• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

Terrorism v. Hype Poll

Is the threat of Terrorism a real threat or really hyped?

  • Terrorism is an absolutely and totally real threat, no hype at all.

    Votes: 4 23.5%
  • Terrorism is a very serious threat, but there is a little hype

    Votes: 2 11.8%
  • Terrorism is mostly a real threat, but there is big chuck of hype

    Votes: 5 29.4%
  • Terrorism is as much hype as it is real.

    Votes: 2 11.8%
  • Terrorism is more Hype than real threat, but still some threat

    Votes: 3 17.6%
  • Terrorism is almost all hype, but there is a little bit of seriousness to it

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Terrorism is completely hype, Hamsters revolting against their owners en masse is more dangerous

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • Total voters
    17

libertarian_knight

DP Veteran
Joined
Jun 23, 2005
Messages
997
Reaction score
0
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Independent
By asking this I mean in no way to mock or reducde the seriousness of the level of suffering Victims and Survivors of terrorism have faced. Yes people have horribly died as a result of Terrorist Attacks, but I want to get a sense of the people here, as the extent of the threat.
 
libertarian_knight said:
By asking this I mean in no way to mock or reducde the seriousness of the level of suffering Victims and Survivors of terrorism have faced. Yes people have horribly died as a result of Terrorist Attacks, but I want to get a sense of the people here, as the extent of the threat.

I said this: Terrorism is mostly a real threat, but there is big chuck of hype

The September 11th attacks reminded us that there are people out there that hate us. That is terrorism at its worst, and it's very real.

What's going on in Iraq is not the war on terror no matter how much the Bushies want us to believe it. This is the basis for my saying that there is a "big chunk of hype."
 
In 1993, there was a terrorist attack on American soil at the World Trade Center. In 1996, there was a terrorist attack on American soil at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. In 2001, there was a terrorist attack on American soil at the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

That seems like a lot, but are three terrorist attacks in the last fifteen years really worth a prolonged "war on terror"? I agree that we needed to root al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan after 9/11, but that's about it. I realize people were angry at the time, and the resident neocons will accuse me of being short-sighted. I simply ask this: How many hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands of soldiers lives, is it worth to supposedly prevent terrorist attacks (and there's not even any evidence that we're doing that), that frankly are not that common anyway?

Maybe a terrorist attack on American soil every 6-7 years is simply a risk we need to learn to accept.
 
More have died in the phoney 'war on terror' in Iraq than from terrorism.
That's 25,000 Iraqis & 2000 American soldiers & 98 British soldiers.
The hype is from the people that make money from wars on terror

Send Lawyers, Guns and Money:
Lobbying and the Merchants of Death
from the book Washington on $10 million a Day
by Ken Silverstein
Common Courage Press, 1998

