp the distinction between Bush’s two Wars? 
Have you heard the schoolyard expression
Two wrongs don’t make a right?
You go on to point out that cheeseburgers kill many more than 9/11, while supporting the Bush-Cheney misadventure. :smack: By your logic you should kill a hundred innocent civilians next time a cheeseburger displeases you.
I hope it isn’t a hijack to refute this train of thought with a political analogy.
Many politicians rant against some injustice or “political correctness” as a wedge issue — but the last thing they really want is for that issue to go away. Similarly, Islamic terrorists’ agenda of a militant Caliphate requires inflaming fellow Arabs with wedge issues. Why do you think they deliberately exacerbate rather than ease the suffering of the Palestinians? U.S.'s over-reaction to the 9/11 tragedy played right into their hands.
I think we should turn the question around. What if Bush hadn’t ignored the warnings from his own intelligence agencies that a large attack was imminent?
Maybe the NSA and CIA could have rounded up the hijackers and stopped 9/11. I think thats a much more interesting question to discuss.
The ignoring strategy in response to terrorism employed by Bill Clinton birthed 911.
The OP’s question is truly about the wars that followed 911. Such wars were not the result of 911. Anyone believing so is a mediocre revisionist History professor at a third-rate community college.
Those wars were the result of dysfunctional intelligence, and a Tyrant who balked at the UN’s inspection demands.
Bizarre ignorance! Clinton made fighting bin Laden a priority, even proposing a December 1998 strike on Kandahar to take him out. (The Joint Chiefs dissuaded him, citing collateral damage.) He tried to explain his concerns to the incoming Bush-Cheney Administration. But their overriding philosophy seemed to be “Whatever Clinton did, do the opposite”, so the terrorist threat was ignored until 11 September 2001. (And even when Cheney did respond, it was the opportunity for profit and experimentation in non-terrorist Iraq that drove the military planning.)
My irony meter melted through the floor at “mediocre revisionist”.
It’s fun to spin things after the fact; and it’s nice that Clinton “wanted to do something, but was dissuaded”, but the truth is, he actually did very little. Clinton’s lack of action fueled their rise.
Not an inevitable result of 9/11, but clearly a result of them. 9/11 was necessary, but not sufficient, for the two wars.
Now who’s the revisionist?
In my 27 January update to the Council, I said that it seemed from our experience that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, most importantly prompt access to all sites and assistance to UNMOVIC in the establishment of the necessary infrastructure. This impression remains, and we note that access to sites has so far been without problems, including those that had never been declared or inspected, as well as to Presidential sites and private residences.
Hans Blix (head of UNMOVIC at the time)'s report to the Security Council, February 14, 2003.
I’m not sure who’s worse: The guy suggesting that Clinton’s non-action in opposition to terrorism was justified by his post-presidential tough talk; or the guy who just linked nonsense providing no insight as to his opinion.
The ignorance of revisionist history is bliss!
What right-wing site do you get information from? 'Fess up!
Snopes isn’t infallible, but they know more than you.
If you don’t have the facts on your side, pound on the table, right?
You’re wrong that Clinton took no action on terrorism, and you’re wrong that Saddam Hussein didn’t cooperate with UNMOVIC’s inspectors. No amount of bitching about other posters will change that.
There once was a TV show called The West Wing. One of the characters was a fictional president of the USA. There’s a scene where he’s calling for vengeance against some country for an attack of some kind, and wants to kill 1000 of their people for every American life lost. His chief of staff tries to calm him down and accept proportionate response.
I thought President Bartlett came off as a racist (or nationalistic if you will) ass in that scene.
I see Bartlett held up as a “good” fictional president, which I see as a misreading of the show’s text. He’s arrogant and deeply flawed. The people around him have to keep him in line, and spend a lot of time covering up his lies and mistakes. But many Americans love him.
There’s your problem. Conservatives think they know better than liberals, liberals think they’re better than conservatives, and they almost all call like howling cannibals for the blood of the foreigners. The USA isn’t a nation; it’s a psychotic cult.
Those of us who can see the USA as she looks from outside, and accept the rule of law, the rule of treaty, and acting as a responsible peer to the other polities of the world–I’m afraid we’re not the norm, somehow?
You’re right. We should totally find persons with alleged ties to the alcohol trade and imprison them without trial.
I don’t think it needed to be* ignored,* as such. But somehow we’ve had named multiple “20th hijackers” and “9-11 masterminds.” The USA’s successive paranoid versions of events lack credibility.