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Defending The Skies Against Congress And The Elderly
theodp writes "After watching a burly airport screener search her lymphoma-stricken father, forcing the frail and faltering 78-year-old to hand over his oxygen meter, stand at attention with arms spread for a wand search, take off the Velcro strap shoes that he'd struggled to put on, and strain to keep his balance as his belt was tugged repeatedly, a Newsweek columnist wonders: have we lost our common sense when it comes to passenger screening?" An anonymous reader writes "CNN reported that Kennedy wasn't alone in being listed in the airport watch list as reported in a Slashdot article. Rep. John Lewis, D - Georgia, a nine-term congressman, has been stopped many times because his name appeared on an airline watch list as told to Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on border security. He contacted the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security and executives at various airlines in an effort to get his name off the list, but failed. Instead, he received a letter from the TSA indicating he has cleared an identity check with the agency even though he might still be subject to extra security checks."
Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, and John Lewis... any republicans on this list?
An elderly man with medical devices that include metal components would make an excellent suicide bomber. The metal components of his bomb? "Oh, that's my pacemaker/air filter/cancer thingamajig." Bomb dog smells something? "Oh, I take these tablets of such and such for my heart." He's not suspicious in the least no matter how suspicious he's acting. Plus, he doesn't have much time and wouldn't mind as much giving up his life for some radical cause. Keep up the good work, men!
I think it's really dumb that pilots are frequently stopped. My dad is a pilot, and sometimes he flies one way trips on other airlines. He has to do that in order to get to whereever the company plane is so that he can fly it. People with one way tickets frequently come up on security lists, so my dad and other pilots are searched very often. Shouldn't the pilots not have to put up with this? As much as he flies one way, it really annoys my dad...We need a separate system to deal with pilots and flight attendants.
I just returned from a trip to the Middle East via commercial airlines - I was seached more times than I can recall, and I must have shown my passport to at least a dozen folks - the really stupid thing is that the people checking the passports are just going through the motions anyway - not one person actually compared the passport photo to my own face (which is an older photo and I had a beard then). I think that the collective airline security is in a ridiculous state - I doubt they could actually catch someone trying to do wrong without prior knowledge.
I haven't seen my mother in well over ten years. She lives in Dayton, Ohio, and I live in Seattle, Washington. I'd love to see her at least once more, before she finally kicks the bucket, but ...
See, I'm disabled. I'm stuck in a wheelchair. At the moment, I can still stand by myself, for short periods, I can even put my shoes on (Velcro is my bestest friend), I cannot, however, spend multiple hours waiting in line to be screened - MS has left my bladder very functional, but taken away my ability to sense "fullness" (and no, the drug that's advertised will not help. Tried that. Nada).
So, flying is out. Greyhound is even worse - those toilets are *not* very handicapped accessible. Amtrack? They keep cutting off routes because Congress won't give them adequate funding for anything but the East coast corridor. Driving? Ha! Got no vehicle that can carry my power chair, and I for sure can't drive myself any more.
So I'm stuck here in Seattle, likely until I die. Thank you, TSA, and your over-zealous "screeners" who really can't stop a determined terrorist (or even a half-determined amateur who wants to demonstrate gow ludicrous the "Homeland Security" really is).
Bah. A pox on all their houses.
Lemon curry?
Just wanted to point out that this type of security happens only in USA. In other countries, most everybody just go through a metal detector and get their carry-on stuff x-rayed. No leaving luggage unlocked, no blacklists, no checking visas (on internal flights), etc.
As well as biometric passports, and biometric scanning until those are available, all visitors to the US from every countryhave to have their own passports regardless of their age.
So, whereas in the past, a family of British tourists to the US would have a couple of adult passports and one or two for the older kids, with the younger kids and the new baby travelling on one of their parent's passports, they now have to all have their own individual passports and all be photographed and fingerprinted on entry.