"The vast sums allocated each year to the Pentagon-$260 billion in 1997- constitutes the largest gravy train for private interests in the history of mankind.
The scale of the plunder is not the only reason that military lobbyists deserve special scrutiny. When the weapons industry convinces Congress to dole out money for more tanks and planes, a de facto outcome is that less money is left for social programs. The choice truly is between guns and butter.
Yet eight years after the Berlin Wall came down, the defense budget sits at the same level, in real dollars, as it did during the 1950s, the coldest days of the Cold War. It has declined only 23 percent from its all time peak under Ronald Reagan. As of 1997, the U.S. was spending almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined-and internal Defense Department studies show a doubling of the Pentagon's budget over the next twenty years.
The money now being spent on "defense" is completely out of proportion to any credible threat to national security. The United States accounts for about half of all military spending on the planet and with the Soviet Union gone, the gravest "threat" to national security is posed by "rogue" nations such as North Korea, Libya, Iran and Iraq.
The absurdity of this situation is matched only by the absurdity of the military industry's post-Cold War lobbying efforts, which have been greatly increased in order to fend off any threat to its money pipeline. Here's an example of just how ridiculous things have become: A few years ago, it appeared that Congress might kill off a relic of the Cold War, the V-22 Osprey, a vertical lift-off plane whose prime contractors are Boeing and Bell Helicopter. From the perspective of Pentagon porkers and arms makers, the V-22 has special appeal: since it is incapable of carrying any of the military's current inventory of fighting vehicles, it has opened the door to a subsidiary boondoggle, the armored dune buggy. Said buggy, which is capable of attaining speeds of 80 miles per hour, is being designed especially to fit on the V-22.
To help save the plane, lobbyists for the V-22 dreamed up Alyssa, Albert B the Magic Plane, a cartoon book that was distributed to members of Congress. The comic book opens with little Alyssa playing in her backyard with Albert, a stuffed animal who springs to life. The pair dream of attending the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta but grow despondent upon concluding that they won't be able to get to the games by bicycle (too far), truck (no drivers license), boat (no water near Atlanta), the Space Shuttle (not practical), or a variety of other means.
Just as the cuddly duo have reached the point of despair a V22-the "Magic Plane"-lands in the backyard to fly them to Atlanta. After "meeting people from all over the world and learning new games," Alyssa and Albert remember that "daddy would be done fixing the kitchen sink very soon and that they needed to get back home. Alyssa wished again for the Magic Plane to come take them home. And it did!"
The dramatic tale of Alyssa and other lobbying, combined with hefty campaign donations from Boeing and Bell, led Congress to save the V-22. Coming next: The arms makers sign up Barney the Dinosaur to lobby for Star Wars.
The Pentagon's Nightmare Scenario: Budget Cuts
Though the military budget remains in the stratosphere, life has become far more complicated for the arms lobby during the past decade. During the Cold War, the military-industrial complex needed only to point to the Soviet Union, and lawmakers would immediately sign over a check to cover yet another of the Pentagon's gold-plated boondoggles. With the Soviet Bear extinct and China and other future "threats" not yet on line, the public has grown somewhat more reluctant to tolerate Cold War levels of defense spending.
Hence, soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall the arms industry and the Pentagon began invoking the grave threat to national security posed by the "rogue" nations. But this strategy never galvanized the public. As Michael Klare has written in The Nation, "None of the prominent rogues have made any move in recent years to threaten U.S. interests seriously, and periodic claims of major breakthroughs by these states in acquiring nuclear or chemical weapons have rarely amounted to much....Only Iran now appears as a credible enemy...[but it] spends only about 1 percent of what the United States spends on defense [and its] poorly equipped military is a mere shadow of the force assembled by Saddam Hussein in 1990."
By 1997, the Pentagon had grown desperate to find a stand-in for the Red Army, as seen in a secret document prepared by the Air Force University that year and uncovered by journalist Andrew Cockburn. Peering into the second decade of the coming millennium, Air Force soothsayers were pointing to the emergence of a terrifying specter they called The Khan (as in Genghis). By this the "futurists" mean an aggressive China, enlarged by domination of the entire Korean Peninsula, not to mention Japan and possibly Vietnam. The Khan will be an economic superpower and thus able to develop and produce the most advanced forms of weaponry. It therefore follows that U.S. defense spending will have to rise commensurably to defend the West against this ominous Asian monster.
Elsewhere in the Pentagon officials are invoking the menace of "peer competitors," by which they mean China (though not yet grown to Khan dimensions) and, bizarrely, Russia. Yet others talk of GET, which stands for Generic Emerging Threat-a menace as yet undefined but against which the U.S. had better arm itself.
The Pet Rock Lobby
In addition to its failure to drum up a new "threat" to national security, the arms industry lobby is burdened by the shoddy nature of some of its wares. The primary cause here is that the chief mission of the U.S. defense industry is not to protect national security, but to inflate contractor profits.
This is seen in the case of McDonnell Douglas's hopeless C17 cargo plane. Like many current Pentagon projects, the C-17 gained momentum following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when the Carter administration pushed for a wave of new defense spending to counter the Red Menace. The Pentagon initially planned to buy 210 C-17s for $32 billion-$152 million apiece-but in 1990 cut the order to 120 planes for $36 billion-$333 million apiece. In 1993, the program was further reduced to 40 planes, with the per copy cost soaring to $700 million.
Since the original justification for the aircraft has vanished, the Pentagon and McDonnell Douglas now insist that the cargo plane is essential to national security because of its alleged ability to move personnel and tons of equipment to distant combat zones. Just as important is the C-17's much hyped capacity to land on short, dirt airstrips, and thus handle the dangerous task of re-supplying advance troops.
In reality, the C-17 is a threat to national security, and to anyone who is forced to ride it. A 1992 Congressional Research Service report detailed a few of the problems experienced by this monstrous boondoggle, including multiple problems with the software for the C-17's nineteen on-board computers. The C-17 also has a mysterious center-of-gravity problem, which makes take-off extremely dangerous unless the plane is fully loaded. When the aircraft is empty, sources say, Air Force crews keep two 7,950 pound cement blocs-known as the "pet rocks"-in the craft's forward area to ensure safe take-off This means that the C-17 will either fly into action pre-loaded with nearly eight tons of cement or advance troops will be forced to tote along two "pet rocks" to load onto the plane after removing its cargo.
Even worse, the C-17 is incapable of carrying out its assigned task of forward re-supply. The enormous aircraft needs at least 4,000 feet of runway to land, 1,000 more than the Air Force claims. A former Pentagon official tells me that the C-17 cannot come down on a dirt airstrip because its jet engines will "ingest" earth. "You could land it on a concrete strip but if you try to put it down on dirt you'll end up with some very expensive repair hills," says this person, who points out that advance combat troops are not normally anywhere near a concrete landing strip.
This same person says that a used Boeing 747, which can be bought and modified for less than $100 million, can carry three times as much cargo as the C- 17 and twice as far. In fact, the Pentagon's old twin engine C-123, which was used in Vietnam, could perform the C-17's job perfectly well Unfortunately, the Pentagon hated that plane because it was inexpensive and lacked the glamour of a jet-engine aircraft. As the source points out, "this golden turkey represents a sizable chunk of the GNP and can be blown to smithereens by a $22 mortar shell."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Political_Corruption/LobbyingMerchantsDeath.html
 
