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Originally posted by Mordante:
Well my world view changed on tuesday I can tell you. I'm British, and I watched the developing massacre live on BBC, and besides offering my sympathy and best regards to anyone who lost friends and family in those outrages, I am now seriously wondering exactly where our civilisation goes from here.
Maybe not THAT much of a change in worldview. I seem to recall a decade or so ago, when plane and ship (remember the Achille Lauro?) hijackings were much more common and certain factions significantly more active -- the Abu Nidal group, Baeder-Meinhof (sp? Also known as Red Army Faction, IIRC), and others -- it was common practice for hijackers to demand passports, to allow them to single out Americans.
Some of these people have been pissed off at the United States for a long, long time, and perhaps with the Cold War over there are fewer barracks (in, say, Beirut) providing convenient targets.
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Is the USA military actually capable of delivering any sort of proportionate justice for this? I mean, 20-30 terrorists in exchange for tens of thousands of innocents -how do you punish that and answer the need for vengeance that will burn in millions of breasts across America and the West?
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You don't, really. You do, however, significantly boost HUMINT (human intelligence. It's broadly accepted, IIRC, that the US pays too much attention to ELINT/SIGINT (electronic / signals), and relies too much on its satellites and other technology, and far too little to human assets. The KGB was far better than its Western counterparts, albeit it was working with a far easier target -- an open society.
We also, hopefully, actually
notice that airport security has been woefully pathetic in the United States. As recent as two weeks ago, airlines were still providing metal cutlery, for instance. A butter knife may not be serrated, but it's sure going to hurt jammed into somebody's jugular. And I've even had a laptop unquestioned, on a flight to Egypt no less.
The 4-inch rule for knives, which I didn't know about (my SAK -- a Ranger model, something like an 85mm non-locking blade IIRC -- always went in my checked-in luggage), doesn't seem terribly swift, either. I wouldn't relish being slashed with a 1-inch blade, let alone 4.
We probably pay much more attention to finding drugs than weaponry, which is remarkably complacent.
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With a few missiles and ineffective airstrikes? I don't think so. It really does need the "war" that bush and his advisors are talking about, but that really will shake the world order and take tremendous guts and resolve to make it happen - I hope it does.
I think this may turn into a long-term conflict. Actually, it's *been* a long-term conflict, since we've been aiding other nations against terrorists for a long time -- providing training, sharing intelligence data, and so forth. More important than missiles are developing human assets to provide a better probability of warning, although I'm not too optimistic about the possibility of infiltrating fanatical Groups... assuming that most remaining Groups are not run by fools (and, to have survived this long, they probably are not) they are going to be careful about giving out operational details (IOW, compartmentalization) or even accepting people without having established clear
bona fides.
Even if bin Laden showed up and publicly blew himself up in Times Square, it would not end there, anymore than the suicide bombings in Israel stopped after the Israelis managed to nab the one dubbed "the Engineer". Security is always an on-going process, and one in which an open society will necessarily have great difficulty.
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Prior to tuesday I was quietly opposed to the private ownership of handguns and civilian gun proliferation .... now, well frankly, I feel that if anyone is going to wield weapons in sensitive environments it ought to be ordinary people not the crazies and fanatics. I find it absolutely heartbreaking to think of the passengers on those airliners rendered helpless by a rabble of fanatics with knives and cardboard-cutters.
Frankly, let reservists and civil authorities carry guns on airplanes from here on in ... If this "war" on terrorism is to be won then the ordinary guy on the street needs the tools to fight back.
They'd better have special ammo loads, then. I'm also not particularly thrilled at the idea of untrained "ordinary guys", incredibly paranoid (trivia: a local radio station reported that gun sales were up 15-30% at various gun stores nearby), packing heat in such an unfavorable area -- a narrowly confined region with plenty of innocent civillians, and unusually high potential negative consequences for stray shots. And I'm not even a Sikh (IIRC, they carry knives for religious reasons, and to an ignorant paranoid, might be mistaken for an Arab, headgear and all).
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And this from a British liberal ...
Well, I'm with you guys ...
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-- The thing that goes bump in the night