Is the US overreacting to terrorist threat and dooming itself?

Question

“We’re on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront,” Bush said last week, “and we’ll accept nothing less than complete victory.”

"When you define victory that way, when you treat one attack from a disorganized band of fanatics as a menace to civilization, you’ve doomed yourself to defeat and caused more damage than they could."

John Tierney, NYTimes op ed Sep 12 2006

Answer 1

There are two huge flaws in Tierney's logic.

First a small band with a few nuclear weapons can kill tens of millions of people. It would be easy for Islamic terrorists to bring nuclear weapons into the US. We dont' even check for them at most border outposts. They could easily hire a coyote to smuggle them and thier cargo of "opium" into the US. Of course they would execute the coyote and any illegals that made the journey with them. They could bring it into the US accross the Canadian border. Not hard to get much of anything into Canada. They could use a small sub or even a fishing boat. They could hire drug smugglers. Or they might drive right into the US thorugh the Mexican border with it. Last I saw gieger counters were not part of standard gear for Border agents. If they put enough lead around the critter and disguised it as a shipment of batteries the gieger counter wouldn't even detect it.

If they got ahold of 3 for example. Took out LA, NY and maybe Chicago or Houston. If they took out DC few would be all that mad LOL. Lets just say Chicago. Direct effects of a small war head would be several million dead. Tens of millions injured with over 2 million dieing of radiation poisoning within weeks of the blast. All of the West coast would be shrouded in fallout. This would sicken millions and cause many millions more to evacuate. Depending on the winds the main cloud from the LA blast might head inland into the US or down to Mexico or up to Canada or out into the Pacific. The nuclear blast might be enough to rupture the fault and or create tidal waves that battered cities like San Diego or might even send a wave out into the Pacific proper hitting Hawai and Japan. Depends on the size, whether the blast triggered earth quakes and where the detonation was.

East coast would be hit worse. Much of our fishing industry is located up in New England. US fishing would end almost completely. If the third blast was in Houston instead of Chicago then it WOULD end completely. There is less likelyhood of tidal waves but they are still possible. The fallout would deffinitely affect Eastern Canada and the whole New England area. Northern NJ would be abandoned. At least what was left of it. Paniced evactualation and fallout would leave a real mess there. With such a huge percentage of the US population living in the New England area the congestion and tension would leave it's own bloodbath. If the fallout started heading for the panic'd evacuees massive bloodshed would likely result. Even if the fallout went to see thousands would die in the ecacuation. Wherever the evacuees went would be a path of destruction. No roadways, towns, police forces, national guard could create orderly traffic for that many people moving with sch short notice and great fear. The evac itself would cost more in damage than the bombs would do. It would also leave tens of millions of displaced people, many of them exposed to enough radiation that they will require treatment. Hospitals will be swamped with injuries from accidents, violence and other medical emergancies. Food will be very difficult to aquire along the way. Gas impossible. Large numbers will wind up proceeding on foot and often looting every store they come accross.

If Chicago was also hit it'd force the New England ecacuees into a tighter funnel heading South assuming the fallout didn't go South. If it did that would leave a narrow band of safe travel unless the Chicago fallout traveled East into the refugees. Then they would have nowhere to and would get exposed to the Chicago fallout. Live in it actually, stir it up as they moved along.

Tidal waves are likely in the great lakes from the Chicago blast. The lakes would be poisoned and fishing and comerce would cease on them for many years. Survivors from the densly packed urban areas around the lakes would then flee south, possibly running into the refugees from New England which would utterly destroy the areas they crossed.

If Houston were hit that would pretty much wipe out our international ports. The ports in the Carolinas might be able to stay open. With LA and SoCal gone and New York gone, if Houston our other massive port was also wiped out then we would not be importing very much. Boston would be closed by the New York blast. San Franciso would probably stay open but constant fall out fears would make it a ghost town. The earth quakes that might radiate out from the LA blast might heavily damage SF as well. So it would not be an efficient port. If Houston were hit it'd also wipe out most of our refineries. This would agrvate an already extreme gas crisis.

The detonations would assuredly be timed to go off within an hour of each other. So there would be no possibility to evacuate big cities. No way to find those things unless a terrorist were caught and gave up the information. The net effect would be to completely remove all order in the US for at least a couple weeks. Martial law would likely be declared. Economically we'd be obliterated. We would be suddenly without a major source of imports so many of our manufactured goods would no longer be availible. There would be runs on banks and people heading for the hills in masses. The death toll from riots, martial law, the blasts, evacuations and probably fighting between factions would be at least 60 million dead. Little over a third directly from blasts or imediate fallout. Most of the dead would be from evacuations, panic, revenge against Arabs and Arab looking people (Indians for example might be accidentally and unfairly targeted) and insurections. Fanatical Muslim factions here in the US would use the chaos to strike and local resistance to them would turn bloody. There would likely be masecres from both sides with tens of thousands dead just from localized Muslim fanatic's activities.

Ok that's just a few nukes. 3 or 4 of them. Pakistan has more than that. What if Iran became a nuclear power? Can you imagion the devastation 10 nukes could produce in the US?

What is far more dangerous is chemical and biological weapons. People tend to disreguard chemical but lets go with this scenerio. Exterior terrorists with help of internal terrorists create a slow acting poison. In 2 years they could have an army of agents working at or with access too the water supply of hundreds of US cities. Releasing the slow acting poison over a period of a week then waiting for the 2 weeks or so for accumulated toxins to kill victems. Death toll possibly as much as 100 million or more. Many do to the panic when a third of the population around them dies with a 24-36 hour window. Even if they found the reason people would still freak out. Chaos would ensue as the rage spun up about the events. Most at risk would be the young and the old. So it would be a population mostly in it's prime that survived the doses or that avoided the city water.

