Is the US safer?

The question is not "is the US safer"; the question is "Is ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD safer than it was before Bush was in office."

Certainly, AQ came into its own around '93 and has managed to pull off several bombings in the 11 years between now and then. Can we blame the attacks themselves on Bush? No. Of course not. But we can ask whether his approach to terrorism--kill them where they are before they bring the fight to our shores--is the best.

Since he declared war on terrorism (which I've said time and time again is as stupid as declaring war on diplomacy) and started sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, one simply must admit that the only place in Afghanistan that's "safe" is Kabul. Everywhere else is ruled by the warlords and the Taliban has apparently regrouped. Did we take out much of the AQ leadership? Apparently. We've managed to arrest or kill much of the 2000 leadership of AQ, which means that there's now a new leadership about whom we know next to nothing and who doesn't have the same MO as the 2000 leadership. Iraq? Sure we're building schools and hospitals and providing health care to a country that's had the crap beaten out of it routinely, by both external and internal forces, for decades. We're pushing 1000 dead soldiers there. More than twice as many soldiers (do I have this right?) have died since Bush declared Mission Accomplished than before. AQ, which was not operating in Iraq before war, is now streaming in. Other groups of people are organizing in such a way that we simply cannot know who they are. Truck bombs. Car bombs. Suicide bombers. Roadside bombs detonated by cell phone. Bombs on oil pipelines. Unemployment is rife there. Pensions disappeared. The economy is in chaos. We've ceded cities like Fallujah to the militias we were fighting.

And, quite simply, we cannot get out. If we leave now, Iraq will most certainly fall back into a dictatorship after a civil war decimates the major cities (even worse than they are), and that dictatorship will likely be a Shi'a one friendly to Iran. And to top it all off, we can't afford the war(s). A billion dollars a week.

Terrorist bombings in Indonesia. In Saudi. In Israel. In Spain. In Uzbekistan.

Are we safer now than we were 4 years ago? We've done nothing but galvanize hatred of America to an entirely new population of terrorists and potential terrorists and effectively manufactured scores of new terrorists by shooting at them under the delusional notion that the number of terrorists is finite.

And we're left with only one of our major allies--Britain. Germany and France, who could send tens of thousands of troops to help us out, we have alienated and then, to make matters worse, insulted. That means fewer troops. That means more funding we have to come up with.

Are we safer now than we were 4 years ago? No. Are our children? No. Are our children's children? No.

Frankly terrorism just doesn't do that much for me as far as fear. My chances of dying from dozens of other things are far greater than the chances I'll die from terrorism. Not to say that it should not be fought but it is way overblown as a social priority. Less than 4,000 Americans died from terrorism in 2001. Contrast that with 700,000 dying from Heart Disease, 100,000 dying from accidents, 30,000 from suicide, 17,000 from non 9/11 homicides, 14,000 from HIV etc. Some of these have no total solution but others could be drastically reduced with prevention. Honestly, putting center medians in on two lane highways would save more Americans than getting Osama. Although it's not nearly as interesting. Those things are all much bigger threats to my safety than terrorism.

And we're not spending enough money anyway buying up former Soviet countries nukes which is the biggest threat to our safety as far as terrorism.

Beyond that, we have not supported Musharraf as much with political giveaways in terms of trade to help Pakistan's economy. Musharraf survival is more important than Bin Laden's capture by far. You've got a country with nukes, a relatively strong army, a pretty prominent population segment with an extreme ideology, a neighbor who they like to skirmish with and a bunch of Al-Queda wackos running around the country. Supporting Musharraf may be dubious morally but it is essential from a strategic point of view.

Past that, the real players in WOMD exporting are NK, Iran, China, etc and we are not about to tackle any of those guys.

Hear hear. It blows my mind that they curtailed that program in the middle of the War on Terror.