Post a snippet and a link, I read that already on another thread, it's annoying and could kill threads, should be counted as spamming.
 
I voted that terrorism is mostly a real threat, but there is a "big chuck of hype" from the Bush administration. The hype was the threat exaggeration in pre-war Iraq, and also mislabeling the fuel that helps ignite terrorism as being an "ideology of hatred," with no other reason than they supposedly hate our freedoms and hate democracy.
 
There should be another option, although it would end up "wordy"...

Terrorism is a MAJOR threat, but Americans are too busy watching "American Idol", taking pictures on their cell phones, and wondering whether or not Katie & Tom's baby will be a boy or a girl, so it needs to by hyped to get the proper attention it deserves.
 
cnredd said:
There should be another option, although it would end up "wordy"...

Terrorism is a MAJOR threat, but Americans are too busy watching "American Idol", taking pictures on their cell phones, and wondering whether or not Katie & Tom's baby will be a boy or a girl, so it needs to by hyped to get the proper attention it deserves.

"Man is not compelled to act until there is some percieved uneasiness." -Ludwig von Mises.

That being said, Americans then feel the Uneasiness of going without American Idol, is greater than that of Terrorism. Now you I assume think the Problem is that American People are ignorant of the danger. I disagree, we are one fearful ****ing society. Danger everywhere, Bad men, hooded men, claoked men, turbaned men, drugs, crime, sex fiends, kidnappers, angry third worlders, and bad singers.

I think the uneasiness of terrorism is less than going without American Idiot, err Idol, and americans know this, thus the hype.
 
robin said:
More have died in the phoney 'war on terror' in Iraq than from terrorism.
That's 25,000 Iraqis & 2000 American soldiers & 98 British soldiers.
The hype is from the people that make money from wars on terror

Send Lawyers, Guns and Money:
Lobbying and the Merchants of Death
from the book Washington on $10 million a Day
by Ken Silverstein
Common Courage Press, 1998

