Who's overreacting here?

It occurred to me today, while reading the multitudes of other war/no war posts… Just who is over reacting?

I mean, yes, the blood thirst of the US is still high, the feeling of both horror and rage is still strong… at least, it is for me. I don’t know if I can look upon the Flag the same, again.

However, there are calls to not “over react” and start bombing indiscriminately… And they haven’t. Not a shot has been fired to date.

There are demands to not paint all Muslims/Islamics with the same “radical/enemy” brush… and they haven’t. Bush has been on worldwide TV stating we have no quarrel with Islam, just with a small subset of radicals.

The worry is that we’ll invade Afghanistan… But they haven’t. And probably won’t, as there’s little reason to. If bin Laden is gone, and terrorists have cleared out, well, then the camps are empty- why invade an empty tent?

People worry we’ll lose significant civil liberties under the War Powers… but we haven’t. Not yet anyway, though I make no promises for the future.

We demand that the administration not over react… and they haven’t.

So who’s overreacted, us or them? Is this really a Great Debate?

I don’t think so. When one worries about what might happen, one is necessarily worrying about things that have not happened and may never happen. What are you complaining about?

First, remember that it’s only been a week and a half. Erosion of civil liberties usually takes much longer than that. It starts small, and gets bigger. I think it’s perfectly warranted to warn that we should be careful about this and not, well, overreact.

The same goes about the other areas. Why haven’t we started bombing Afghanistan? Well, for one thing, our military wasn’t in place. It’s moving there now. It’s a perfect time to warn that we need to be discriminate.

As far as this one:

Define “they.” There have, indeed, been a number of incidents across the country in which people have firebombed or grafitied (is that a word?) Muslim mosques or attacked Muslims in other ways.

All in all, yes, it is perfectly valid to warn against overreacting. If you wait until it’s already happened, it’s pretty much too late.

In Cleveland, 39 acts of violence against our substantial Middle-Eastern population have been reported to the police. It is likely that many more violent acts have gone unreported. Thus, Middle-Easterners have already suffered racial/ethnic profiling and violence in Cleveland and it is neither premature or overreacting to warn against painting these individuals with an “enemy brush”.

From an american perspective afghanistan is a huge terrorist training school under the Taliban and it seems likely that the US will invade. This is not simply about catching and punishing the perpatrators but also will attempt to eliminate the long term risk. I think the Taliban are perceived to have a weak hold on the country and the US will take this opportunity to usher in a change in management.

As for who is over reacting: no one is yet, we are simply discussing what is an appropriate response. There are many, including people within the administration, arguing for extreme measures. Others believe this would be an over reaction. It is called debate.

There’s plenty of overreacting going on right now. The trillion dollar flight of corporate investors from Wall street goes well beyond a reasonable response to short term economic uncertainty. Millions of americans are now unwilling to get on an airplane. There is a lot of overeacting going on just now, and not much evidence that it won’t be extended to include US foreign policies.

Too, overreaction can be a good thing. In 1999 people overreacted to the Millennium “bug,” and nothing happened. Could the response have been less extensive witht he same efficacy? Maybe. The fact remains that very few systems crashed during the rollover.

True that few crashed, but there were a lot more glitches than the media reported or even knew about. The work that was done prior definitely helped keep it from being worse.

stoid

Sure the overreaction was good for stopping the Millennium bug, but what else suffered because of that? There are bugs that happen all the time for various reasons. If an overreaction was made then other bugs could have been fixed in the time that was spent on the bug.

Nor any evidence that it will.