The war on terror will be a continuous battle to stay ahead of the terrorists. We could be much more effective in this war if the liberals would stop holding our military and law enforcement people back. We can not be worried about hurting the feeling of people who fit the profile of terrorists. Yes, I am advocating racial profiling. The people who want to kill us are for the most part Arab males. Sorry,we need to scrutinize all Arab males that come into this country. We need to question them if the police find them suspicious. No this is not fair, but what are we to do? Are we to let a terrorist attack take place because we would not hurt someone's feelings?
We also need to become more militarily aggressive in this war. We need to go after known terrorists and their camps no matter where they are. If a country does not arrest and turn people we want over to us, then we need to go into that country and get them ourselves. Have you noticed how the Saudis find terrorists when the heat is on? Do you think they might know where many more are and are not telling us? I think so. It is also time to stop playing games with Iran and Syria. They should be given an ultimatum to come clean or be cleaned. I am tired of this nonsense. We are Americans and we stand for what is right. It is not our fault that a bunch of wacko pseudo religion zealots hate us. If it is us or them, lets make it them!

Nope not one bit safer. If anything ( as the recent report from the whitehouse has shown ) things are worse not better.

This isn't because liberals have been holding law enforcement agencys back. It's because of the Bush addministration's poor handling of the situation. Thumbing your nose at and just asking them to attack isn't the way to handle this.

The war on terror is just like the war on drugs. Ineffective.

McVay and who else? How many others were not Islamic extremists? The truth is the truth and we should face up to it. Sorry.

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" We are Americans and we stand for what is right. It is not our fault that a bunch of wacko pseudo religion zealots hate us. If it is us or them, lets make it them! "

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This isn't a slam it's just to point out the reality of the situation. If you really feel this way I'm sure there's a place for you on the front line in a couple of years.

Armchair wars are easy aren't they?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/08/01/ter...eat/index.html

Oh, god here we go again!

Timing is everything.

These guys? Maybe these guys? How about just in your home state? 53 hate groups. In the whole country? 751 active hate groups.

Maybe these guys? You know. They came back. Maybe these guys? How about these guys? These? Hell, how about any of your average homegrown right-wing nutjobs who want to bring down the federal government and restore America to what it was supposed to be?

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Hey, I think we have a new lead for Kerry's stump speech!

I think everybody should ask themself if they feel "safer" if the government just didn't tell anyone of a potential threat or did tell? If they don't tell, do you then feel safer (even though the odds are exactly the same that something could happen). If they don't tell, and something does happen they are then blamed for "covering-up" an event. So it doesn't matter if they tell or do not tell, there will be partisans who will twist that into some opportune political statement. In reality, it is what it is- nothing more. Aside from all of that, these terrorists are coming for us. Doesn't much matter who's in office or what has been done in the past. They are coming because we exist. They will keep coming until we no longer exist, or until we succeed in eliminating their powerbase. You can either decide to do something about it or just sit there and complain that you don't feel safe ("vote xyz in!" and other various FUD). Either way, they will be coming.

So it doesn't matter who's in office but we are obligated to do something?

Short of voting for someone I think will do a better job do doing something (for instance, working to keep fissionable materials off the black market) I can't really see what you're suggesting.

Get a big gun? Dig a deep hole? Move to Canada?

And the theatrics of "they are coming", I think, are a bit over heated. "They" are not aliens or the black death or even godless communists, but a loosely affiliated group of Islamic extremists. Surely they will do what they can to harass the US, but they are hardly in a position to see to it that we "no longer exist". The rhetoric of "fighting for our lives" only serves to justify foolish overreaction and the increases the likelihood of making things worse.

Well I wouldn't do it by vacuously bombing a country back to the stone age and then trying to draw a vauge connection between the terrorism threat and our attack.

That just gives them more reason to attack.