"The vast sums allocated each year to the Pentagon-$260 billion in 1997- constitutes the largest gravy train for private interests in the history of mankind.
The scale of the plunder is not the only reason that military lobbyists deserve special scrutiny. When the weapons industry convinces Congress to dole out money for more tanks and planes, a de facto outcome is that less money is left for social programs. The choice truly is between guns and butter.
Yet eight years after the Berlin Wall came down, the defense budget sits at the same level, in real dollars, as it did during the 1950s, the coldest days of the Cold War. It has declined only 23 percent from its all time peak under Ronald Reagan. As of 1997, the U.S. was spending almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined-and internal Defense Department studies show a doubling of the Pentagon's budget over the next twenty years.
The money now being spent on "defense" is completely out of proportion to any credible threat to national security. The United States accounts for about half of all military spending on the planet and with the Soviet Union gone, the gravest "threat" to national security is posed by "rogue" nations such as North Korea, Libya, Iran and Iraq.
The absurdity of this situation is matched only by the absurdity of the military industry's post-Cold War lobbying efforts, which have been greatly increased in order to fend off any threat to its money pipeline. Here's an example of just how ridiculous things have become: A few years ago, it appeared that Congress might kill off a relic of the Cold War, the V-22 Osprey, a vertical lift-off plane whose prime contractors are Boeing and Bell Helicopter. From the perspective of Pentagon porkers and arms makers, the V-22 has special appeal: since it is incapable of carrying any of the military's current inventory of fighting vehicles, it has opened the door to a subsidiary boondoggle, the armored dune buggy. Said buggy, which is capable of attaining speeds of 80 miles per hour, is being designed especially to fit on the V-22.
To help save the plane, lobbyists for the V-22 dreamed up Alyssa, Albert B the Magic Plane, a cartoon book that was distributed to members of Congress. The comic book opens with little Alyssa playing in her backyard with Albert, a stuffed animal who springs to life. The pair dream of attending the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta but grow despondent upon concluding that they won't be able to get to the games by bicycle (too far), truck (no drivers license), boat (no water near Atlanta), the Space Shuttle (not practical), or a variety of other means.
Just as the cuddly duo have reached the point of despair a V22-the "Magic Plane"-lands in the backyard to fly them to Atlanta. After "meeting people from all over the world and learning new games," Alyssa and Albert remember that "daddy would be done fixing the kitchen sink very soon and that they needed to get back home. Alyssa wished again for the Magic Plane to come take them home. And it did!"
The dramatic tale of Alyssa and other lobbying, combined with hefty campaign donations from Boeing and Bell, led Congress to save the V-22. Coming next: The arms makers sign up Barney the Dinosaur to lobby for Star Wars.
The Pentagon's Nightmare Scenario: Budget Cuts
Though the military budget remains in the stratosphere, life has become far more complicated for the arms lobby during the past decade. During the Cold War, the military-industrial complex needed only to point to the Soviet Union, and lawmakers would immediately sign over a check to cover yet another of the Pentagon's gold-plated boondoggles. With the Soviet Bear extinct and China and other future "threats" not yet on line, the public has grown somewhat more reluctant to tolerate Cold War levels of defense spending.
Hence, soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall the arms industry and the Pentagon began invoking the grave threat to national security posed by the "rogue" nations. But this strategy never galvanized the public. As Michael Klare has written in The Nation, "None of the prominent rogues have made any move in recent years to threaten U.S. interests seriously, and periodic claims of major breakthroughs by these states in acquiring nuclear or chemical weapons have rarely amounted to much....Only Iran now appears as a credible enemy...[but it] spends only about 1 percent of what the United States spends on defense [and its] poorly equipped military is a mere shadow of the force assembled by Saddam Hussein in 1990."
By 1997, the Pentagon had grown desperate to find a stand-in for the Red Army, as seen in a secret document prepared by the Air Force University that year and uncovered by journalist Andrew Cockburn. Peering into the second decade of the coming millennium, Air Force soothsayers were pointing to the emergence of a terrifying specter they called The Khan (as in Genghis). By this the "futurists" mean an aggressive China, enlarged by domination of the entire Korean Peninsula, not to mention Japan and possibly Vietnam. The Khan will be an economic superpower and thus able to develop and produce the most advanced forms of weaponry. It therefore follows that U.S. defense spending will have to rise commensurably to defend the West against this ominous Asian monster.
Elsewhere in the Pentagon officials are invoking the menace of "peer competitors," by which they mean China (though not yet grown to Khan dimensions) and, bizarrely, Russia. Yet others talk of GET, which stands for Generic Emerging Threat-a menace as yet undefined but against which the U.S. had better arm itself.
The Pet Rock Lobby
In addition to its failure to drum up a new "threat" to national security, the arms industry lobby is burdened by the shoddy nature of some of its wares. The primary cause here is that the chief mission of the U.S. defense industry is not to protect national security, but to inflate contractor profits.
This is seen in the case of McDonnell Douglas's hopeless C17 cargo plane. Like many current Pentagon projects, the C-17 gained momentum following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when the Carter administration pushed for a wave of new defense spending to counter the Red Menace. The Pentagon initially planned to buy 210 C-17s for $32 billion-$152 million apiece-but in 1990 cut the order to 120 planes for $36 billion-$333 million apiece. In 1993, the program was further reduced to 40 planes, with the per copy cost soaring to $700 million.
Since the original justification for the aircraft has vanished, the Pentagon and McDonnell Douglas now insist that the cargo plane is essential to national security because of its alleged ability to move personnel and tons of equipment to distant combat zones. Just as important is the C-17's much hyped capacity to land on short, dirt airstrips, and thus handle the dangerous task of re-supplying advance troops.
In reality, the C-17 is a threat to national security, and to anyone who is forced to ride it. A 1992 Congressional Research Service report detailed a few of the problems experienced by this monstrous boondoggle, including multiple problems with the software for the C-17's nineteen on-board computers. The C-17 also has a mysterious center-of-gravity problem, which makes take-off extremely dangerous unless the plane is fully loaded. When the aircraft is empty, sources say, Air Force crews keep two 7,950 pound cement blocs-known as the "pet rocks"-in the craft's forward area to ensure safe take-off This means that the C-17 will either fly into action pre-loaded with nearly eight tons of cement or advance troops will be forced to tote along two "pet rocks" to load onto the plane after removing its cargo.
Even worse, the C-17 is incapable of carrying out its assigned task of forward re-supply. The enormous aircraft needs at least 4,000 feet of runway to land, 1,000 more than the Air Force claims. A former Pentagon official tells me that the C-17 cannot come down on a dirt airstrip because its jet engines will "ingest" earth. "You could land it on a concrete strip but if you try to put it down on dirt you'll end up with some very expensive repair hills," says this person, who points out that advance combat troops are not normally anywhere near a concrete landing strip.
This same person says that a used Boeing 747, which can be bought and modified for less than $100 million, can carry three times as much cargo as the C- 17 and twice as far. In fact, the Pentagon's old twin engine C-123, which was used in Vietnam, could perform the C-17's job perfectly well Unfortunately, the Pentagon hated that plane because it was inexpensive and lacked the glamour of a jet-engine aircraft. As the source points out, "this golden turkey represents a sizable chunk of the GNP and can be blown to smithereens by a $22 mortar shell."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Political_Corruption/LobbyingMerchantsDeath.html