Now can someone please tell me how requiring babies to have their own passports adds to the security of the US? All this is doing (together with the treating visitors to the US like criminals before they've even set foot on US soil) is giving people every incentive to spend their holidays anywhere but the US. Watch whilst the US tourist industry takes a dive because of this bureaucratic stupidity.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I'm guessing I was a random target for extra security, but who knows?
As for seraching the elderly and children, smugglers have used such people before, and the successful terrorist groups look for loopholes in security before striking. For example, if knives and metal toy guns get caught too often in "dry runs", then they use box cutters instead once they know that they can get them past security.
I'm sure other threads will bring this up, but Bruce Schneier has a great term for this: he calls it "security theater".
Fortunately terrorism isn't a threat in the US. The chances of dying of terrorism here are less than the chances of being killed by lightening or many other things. We shouldn't worry about it.
Ok, here's a link about responsibility and human rights.
Said columnist is not really a columnist. The "My Turn" column in Newsweek is written each week by someone from the general public. It's a high-profile soapbox for people who aren't reporters.
--
I don't want to rule the world... I just want to be in charge of mayonnaise.
hell, I had more trouble explaining my ZIPPO lighter than I did all the other electronic stuff I carry.
You keep going until you die..."Me".
#1. Change the cockpit doors so the terrorists can't get into them.
#2. Rotate the first 2 seats in the plane to face the rest of the passengers.
#3. An air marshal with a pistol or uzi and rubber bullets (no hull penetration) sits here, facing the passengers.
#4. The air marshal has an intercom to the pilots.
#5. Improve training at the baggage inspectors. They are the first line of defense.
That way, a terrorist has to get past the first inspectors, get past the air marshal who will have alerted the pilot who will be calling in for emergency landing instructions and military support and then get past the door to get to the cockpit.
Defense in depth.
Weak old guys and fat senators don't pose any problems to that system.
Now you can fault the airlines or the government for having accessed all our private information just to train and calibrate the systems, but there's a more fundamental problem: they didn't usefully train or calibrate those systems at all. They just wasted time and money. And they give at least some people a false sense of security when all it really is, is mumbo-jumbo.
kinda hard to not pay attention to a smoking hole in the middle of New York and thousands dead
I think that it's a very good idea to keep track of the flights of people who may be dangerous to other passengers. However, I think that the list should be much more selective.
IMHO, I think it would make more sense to put two classes of people on the list. Those classes being anyone who was not born in the United States, and anyone who has a criminal record which includes a violent crime or a felony. We're primarily watching for terrorists and violent people. To me, it makes more sense to watch the types of people most likely to be a terrorist or a violent person. When was the last time you met a 78 year old man who wanted to hijack a plane and crash it into something?
Also, I think it would be a show of good faith for Homeland Security to send a letter notifying people that they are on the watch list and why, thus offering them a chance to correct the issue ahead of time if they shouldn't be on it. Many would say that would just be alerting the enemy, but if they are really doing something wrong, and we know who they are, it won't matter if they know we know about them.
Everything terrorists do is, by definition, stupid.
I have to disagree. 9/11, while horrific and twisted, was still brilliant.
Nobody's ever going to make us safer by overestimating the intelligence of terrorists.
Yet everything they do is, in your words, "by definition, stupid"? Methinks you're underestimating them...?
Besides, if you read the 9/11 Commission report, you saw just how close we came to losing Flight 93.
If flight 93 crashing with the loss of all on board doesn't count as "lost", I don't know what does...
And those precious locks on the cockpit doors that so many short-sighted people fought for will do an excellent job of keeping the passengers and crew out of the hijackers' way.
If the passengers and crew can't get in, neither can the terrorists (at least, not without explosives or taking apart the door, but that'd make it accessible by the passengers anyways).
Funny that you accuse others of being short-sighted...
