Right Pundits

How realistically, can we create impermeable security? Technically impossible. Every American has a subsurface pipeline or electric substation or chemical plant or agricultural distribution center or container port or other valuable “target” within a reasonable distance from his or her home.

And if we look at our changing demographics as a nation, we can’t rely on racial, ethic, or religious profiling to identify every potential threat.

The only security is to create n environment in which everyone would look forward to the benefits of prosperity and despise those who, through destructive acts, would seek to destroy this potential.

I went all the way to Germany and almost all the way back with a brand new bottle of hair gel. It got taken by a FEMALE security person as I was leaving the Detroit airport to fly the rest of the way home.

I’m very suspicious about that …..

Mickey says: “What are you going to tell the terrorists after they kill 3000 people â€?

“We despise you cuz ya didnt go with the flow�?

Just because we haven’t been attacked again doesn’t necessarily mean our current tactics, and that’s what they are, tactics, are working. What’s our long term strategy? Find them in their caves and kill them?

We have a whole bunch of potential terrorists, and if they weren’t before, they are now, in Guantanamo. And each has probably brothers and uncles. And every one of the victims of the “collateral damage” in Afghanistan and Iraq has the same. What we’ve been doing has created a multiplier effect that discarding liquids and taking your shoes off before you board a plane can’t address.

Our blunt approach can’t work in the long run.

I’ll just tell this little story for what its worth, I found it interesting. I went to law school at the University of Utah and it was right around the time that Salt Lake City was holding the Olympics (2002). Of course, so soon after 9/11 there was a large concern about terrorism, etc.

We had a guy give a presentation in one of my classes who was in charge of security for the Italy games for 2006. One of the things he mentioned that always stood out in my mind is that here in the US, he always felt so unsafe an insecure. In Italy (and the rest of Europe I gather) they have much stronger institutional controls to ensure safety, including things like national ID cards, etc. He was baffled how we could walk around all day and not be paranoid that someone was going to blow us up.

So,despite the Franklin quote (he says that those who would give up a little freedom for a little security shall deserve neither) I think that there is a balance. In the US we place a higher value on social liberty and civil rights then in Europe. Thus, we do not have the same security measure they do. Part of that is due to our experience, we have been largely sheltered from the troubles of the rest of the world, while countries like Spain and Italy have dealt with domestic terrorism for a long time now. At what point is the tipping balance, I don’t know?

All links are

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=29040

“By Kathleen T. Rhem
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, April 30, 2003 – Terrorist attacks around the globe in 2002 were down 44 percent from the previous year, State Department experts announced here today.
There were 199 international terrorist attacks last year, compared to 355 in 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell said in introducing the department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, Ambassador Cofer Black. �

http://www.newsweek.com/id/138508

“The Simon Fraser study points out that all three of these data sets have a common problem. They count civilian casualties from the war in Iraq as deaths caused by terrorism. This makes no sense. Iraq is a war zone, and as in other war zones around the world, many of those killed are civilians.

But if you set aside the war there, terrorism has in fact gone way down over the past five years. In both the START and MIPT data, non-Iraq deaths from terrorism have declined by more than 40 percent since 2001. (The NCTC says the number has stayed roughly the same, but that too is because of a peculiar method of counting.) In the only other independent analysis of terrorism data, the U.S.-based IntelCenter published a study in mid-2007 that examined “significant� attacks launched by Al Qaeda over the past 10 years. It came to the conclusion that the number of Islamist attacks had declined 65 percent from a high point in 2004, and fatalities from such attacks had declined by 90 percent.�

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/05/30/f-terrorism-decline.html

“A new report from Simon Fraser University in B.C. concludes there has been a sharp decline in the incidence of terrorist violence around the world, challenging assumptions that the global threat has been increasing.

The Human Security Brief 2007 says fatalities from terrorism have decreased by some 40 per cent in recent months. It also concludes the terrorist network associated with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden has suffered a dramatic collapse in popular support in the Muslim world.

The study analyzed data produced by three U.S.-based terrorism research centres: the National Counterterrorism Centre; the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism; and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland.

By your logic other Brian it seems we have been doing it all wrong ?
I guess we should let all violent sadistic criminal and terrorist acts go unpunished ?

That out to be enough reliable sources coming from many perspectives to show that while our currebnt tactics are not perfect, they are working.

Mickey, I object to your getting personal. That said, and asking the forgiveness of the other participants of this forum, let ME get personal for a moment. How old are you, 30? You think you know something about the world, war, and humanity.

I’ve been in the foxhole. Literally.

I’ll tell you straight up, success depends on the willingness to trust your brother with your life and be willing to give yours for his. I’ve learned over time that the only solution for humanity is to make the brotherhood global.

And if you don’t believe “that ALL men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights,” regardless of their country of birth or residence or political beliefs or religion or language or skin color or sexual preferences or handicap, then I challenge you to call yourself American.

Oh, and Mickey, when you’ve been where I’ve been, done what I’ve done, and seen what I’ve seen, the police are amateurs. Do you really think their mere intimidating presence can deter a trained and highly motivated adversary? Give me a break.

Go back to your mama, little boy.

Yea well, you need to go back to your fox hole and learn a few lessons.
Its hard to believe that someone who has been in the face of our enemy could be so naive as to the mindset.
I have done more in the first 20 of my fifty years than you probably will in a lifetime.
Have worked closely with police for the last 20 as a security advisor and informant.
I have been dead, shot at numerous times, stabbed and been to hell and back.
I worked a few blocks from the trade towers in the 80s, my friends fince` died on flight 93.

let me tell you something.
If Clinton had done hid job we would not have to run around picking his mess up behind him in Afghanistan and Iraq.
911 was planned on Clintons watch after one unsuccessful attempt to topple the towers in which HE DID N O T H I N G !!!! and numerous (4)other attacks on our facilities and troops across the globe. That pales in comparison to one note on Bushs desk.
Would you like me to go on showing you the way and reminding you of all the failed policies that you embrace as have been tried before and failed ?

“The only security is to create n environment in which everyone would look forward to the benefits of prosperity ”

You dont get it do you ?

It is that exact environment that radical islam despises.
They despise our freedom, our tolerance, our capitalism, our religious freedom and our benefits of prosperity right to our whole way of life.
And you seem to think that will embrace it if we just give them a little taste of it.

Yea its personal, too bad.
Your personality of naivety has evolved in the last couple of debates and you are clearly not with the program.
From you misgiuded delusion that the govenment should be the stewards of our wealth to the idiotic assertion that radical islam will emrace us if we just coddle them a little more.
Oh, and lets not forget the ridiculous premise that not eating meat will somehow save the planet and feed the starving.
You sound like some little kumbaya idealist without a clue.

There will never be a “global brotherhood of humanity”
As much as we wish for that to happen there are just too many variables in ideals, religions, customs and cultures for that too ever happen.

Keep listening to your John Lennons “Imagine” and leave the serious, realistic debates to the adults