Your analogy is false in its simplicity, think about it this way if we decided the amount which would have been lost in blood and treasure that would have to be lost in WW2 in relation to those who died and the treasure lost in Pearl Harbor as a factor to keep us out of the war then America would surely not have gone to war, however, consider the consequences of that inaction, consider all that would have been lost in not defeating Japan and Germany.

For your analogy to have bearing it must take into account the future costs of lack of action not the immediate costs of war.
 
Last edited:
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
For your analogy to have bearing it must take into account the future costs of lack of action not the immediate costs of war.
That is the thrust of the discussion which some do not take into consideration...I've paraphrased this before...

The options are NOT a) some die now & b) no one dies now...

The options are a)some die now & b)many more die later...

Avoiding this war will lead to a larger war....This is "small potatos" compared to what the situation would be if we continued to appease and apologize...

Putting your hands over your eyes does not make the situation go away...
 
cnredd said:
That is the thrust of the discussion which some do not take into consideration...I've paraphrased this before...

The options are NOT a) some die now & b) no one dies now...

The options are a)some die now & b)many more die later...

Avoiding this war will lead to a larger war....This is "small potatos" compared to what the situation would be if we continued to appease and apologize...

Putting your hands over your eyes does not make the situation go away...

I disagree with the sentiment, and agree with the grammar. Some people die now, and more will still die later, in a larger war. c) both a & b
 
This is "small potatos" compared to what the situation would be if we continued to appease and apologize...
Why do you interpret "understanding America's role in fueling terrorist hatred" as "appease and apologize"? It seems like America can't accept any responsibility, because people spin that to mean sole responsibility instead. Make just one reference to any American foreign policy mistake, and somehow that's blaming America for the whole damn thing. :confused:
 
Kandahar said:
In 1993, there was a terrorist attack on American soil at the World Trade Center. In 1996, there was a terrorist attack on American soil at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. In 2001, there was a terrorist attack on American soil at the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

That seems like a lot, but are three terrorist attacks in the last fifteen years really worth a prolonged "war on terror"?

The U.S.S. Cole, American embassy bombings and countless other attacks that didn't necessarily occur on "American soil" should also be taken into account.
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
Your analogy is false in its simplicity, think about it this way if we decided the amount which would have been lost in blood and treasure that would have to be lost in WW2 in relation to those who died and the treasure lost in Pearl Harbor as a factor to keep us out of the war then America would surely not have gone to war, however, consider the consequences of that inaction, consider all that would have been lost in not defeating Japan and Germany.

For your analogy to have bearing it must take into account the future costs of lack of action not the immediate costs of war.
Your analogy is flawed. Japan had a head that could be removed & a geographical centre, namely Tokyo.
This is not the case with this politicised mutation of Islam known as Wahabi. It has no centre & no boundaries & no head. Bin Laden is just one of many. The war in Iraq is irrelevant to Al Quaeda. They are diffuse throught the world in places such as Morroco, Eritrea, Somalia, Pakistan, England etc.
How can you fight an ideology. Least of all in Iraq which is not even where the terrorists came from.
 