Lets talk about biological weapons. Anthrax is not a big deal. Though if you had enough of it you would see thousands die from exposure to it. What IS a big deal is if terrorists watching for the next ebola breakout were to send martyrs to intentionally infect themselves. Then these people would like a torch spread out accross Europe, Isreal and the US infecting other Martyrs awaiting thier arrival. Little bug bombs could then be arranged to spread bodily fluids accross packed crowds such as those found in crowded downtown areas, mass transit and such. Each of those infected spreading it to others. Through world travel the disease would be worldwide in a day or two. The terrorists who run to the hills leave the rest of thier countryman to face the disease they spread. Something as contagious as Ebola and as deadly could devesate the world. THe ENTIRE world.

What if it mutated? I mean Ebola requires contact with bodily fluids if I remember correctly. What if a more virulent strain came out? One that could spread from a sneeze for example. What if Ebola were crossed genetically with the common cold?

Are these scenarios possible? Yes they are. We are very lucky that none of this has suceeded yet. Primarily the lack of technology has prevented terrorists from doing such. In Japan we got a preview of what COULD happen if terrorists had more technological savvy. What IS happening is that China through North Korea is opening dialogs with terrorist nations. The Chinese could easily supply the necessary technology to make these things happen. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Iraq made many attempts to get them. Iran is attempting to become a nuclear power. So warheads might be easily availible to terrorists.

Back before 9-11 I was trying to tell people about such dangers. While I didn't predict the use of airliners, the fact that terrorists WANT to wipe us off the face of the earth is reason enough to take them very serious. Reason enough to wipe them off the face of the earth. This isn't an issue of maybe you get on a bus one day and get blown up. This is an issue of entire nations ceasing to exist. Possibly 2/3rds of the worlds population dead in a single year. This is serious biz.

Bush and his crew do not understand the levity of the sitution. Nor do the Democrats. These are people who have sworn to kill us. They are not just wanting some peice of land. Not just wanting to be left alone. They want us dead man. Every one of us. That is thier stated goal. We cannot placate them. We cannot negotiate with them. We cannot reason with them. We can kill them or wait for them to kill us.

So I think we've UNDER reacted to terrorism in a big way. 9-11 should have been a huge wakeup call. With assistance from China and from Hugo Chavez's crowd terrorists can go from being technicogical infants to infants with BIG weapons. These are people who are not afraid to die. So Mutual Assured Destruction will not work with them. They actually believe they will go to heaven if they destroy the world.

So while we are bogged down in Iraq the terrorists are plotting the next big thing. Will you be one of the millions who die when they pull it off? Will it be your children? Friends, relitives? We need to go after the terrorists with EVERYTHING we have and not stop until the hint of a terrorist is gone. Until no nation would suffer a terrorist in thier borders for fear we will come to get them. We need to do whatever it takes to elimanate terrorism. The Arabs can do it themselves right now but soon they will no longer be able too. It is not only the Arabs and Muslims we have to be vigilent about.

The choice is to do something about this while we still can or wait until millions die and maybe be able to stop it then. We are NOT doing enough. We need to fight them idealogically, we need to fight them with weapons, we need to hunt them where they hide and make no place in the world safe for terrorists. We need to remove the conditions that ferment terrorists. This means some of what we do will not be popular in the world. It means Americans and others will die. That thousands sacrafice thier lives to save millions is the choice we have.

So no I do not agree that Bush is doing anything usefull against terrorism now. He did initially after 9-11. I think the Democrats have no clue whatsover about how to stop terrorism and worse they are percieved as weak and will encourage it more. We need action not flowery speechs and hand wringing. We need most of all unity in purpose to rid ourselves of terrorism. Lets repeal the Patriot act. Then get serious about hunting terrorism as one nation undevided. We can argue all we want about everything else but lets put down our differences long enough to put down this threat to ours and the worlds very existance.

Answer 2

There is no such thing as victory in this situation, especially the way we are approaching it!!

I am not willing to give up my freedoms, or live in terror of a person who has a personality disorder and is an alcoholic!

If some of us die, that's the price of freedom! If you aren't willing to do that, how can you ask someone else to die for you?

I think most of this completely makes no sense whatsoever!

I think that a few people are getting very rich, and a lot of others are paying the price!!!

Answer 3

Oh hell yeah!!! You can no long have food or water on planes I call that overreacting.

As for dooming themself the human race as a whole has done that for 100s of year. Doom will came one why or another.... You know the sun will explode one of these days. I call that doom.

Answer 4

somethings can never be defeated, the war on drugs how long has that been going on? are we any closer to getting drugs off the street today then 40 years ago? its all about getting paid. prison systems in America are multi-billion dollar businesses, and now the war on terrorism is a multi-billion dollar business

Answer 5

1st off, the NY times now has a rep in NY that runs about the same as a "MAD" magazine. Liberal journalists that are 50 yrs old, and still live at home with MOM work there, so nobody pays much attn. to the NY times (except 8th graders).

You can never get into trouble by over estimating your enemy's power, you can get into trouble "under estimating it" !

Answer 6

Over-reacting, yeah absolutely.

Like when a bee bites you, and you go hunting it and try to destroy its hive. Those bees were'nt going to do anything to you, but now you've screwed their home and they will come after you.

Answer 7

All truth passes through three stages:
First, it is ridiculed;
Second, it is violently opposed; and
Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)