Not only america - I was travelling on the eurostar from london to brussels. I needed to take a pair of crutches back home to belgium and knew, given the current climes ( 6 months after 9/11) that I wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting them on the train had I not needed them. Therefore I (A 19 y/o Male in reasonable trim) pretended that I needed them and got through customs after they got X-rayed and I "hobbled" through the metal detector.
A little old lady in front of me, stereotypical really, had a pogo stick in a box all wrapped up ready for her grandson. Security refused to let her take it on the train because it could be a weapon.
I pondered this as I wandered off on my two 1.2 metre, very usable bludgeoning weapon crutches....
India's former defense minister was strip-searched twice on US airports. He has vowed never to return to US. And you wonder why the world hates you.
This isn't about making anything "safer". This is about providing the ILLUSION that we are "safer" now because we are "taking these steps".
After all this "security" stuff was enacted their were polls that asked how "secure" people felt. One company did the poll and it said 70 some % of people felt safer now. Then they added another question "have you flown on an airplane since 9/11?" After factoring in that answer it was 7% of people who have flown since 9/11 felt safer, where as the vast majority of people who hadn't flown felt safer. It was over 90 some %.
So now we have the most annoying security in the world at our airports that makes people who don't fly feel safe!
Arn't we glad we are making our lives a pain in the ass!!!
On Aug 19, 2004, around 1am EST, immigration computers stopped working at Logan Airport. Nobody could get through. About 30 people and the crew of the airplane had to stand in line for over 2 hours. There were no chairs, and it was very cold. Passengers with children asked for blankets, or to be moved to a holding area, but the requests were denied. There were no phones, and cell phones were not allowed to be used in that area, so nobody could contact family waiting to pick them up. Many people were quite agitated, although everyone was very nice, including the immigration officers. There was no backup plan in case the computers go down.
I'm not convinced that would be enough. They have the resources to turn to private jets and stuff. I say we get their staff on the list. Someone that's important to them, but not important enough that they'd pay to charter rates to fly 'em around.
I've heard that. And you've made an interesting point. Provided that people do it with a big smile on their faces, TSA can still be assholes if they want to and people would never notice that they are being abused.
Wish TSA training would include that... it'd make a huge difference.
One thing thats is prevelant while I have been traveling around the world lately is that many govt workers just dont care one way or another.
While in other countries I noticed regardless of position the person doing it knew checking the papers was something that was of utmost importance and it was their job.
The passport checker would take my papers look them over for about 3-7 minutes and then allow me to move forward, or in some instances ask a gentleman to the side for some sort of re-verification with someone else. People gathering luggage carts did it speedily and was smart enough to see that when someone needed one take it out if their train and give it to the weary traveler.
Upon arrival at LAX I noticed people asked to see various forms of ID while traveling through the terminals about 4 times before luggage claim, with each time no one even glancing at the paper they are asking for, but simply taking it and handing it back. As if passing time till next pay day. Cart gatherers would take carts and if someone needed one direct them to where they should get them, with a life sucks type attitude. No one around to provide information to foreigners on where to get a taxi or even where to proceed next.
Ever since the boomer generation and subsequent generations it seems no one cares one way or another about much of anything, Im beginning to believe my grandparents stories on how they had a work ethic over us. What we need is people taking pride back in whatever it is they do and I would say almost all the things that frustrate us daily would disappear.
...and change the slogan here from "News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters" to "Kerry For President, Republicans Are Evil, and Democrats are 100% Perfect!" I saw enough hate-spewing vitriol in the South Park article, so I know I'm burning karma by even daring post this.
chechens live in the caucasian heartland (caucausus mountains), are white (auburn hair even) and are all muslim. many are terrorists.
Yes, let's bring on the racial profiling !
My father died about 2 years ago. His last 6 months of intense suffering was made possible by modern medicine. Keeping him alive was no favor to either him or my family.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
How about if they are doing this to Edward Kennedy et al on purpose. So far the US has asked us for their trust and if Mr. Kennedy is a suspected terrorist and under review will not be given a clean slate in terms of flying on an airplane then should he be holding office?