Last edited:
The Real McCoy said:
The U.S.S. Cole, American embassy bombings and countless other attacks that didn't necessarily occur on "American soil" should also be taken into account.

If that's the case, then we should also take into account the attacks on Americans in Iraq. Factoring them in, it would seem that the war in Iraq has greatly AGGRAVATED terrorism against Americans rather than reduced it. This is one way I think that the prolonged "war on terror" has a great deal of hype; there weren't any anti-American terrorist groups in Iraq prior to the war, and Saddam's contacts with them were minimal at best.

So either we count attacks on Americans abroad, or we don't. I'm hard pressed to find a meaningful distinction between the attacks on Americans in Iraq, and the attacks on Americans off the coast of Yemen.
 
robin said:
Your analogy is flawed. Japan had a head that could be removed & a geographical centre, namely Tokyo.
This is not the case with this politicised mutation of Islam known as Wahabi. It has no centre & no boundaries & no head. Bin Laden is just one of many. The war in Iraq is irrelevant to Al Quaeda. They are diffuse throught the world in places such as Morroco, Eritrea, Somalia, Pakistan, England etc.
How can you fight an ideology. Least of all in Iraq which is not even where the terrorists came from.

This is the problem. Al-Qa'ida doesn't exist as we know it. It is not some organization which we can take down by getting bin Laden or Zarqawi. The enemy we are fighting is an extremist Islamic ideology and no amount of weaponry can defeat it. We're looking at a war of ideas.
 
Columbusite said:
This is the problem. Al-Qa'ida doesn't exist as we know it. It is not some organization which we can take down by getting bin Laden or Zarqawi. The enemy we are fighting is an extremist Islamic ideology and no amount of weaponry can defeat it. We're looking at a war of ideas.

Wars of ideas can't effectively be fought on the battlefield, so what we should do is drop 2000lb libraries on the Iraqis, and typewriters, computers, printers, copiers and fax machines.
 
Terrorism is completely hype, Hamsters revolting against their owners en masse is more dangerous.


Whoever's responsible for the single vote for that choice is brain dead.
 
The Real McCoy said:
Terrorism is completely hype, Hamsters revolting against their owners en masse is more dangerous.


Whoever's responsible for the single vote for that choice is brain dead.

I didn't make that vote, but I feel the same (but I didn't use the same literary flair) about it being no hype at all. Code Orange... sheesh
 
libertarian_knight said:
I didn't make that vote, but I feel the same (but I didn't use the same literary flair) about it being no hype at all. Code Orange... sheesh

Agreed....
 
With anything involving media and hype I think its extremely important to, if so inclined, attempt to seperate fact from fiction regarding the reports of mass media outlets.

Thus It seems quite apparent the term islamo-fascists has been thrown around far too much by people who have no business in attempting to understand the implications of such words... let alone attempt to summarize the virtue of a religious belief and a political ideology and deem it a form of blanket terrorism. That is waging a war that cannot be one physically nor semantically.

I don't know when the media and the professional journalists became Historians and Political Science experts... and I don't know when the average American had started confiding in them as such... But I think there is little question as to who has caused much more hype and terror than is necessary; The media.

The quiet war, the war of idea, is the epitome of our downfall in these conflicts.
 
Kandahar said:
In 1993, there was a terrorist attack on American soil at the World Trade Center. In 1996, there was a terrorist attack on American soil at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. In 2001, there was a terrorist attack on American soil at the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

That seems like a lot, but are three terrorist attacks in the last fifteen years really worth a prolonged "war on terror"? I agree that we needed to root al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan after 9/11, but that's about it. I realize people were angry at the time, and the resident neocons will accuse me of being short-sighted. I simply ask this: How many hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands of soldiers lives, is it worth to supposedly prevent terrorist attacks (and there's not even any evidence that we're doing that), that frankly are not that common anyway?

Maybe a terrorist attack on American soil every 6-7 years is simply a risk we need to learn to accept.

If I bombed your house three separate times and killed three of your family members, would there really be a problem, or would it mostly be hype?

'tel-yu-wut, I wouldn't stand for anyone bombing my house more than once. Now, bombing the world trade center, literally taking tens of thousands of lives...should that be taken seriously? I vote yes.

But I know nothing about terrorism. So I didn't vote in this poll.
 
Back
Top Bottom