This whole discussion is full of overheated replies. By saying "do something", we see various attempts to fill-in-the-blanks to suit myraid nefarious strawman arguments (hate to see how up in arms some would be if the US really did bomb somebody into the stone age- talk about overheated...). Also the premise is given that by voting for Kerry, these terrorists will suddenly go underground and pay us no mind. 'kay... To top it all off, we hear claims that there is nothing at all to fear from our "peace loving" Islamic brothers (afterall, a little "harrassment" never hurt nobody...), which falls in stark contrast to others who persist with the "we are not safer" mantra (I guess there would have to be a 3rd group that believes that there is no threat whatsoever, but this is the administration yanking our collective chain to keep us fearful- can't very well argue we are "less safe" in actuality then). Whichever way you lean, it is surely the fault of the current administration, however. Therein lies the partisan agenda for something that should not be wrt personal security. It's too bad we, as a people, cannot discuss this heart to heart w/o being shouted down, marginalized, and ridiculed.

Nevermind that any of this misses the cruxt of my initial post- is there really a point to imagining you are safer or not based on whether you are aprised of real risks or not? There are only 2 groups of people in that context- those who say there is no point and those who just want to whine that they are not safer (for various personal viewpoints). I see some of the usual suspects did not hesitate the opportunity to jump on a soapbox. That is all. [click]

Used where? To do what? According to some, there is no legitimate purpose to send a soldier anywhere to address an international concern. Containment and diplomacy is the only route...

Yup, and those are usually conservatives.

Clever juxtaposition, but no.

That's right. Conservatives were all about sending troops to the Balkans. And Rwanda. And Somalia.

We're certainly not safer at this point.

I was very supportive of an invasion of Afghanistan but we failed miserably. The border with Pakistan should have been a far greater priority, but we left it far to vulnerable. The result is that while we've been able to improve the government of Afghanistan, the actual problem we faced in and because of Afghanistan has just moved further south.

At this point we would need an attack on Pakistan, a known nuclear power, in order to fix the problem we had a chance of fixing in a well contained Afghanistan. Now our original problem has been left to fester in an even more difficult situation, Pakistan, and we've diverted our attentions to Iraq.

Iraq held no immediate threat to the United States when we attacked. And while we'll never know if Saddam would have eventually joined up with AQ, the chances of that combination were always much smaller than the potential team of Pakistan and AQ. By ignoring that possibility we've made it much easier and much more likely.

Pakistan is now one death away from a horrible demise. There have been several significant attempts to kill Musharraf and once he goes the United States (as well as India) will be in a very precarious situation that has the potential to be positive, but more likely to be far more dangerous of a situation than we're in right now. Probably the best defense we have right now is the fact that Musharraf has let us know where Pakistan's arsenal is located so in the event of an emergency we could probably destroy it before it could be used.

This all ignores the far greater threat of a dirty nuclear bomb. They've been used (attempted) before and will only become more likely with time. Nuclear materials were lost when we invaded Iraq, and I can only believe that Pakistan's AQ sympathizers (empathizers?) have or will pass along their own dirty materials.

The situation is currently a mess. Bush had a viable opportunity to clean up Afghanistan and he's failed. The results will be played out over the next 10 years and the possibilities don't look very good.

hey, look on the bright side. Heroin prices are coming down.

That's Bush's fault. He's the one who invaded Afghanistan and then had no full scale reconstruction plan and so these farmers have no other way of making money. So they grow poppies and now we have mad poppies.

Plus, Shrubbery destabilized the Middle East too much with the Iraq war and all his other rhetoric plus his failure to address consumption of energy. And thus we have a situation where gas prices are so high that no well meaning heroin addict can afford to put gas in their car and drive down to see their dealers. And so these dealers all have a glut of heroin since there is no demand since the gas is too expensive for the addicts to drive down to see their dealers. So then supply and demand dictates that that heroin becomes cheaper and then because of that cheap price the addicts are willing to even walk down to get it and so we have a stimulated demand reaction. Although at least this way the addicts are getting some exercise. Thus we can see in total how Bush's geopolitical failures will eventually cause all of the United Kingdom, and especially Tony Blair, to become heroin addicts.

This isyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyy

sorry i just nodded.

Ahem. This is perfectly true, and I'm doing my bit for the reconstruction of rural Afghanistan right now.