Why is it that they are not arresting any of the people that they flag as terrorists (or likely to be)?
They are swinging a big stick and pointing it all around but not 'doing' anything rather than threatening to use it again.
If they want all of this trust, patients and understanding why don't they ever accomplish anything other than moving the 'terrorist alert' level?
With all this intelligence and lists they have compliled why have they not made any arrests? Its been 3 years (almost) now but the same thing over and over again, "if you dont do what we say you will die at the hands of some religious freak".
I don't know about you but if I had a list of bad people that were gonna do bad things I would do a little more than wait for them to get on a plane to just ask them questions and waste their time, then of course let them go on thier marry way.
Common Bush give us some reason to buy your bullshit it can't be that hard you have a lot of intelligent people working for you just give em more tax payer money, because in my opinion you are the worst terrorist of them all
my $0.02 take it or leave it
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Bin Laden wrote a letter stating his demands. Here is a excerpt. Maybe you can pick out a few of the demands that he makes that would require changing the way Americans live today. Just to give you a head start, I'll sum it up, although this isn't complete: Convert everyone in America to Islam, drop the Constitution and separation of church and state, impose Sharia (Islamic) law, stop all gambling, drug use, alcohol, pornography, and prostitution, adultery, fornication, homosexuality under pain of appropriate Islamic penalty (usually death), stop preventing genocide against the Jews, stop charging interest on bank loans, etc. No changes there, right?
It would take years to design and certify new planes or new variations with such large structural changes, and decades to finish phasing them in for the entire fleet. Hell, it's taking years just to get reinforced cockpit doors.
Now, in your solution, would you allow flight attendants to communicate with the flight crew, e.g. to tell them there is a fire in the cabin, or someone is having a heart attack and they need to divert? Because, if so, what flight crew will ignore terrorist demands if they start killing all 400 passengers one by one? Maybe a robot flight crew, that's the only one I can imagine. But then you still have the problem of not being able to inform the robot that the situation requires a change in the flight plan (fire, heart attack, etc). Or, if you allow that to happen, even via the ground, you still have the problem of the terrorists killing off the passengers while taunting the guys on the ground. Maybe you think officials on the ground can stand up to that pressure. I don't.
And, would you allow axes or other heavy tools in the cockpit to use in case of a crash landing? If so, do you really think your reinforced and doorless cockpit wall is going to stand up to them without weighing enough to cut the payload in half?
is the second guy got himself off the list because he ADDED HIS MIDDLE INITIAL to his name!
Think about the stupid programming!
All a terrorist has to do is add something to his name and he drops off the list!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! Your tax dollars at work!
If this doesn't prove that the whole thing is purely a) for show and b) to increase the government's ability to harass the citizenry for no reason at all except to prove they can, I don't know what does.
And, yes, some morons say some of the 9/11 terrorists used their own names when they traveled. What does this tell you? They weren't terrorists, that's what. Either that or the names they used weren't actually theirs and the FBI/CIA is too stupid to determine their real names.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
True. But the aliance also used a "secret" weapon, called Superior Force.
I recoment the book On War, by Karl von Clausewitz. Even tho it is from 1832, it explains in great details why the aliance won WWII, and why USA lost on Vietnam and North Korea. And why USA is currently loosing the war against terrorism. And I mean "terrorism", not necessarily the Al Quaeda, or Saddan.
Quotes from the book (free translation):
"Always keep your forces concentrated, and in the best possible disposition."
"The greater possible number of soldier should be put in action at the decisive point" (Emphasis by me).
And, the one the terrorist always follow:
"If you can't get absolute superiority, you should get a relative superiority at the decisive point, by masterfuly using all the forces you have."
Also, since I'm quoting, lemme give you one from Mao Tsé-Tung:
"When the enemy advances, we withdraw. When he camps, we taunt. When he gets tired, we attack. When he withdraws, we pursue them."
