Is passive or active national security more effective?

Question

I am using the words "passive" and "active" for lack of better words.

I define passive national security as spending the money at home to improve: airline security, Coast Guard resources, border control, intelligence, etc.

I define active security to mean sending troops overseas to actively root out and destroy terrorist cells in other countries before they have a chance to infiltrate our coutry's borders.

As always, there is only so much money to go around. Which do you feel is more effective?

To me, it seems like spending money at home will keep more money here, while being more efficient (fuel and other resource costs increase as we move elsewhere) and creating more jobs. It would also reduce casualties in other countries (both U.S. and foreign).

So far, I believe we have spent 500 bil on the war and have doubled the casualties that were lost in 9/11. Am I missing anything?

Answer 1

yes you are.
Passive defence forces you to protect every inch of the country- and there are milions of potential targets. Look at the suicide bombers in Iraq or Afghanistan- any small group of people will do as a target, and even a single soldier is OK. You simply can't provide a strong enough security everywhere, and keep them alert 24/7 every day for years and years- while the terrorist can rest, sleep, and bide his time in perfect safety.

Active defence means going out after the hideouts, but also after the experts- eg guys who know how to make bombs. Those are few enough, and the amateurs who experiment at bomb making tend to make a short and exciting career...

Active defence means the bad guys have to run and hide, cannot plan anything at liesure. Cannot rest, sleep or set up a workshop in peace. This way THEY get tired- not the defending force

You play football? or soccer? try winning a match by standing right next to the goal posts. Someone ALWAYS gets through, and you cannot retaliate- because all your players are stuck near the goal posts. Forward defence means the attacker can lose the ball even on his own side. he also has to leave men behind to protect his gola. Of course, putting everybody in the attack or everybody in the defence is extremely risky, but a failure to keep some people on the attack means a sure defeat.

Answer 2

No universal rules here. North America and Europe should have very strong security 24/7/365.

If pre-emptive strikes are necessary, then let it be. Bill Clinton fired missiles into Somalia against a suspected nerve-agent factory and Iraq against a WMD threat.

But President Clinton did not terrorize the people of the USA and world by rattling a saber every day like some kind of nut-so dictator.

If we had stayed the h ell out of Iraq, we would be more safe. Islamic militants would be antsy wondering where we would strike, instead of laughing at the tragedy of our loss of 2700 soldiers in a morale-sapping war that we could never win.

The rationale for going into Iraq was to clean out the threat of Nukes. It was never supposed to be an easy victory with no casualties, it was a dirty necessity. Now it is an embarrassment and a waste. It is a loss that should be cut NOW.

If there were no American and British soldiers in Iraq, there would be no suicide insurrgent attacks would there??

Would it not have not been much better to increase troop strength in S. Korea to deter N. Korea from doing what is has done in the last six years under Bush?

Would it not be better to build a satellite-surveillance infrastructure over the Middle-east? Use cruise missiles to knock out targets with no danger to our troops? At $1million apiece, one-thousand missles could be launched in complete safety for every billion spent. The inital Iraq budget was $80 billion. Thats 80 thousand missiles worth. To date, Iraq has cost four times what was budgeted! One third of a million missiles could have been deployed!!!

Answer 3

It's very important not to attack the wrong country. If we had bombed china after pearl harbor that would have been bad. And now we see how bad when Bush invaded Iraq to stop the terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt (republicans may need to look up what countries the 9/11 hijackers came from, as they have clearly forgotten.)

Answer 4

Yes, the less we have to depend on foreign resources the better off we are; the US has the largest oil reserve in the entire world, it's just we can't touch it because the Obama administration is not allowing drilling on federal land. Wouldn't it be nice to not to have to deal with the Middle East countries and Venezuela that's basically run by a dictator for oil?

Answer 5

I support Bush's policy of pre-emptive war all the way. Only the stupidest of liberals can't see the connection between Iraq and the terrorists. The terrorists see it clearly enough. They've made the defeat of the US in Iraq its #1 priority.

Answer 6

pre-emptive strikes are an oxy-moron