I'm looking for a word here....umm...oh yes. WRONG.

Surely you can do better than that SDW?

Yes we are safer. The information leading to the current alert is the direct result of hunting down terrorists. We are breaking them apart and foiling their plans. A long hards job, but they must be engaged and brought to justice. Are we safe? no. Are we getting safer? YES

I thought yiu were going to go away?

WHy did you come back?

It certainly wasn't to actually engage in 'discussion'?

"Common" "man" is a flip-flopper

no no no no no.

the fight against terror existed before the so-called war on terror. what we are seeing is more of the same except for the fact that this administration in particular likes to make frightful claims of knowing something to the public. most other administrations have dealt with this type of information internally. the fact that we even know that there are credible threats is merely a 1984ish method of controlling the common man and you fell for it.

How are we safer when the whitehouse report shows terrorism has increased not decreased? The war on terror is totally ineffective.

A poll on CNN shows more people think this most recent alert is politically motivated.

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Do you agree with Howard Dean's suggestion that the latest terror alert may be politically motivated?

Yes 52% 11699 votes

No 48% 10974 votes
Total: 22673 votes

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We haven't made any headway and you are wrong.

Well, nothing happened today, and we surely had our guard up, so it isn't too outrageous at all to say we were "safer" today.

Also, do note that 80% of all people on the road will rubberneck a traffic accident that should in no way be physically impeding traffic. So I wouldn't put too much credence in people's ability to assess safety (in a poll), if they cannot even handle traffic accidents.

Thanks for the festival of specious logic.

"Nothing happened" (in the US anyway) on the overwhelming majority of days for the last 10 years, so it's pointless to claim a causal relationship between lack of terrorist attack and Bush policies.

The American electorate's capacity to form opinions about the behavior of their government, and to conclude that they are being hoodwinked, is hardly measured by peoples driving habits.

This topic just popped up yesterday out of coincidence, not as a response to terror threats reported on news stations on Sunday? With that connection, it is simple fact that some posters here became more concerned about a terrorist event as a result of reports on Sunday, posted this topic, and nothing happened today in the anticipated areas. Our guard was up, hence, it appears that safety has prevailed today. Barring extreme partisan obsessions, it should not be hard to acknowledge this.

"overwhelming majority of days for the last 10 years" Yeah, I suppose you could take an "extreme averaging" approach to it. That 9/11 thing was pretty overblown, too. I suppose it can be argued to have never happened if you average long enough.


It indicates some degree of common sense, but I suppose you'd argue that no common sense is required to "form opinions about the behavior of their government"? Yeah, got me there!

It is expected that terrorism will rise a little during the war on terror. We are going after them and they are fighting back. We are, however, breaking their codes and getting into their inner workings. It is a tuff battle to stay one step ahead of these people, but so far we are. We must error on the side of caution in these times. Terror was like a festering wound deap in the heart of humanity. Cutting it out is not not easy and is sometimes messy, but I believe it is what has to be done to secure the future of the free world.

We were always at war with Eurasia.

The "war on terror" has only been recently named as such -- it is a simple fact of foreign policy that we have been going after terrorist since before the dawn of time or some such... Think about it -- this nation has always had a program of routing out subversive violent people -- at times variously, through the alien and sedition act, the slave revolts, the indian rebellions, the anarchists, the "communists"... To think we have only just begun to fight terror and indeed the regional terror of the middle east and central asia would be very stupid.

I thought the same.

The International politic aspect of the whole thing shouldn´t be ignored either. Before 911 we were against the russias warfare in chetchnya (or however you americans spell it) because it was defined in the same realm as the wars in former Yogaslavia. There was a lot of internal conflicts like that around the world that we had to react against had we to be consistent. But according to the predominate theories in International politics that situation is untenable because of its complexity.

With 911 most and all the most dangerous ones was redefined in the terrorist vs. us dichotomy with chetchnya as the most obvious example and made the world more manageable. On the strategic level everything is now more secure, unless, of course, you ask those who suffers from the brutality of the russian army...