Okey, I'm done with this subject. Thank you all for your patience.
morcego
Which is exactly why we (the United States) had (initially) a democratic republic as opposed to a pure democracy. Some/most U.S. citizens are:
n 't think for themselves"/un-informed.
stupid/ignorant/evil/jerk-offs/small-minded/"ca
Just because they are citizens does not mean that they should be allowed to make policy. Viz, just because they happen to be human doesn't mean their opinion is useful, important, or valuable.
I love it when fools post. (And PLEASE take the "I'm a history professor!" route; we can discuss the honesty of history professors.)
... we are led by a highly capable president ..."
"
At least your sense of humor is not impared.
"... when the shooting was done is that we made sure the combat took place on enemy soil."
As I recall, the EU (in Europe, where much of the fighting took place) has a larger economy than the US. Remember Japan and Korea, where a great deal of damage was done; our trade balance with them is very sad. China? We owe China a great deal of money.
In, say, 1000 AD, China and the Islamic world were more advanced than Europe. Why did Europe develop science, mathematics, technology, etc.? Why was Gauss German and not from China or Egypt? In part, it is bacause Europe had lots of strife and other parts of the world had stable governments. (OK, this is rather simplistic but in broad outline it is correct.) There were reasons to allow people ("hackers"?) rock the boat. Newton, Leibnitz, Euler, the Bernoullis, etc. helped advance knowledge which allowed (some) nations to survive.
The United States had a temporary advantage after WW2. We have lost that in all areas except the armed forces, which are a drain on the economy. If the rest of the world said, "Pay us what you owe us.", we would be ruined. If oil was priced in Euros rather than dollars, we would be screwed (over time).
There was a plan in 2000 to strongly increase funding to the National Science Foundation (NSF). Bush has not followed through on this plan which was considered by various national science and engineering societies and supported as a good tool of economic and technological development. Bush has cost the US decades of international ill-will. Remember the war in Iraq is over; Bush announced on that aircraft carrier. The bottom line is that Bush is a foolish and inadequate President. If he is reelected, we (in the US, UK, Isreal, Egypt, Korea, etc.) are in trouble.
If you flew back in the sixties (yes, I am old enough to be authoritative about this) you were fed decent meals and lavished with extreme courtesy by very well turned out flight attendants. Just generally you were dealing with a high end, high cost transport method and that's how you were treated. It was fun and it was interesting and it wasn't all that expensive, though I can't say it felt cheap. Throw in a limo at both ends and we're talking something to truly look forward to.
Sadly, today we're dealing with a low end, cut-rate, cattle-call transport method and that's how you're treated. Aside from some extremely misguided women's liberation / political correctness bonehead moves attempting to reject and/or hide femininity, most of this is IMHO due to government interference with the airlines. Deregulation on the one hand, and over regulation on the other.
So some of the makings of a decent conspiracy theory seem to be there.
However, after quite a bit of consideration, I've decided that it is probably stupidity on the part of the government, rather than any organized attempt to destroy the industry. Mainly, this is because I can't figure out why they would be trying to do so - no matter how clear it is that they are doing so.
But I'm not closed minded about it. Not everyone in government is an idiot, clearly, so maybe there is a conspiracy. Anyone have any wild ideas to flesh this out? The government might want to destroy the airline industry because... ???
As an aside, mainly because of what a lousy experience flying is these days, I don't take planes any longer; I drive. I've renewed an interest in high performance cars and added fun gadgets (like street-level mapping GPS, XM Radio, scanners, ham radio, radar and laser detectors, some pretty extreme car audio) and turned my steadily more-and-more annoying business travel back into a perk. Now all I have to do is avoid speeding tickets, which so far I've managed to do. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Of course, SOME kind of security is needed in airports and whatnot, but whether we have gone to far is up for argument.
Whatever the administration[1] does is wrong. If there is another attack, whatever they were doing wasn't enough. If there isn't another attack, whatever they were doing was too harsh.
[1] administration = whoever is in power, dem/reb/lib/tory/labour/socialist/whoever...
All over the world, people know that if you give the U.S. a big enough black eye, we'll turn tail.
The Iraqis know it too. How many GIs would they have to send home in a day to end this thing? Fifty? A hundred? Think tet. All they need is one big PR victory and the war's over and it won't be for the best.
These problems are solved with cash. Big fat fucking sacks of it. CIA finds the most radical mullahs and buys them off. Trust me, they're for sale. Next stop, make life livable in those countries, shit make it comfortable. Nobody with 500 channels straps a bomb on. People with air conditioned malls don't want to breed a generation of martyrs, they want to breed a generation of consumers. We win this thing by making nice, not by making more terrorists.
Most, if not all, airlines will not let you take an O2 tank on the flight.
That doesn't make sense considering many airlines have oxygen as part of their first aid kits.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Now imagine if an airline decided they wanted to do this. They'd need their own airport, and they'd probably be violating a dozen federal laws.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"Fortunately terrorism isn't a threat in the US. The chances of dying of terrorism here are less than the chances of being killed by lightening or many other things. We shouldn't worry about it."
To further emphasize this point. 3K people died on 9/11. 3K people die from smoking EVERY WEEK.
evil is as evil does
It's probably going to come out in a few years that al-Queda is down to a dozen guys with cell phones, making calls once in a while to rattle the US.
Incidentally, if you haven't read bin Laden's writings, do so. His stated plan was to use terrorism to make western civilization more oppressive and thus less attractive. Bush is playing right along.
1. My time in line at Seatac -- and I've flown out 3 times since 9/11 -- have been less than 1/2 hour. If you're relying on the evening news as your only source of information, then you're a fool.
2. Your vehicle? WTF? A 10-second search at Google shows that Shuttle express has lift-equipped vans. This is less than $30.00 one way; given that you'll be paying $8.00/day for parking your own car, I don't think this would be an extravagant expense.
MS, I'm sure, is no fun. But that doesn't give you an excuse to litter Slashdot with your self-defeatist attitude. The next time, you can post how you managed to make it there, despite your disabilities.
Fine... then it follows that a representative government is nothing more than a system where less than 1% of the people take away the rights of the other 99+%
I think a democracy has to win; it indeed sucks as per M. Jefferson's observation, but it is far better in principle than a representative system.
Our current system not only fits the 1% definition, but I am also under the very strong impression that it is doing considerably worse than a 50% majority of citizens would.
I have always found it telling that the US judicial system is set up so that a vote of your citizen peers is the trusted heart and soul of votes that affect you in major ways, unless you choose otherwise; but that politicians have set up a system where our peers have pretty much zero input, no matter how we choose. Citizens are OK to choose if you live or die; but apparently they're far too stupid to decide if you should be allowed to screw someone doggie style, or give/receive oral sex. We "need" politicians to do that for us. Thank goodness for politicians, eh? Seriously - it's OK for a jury to decide if you are guilty of murder, but not to rule on if piercing the labia is OK. The lesson is clear: In the current system, your life is less important than rulemaking, and the reason for that is because the politicians have voted themselves permanent pensions and other fabulous perks from parking places to travel junkets, and you are definitely not going to get to vote on those issues.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I for one am happy to hear an American saying these things. I'm a Canadian who doesn't speak French or live in Quebec, but I'm pretty damned tired of U.S.'s anti-French sentiments as well. The whole Freedom Fries thing... wow. Just wow. What else can one say? It's too bad that so few people can bring such shame and embarassment to an entire country (and of course, now it's down to a single person and his cronies). (Posted AC as to not ruin my karma. That's too bad as well, but speaks for itself.)
Douglas Adams was on to something when he suggested the idea of Atheist Airlines:
"At Atheist Air, prior to boarding, passengers would be required to spout blasphemous remarks at a display of artifacts from all the major religions. This effectively weeds out anyone who has a secret plan to meet the Creator in the next few hours. Blasphemers would be allowed to carry-on pickaxes, blowtorches, chainsaws, nun chucks, whatever, under the theory that atheists generally try to avoid hurting other people in any situation where there isn't a clear escape route."
Ok, so my rant above is a bit harsh, but I've been feeling oppressed by the right lately.. :p
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
Actually, regarding Air France, they are a bunch of cretins, having already been in trouble for refusing passage to several disabled people, recently to a blind couple and their child (who could see all right). This after they had taken another flight with the same company with the same company with no problem whatsoever. There have also been many problems with mentally handicapped people (autonomous though) travelling alone. Do a google search on "Air France handicapés"
But then when you start digging a bit, you'll find these stories with a lot of airlines.
Regarding the anti-french sentiment here, it definitely is present, as well as a strong anti-US sentiment, an anti-arab sentiment, and anti-pretty much every thing sentiments which is pretty much what you'd expect when a community grows since the global intelligence quickly drops proportionally to the number of members (or is it to the square of the number of members?). And with the recent anti-french propaganda in the US, that was bound to leave some trace. I'm French and I don't really mind it. It just makes me sad that playing with people's opinions is that easy.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
If the post office is the best deal in the world, why is it illegal to compete with the USPS?
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush are voting because Kerry wants to make friends with terrorists instead of destroying them.
News for you: "destroying terrorists" has generally not worked well, because you can only oppress people to a certain point before you just get someone else willing to die. See Israel, see Ireland. The United States wiping out terrorism makes as much sense as Microsoft wiping out open source. It just doesn't *work*. There's no single organization. What say you manage to kill off every person currently in al Quada? Then you have a lot of angry people. It's been demonstrated that it only takes four guys who know each other willing to die with knives to take over an airplane. And, heck, that's a pretty elaborate plot. There are much easier routes -- make a fertilizer bomb, or release nasty chemicals next to building air intakes. As long as you have a lot of people who perceive that the United States is oppressing people and culture, there will be terrorism.
The US is good at marketing. Why can't we work in projecting a "the US is a bunch of good guys, not something you want to fight" image?
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush vote because Kerry would have us be nice to the terrorists so they don't hate us so much.
I don't think so, though I wish he would (well, "present a more appealing image to the Middle East", rather than "be nice to the terrorists", but pretty much, yes).
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush because the veterans who served with Kerry in Vietnam say that he can't be trusted to lead the country.
[shrug] Some do, though the people in his boat disagree. Frankly, they knew Kerry years ago and knew him in the capacity of a combat boat commander. I'm dubious as to how well that reflects on Kerry's ability to be a government administrator (or acrobat, or sign painter, for that matter). I *know* that I've just lived through four years of the Bush administration, and I *know* that Bush doesn't do a very good job. There are a lot of times when what I wanted the US to be doing very much different from what Bush had the US doing.
I bet 50% of the people who vote for Bush are voting because Kerry would turn over our national sovereignty to organizations like the UN, which allowed Saddam Hussein to enrich himself with the thoroughly corrupt oil-for-food program.
(a) No president has ever had interest in "turning over our national sovereignty". That's absurd. If you mean "might have listened to the UN when they were condemning us for invading Iraq", I have to point out that that's a long way from "turning over national sovereignty", unless there are no other nations left in the world.
(b) The food-for-oil program was corrupt, yes. It was a mechanism of buying off the leaders of the country. We do the exact same thing (and have, for many, many years), with the same degree of corruption, by use of "foreign aid" for years. It keeps foreign administrations nicely in check, and it's cheaper than fighting wars.
May we never see th
Anyone who talks like this should be avoiding racist stereotypes himself. For example, you should not assume that all al-Quaeda members are Middle-easterners. They're not, no more than all Muslims are. Remember John Walker, the "American Taliban"? Right now al-Quaeda is busy recruiting all sorts of guys like that. Meanwhile, 99.999% of all olive skinned, dark haired, brown eyed men aren't terrorists at all. No, racial profiling is not the answer. Not because the target race can disguise itself, but because the target race doesn't necessarily represent the real target!
And just because Hitler didn't know what "Aryan" meant doesn't mean you ought to be using that word the same way he did. Real Aryans are people like Persians or Romani. Ironically, that last, otherwise known as Gypsies, was among the people Hitler targeted in his death camps. The one thing Aryans generally are not is blond haired and blue eyed.
And the brethren went away edified.
the New Zealanders love rugby and watch their sheep, the Aussies love sheep and watch their rugby,
you got these two backwards... but dont worry, you ignorant americans always do
I would question if an informed electorate is even something sustainable. The best example of one I can name is Switzerland, where the national political structure, and culture, is rabidly decentralized. All laws are proposed via referendum, and there is active debate and involvement by the general public.
While this seems like a wonderful success story, Switzerland is not an isolated nation-state, it relies on the wealth of the entire world, most of which has little or no 'representation'.
Unfortunately, it seems to me, the tendency of human society is one where 99% of the populace, given a choice, would rather be uninformed, and release the decision making to a select few (and as a result grant these few extensive power and wealth). Historically, this is the steady state, until those few become irresponsible and oppress, necessitating an informed electorate to unseat the current leadership and replace it with one more responsible.
fwiw, Switzerland is still my ideal of a nation, which is probably fueled by that fact that I am a Swiss-American, and am inherently biased =)
There's something in there for everybody!
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Whatever the administration[1] does is wrong. If there is another attack, whatever they were doing wasn't enough. If there isn't another attack, whatever they were doing was too harsh.
Well that's as broad as it is long, isn't it? You could as easily say that whatever the administration does is right, because if there is another attack, then they need to do even more of whatever they were doing, however unpleasant, whereas if there isn't another attack, then whatever they were doing was obviously justified.
In my opinion, this kind of rationalization does not relieve an administration of the duty to pay attention to its citizens.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
A common misconception is that US troops are in Saudi Arabia because of Saddam Hussein. This is simply not the case. We have had US military in Saudi Arabia for some time and we were friends with Iraq's brutal dictator due to his animosity with... that's right, Iran.
The real concern of the US government in the Middle East, rightly or wrongly, has been Iran (at least, since they threw our brutal dictator puppet out). The Saudi Arabian government did not *want* our help with Saddam Hussein (pick a reason, maybe they were afraid for their sovereignty if they had to accept foreign aid, or maybe they really thought they could handle it) but we forced it on them.
The main presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia is because of the Patriot missile batteries. There's more to the story, but the short of it is that the US provides the batteries and the troops to operate them -- and additional troops to provide security. The Saudi Arabian government tolerates this (sort of) because it is the arrangement which gives them the missile batteries they believe they need.
What I'm saying is that once you scratch the surface it gets *a lot* more complicated than simply pulling out troops. Not that these complexities *shouldn't* be tackled.
thoromyr
This assumes that the trends will continue unabated for a very looong time (100 years or more despite your alarmist dates pulled off the ceiling by a known Zionist, Thomas Libscomb). Additionaly the anti-semitism and radicalism is equally likely a response to the continuing, seemlesly endless stream of beligernt and arrogant anti-arab actions by both Israel and the US. Untill that stops, noone can tell if this is a part of a violent grand world takover scheme or merely a response to being taunted and degraded. Additionally you forgot to mention that the said Muslim populations are typically North African in origin and desperately poor and mostly unemployed. I bet their extemism has much more to do with that then Millitant Islam (which merely provides a framework on which to hang your social disappointments and setbacks).