Letters to the Editor
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I'm late to the party here
And don't have the time to go back through over 220 posts to count which ones blame the Jews for everything. I would guess it's about 55-60% which is about normal for Salon. At any rate here is a quick clip of your heroes in the UN the bulwark of Anti Israelis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMEw0lZ3k_Y
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20-20 hindsight strikes again
--ajwan
The 9/11 attacks were huge in the scope of murder committed, but it does not make me feel fear of Arabs. It infuriates me that the prevention of this catastrophe was so easy: damn commercial plane cockpits needed damn secure access. You do not need to mess around with our Constitution to fix that. You do not have to anoint our President King to fix that.
Actually there was no reason to secure cockpit doors. FAA policy was to negotiate with hijackers in order to assure passenger safety. Kind of like relying on the UN to protect Darfur. It works until the aggressors change the rules of engagement.
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@shooter
terrorism is far distant and less probable because we are fighting there, not here.
That is by far the stupidest thing I've heard in years. Please stop repeating the most moronic talking points of your master. It sounded stupid coming out of the mouth of Bush Jr., and it sounds stupid coming from your keyboard.
Am I to imagine that we are fighting set battles, like in WWII, where the opponents negotiate the battle points? Then all your mutterings and justifications for the security state are nonsense. Keep on point. Or are we fighting a shadowy underworld, without set battle points where opportunity dictates the battle, where our opponents get to choose when to fight and when to melt into the population? Where propaganda is the primary "there" to fight at?
Have you ever read Sun Tzu? Or has your frontal cortex been dismantled and replaced with a recording device?
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shooter,shooter,shooter...
OTOH terrorism is far distant and less probable because we are fighting there, not here.
That makes absolutely no sense. How can you mistake repeating talking points for thinking? If you were bin Laden, which would serve your purpose better:
a) send your suicide troops (that are rather hard to come by) to be blown up by the best-armed army in the world
or
b) send those guys to America where they could blow up gas stations and cause the economy to completely stall.
The "flypaper" theory is absurd. You should be embarrassed to be pulling out 4-year old talking points.
You know why we haven't been attacked again? Because most people in the world aren't completely crazy and, unlike YOU, have no desire to see people they don't know on the other side of the world get killed for no reason.
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The Jews?
And don't have the time to go back through over 220 posts to count which ones blame the Jews for everything. I would guess it's about 55-60% which is about normal for Salon.
Well, I have read the entire thread and don't recall a single comment mentioning Israel or the Jews, except as a side note.
You have a strange idea about Salon, maybe you were thinking of stormfront or LGF?
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shooter242 misfires again
Essentially your point is, since the measures taken to prevent terrorism have worked, we should dismantle them. Sorry but that doesn't make too much sense to me.
Given that every objective measure shows terrorism worldwide has INCREASED since 2001, I'd say your interpretation of the original point is accurate. The current practices aren't working, make things worse, and really haven't left the country or its citizens any safer.
And given the US experienced nothing but domestic-spawned terrorism throughout the eight years of the Clinton Administration, mayhap the current crowd would do well to take up their practices as they're soooo worried about foreign-born terrorists "coming here".
Too late for that to do any good, of course, but one can always hope for religious conversion.
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i Agree With Brooks 100%
Well maybe 97%.
Dear David Brooks
I agree.
All except for the Islamic extremist part--you guys are just going to have to accept the fact that it's been almost 6 years since they got off their one big showboat of an attack. Normal, non-ideological Americans are just not living in fear of the Big Islamic Bogeyman. And just between us normal, non-ideological guys, Osama got lucky on 9/11--it won't happen again--as long as we take the money we currently waste in Iraq and spend it on actual security here at home.
Unfortunately for those abnormal ideologues out there--the Kristols and Kagans of the world--the neocons took America into an unecessary war that's created a much bigger problem than we started out with. The greatest gift Osama ever got was GW Bush endowing his little band of malcontents with Superpowers. The reality is we aren't Israel, and we're not surrounded by enemies that want to kill us. We have two big oceans that keep us safe from anything but the random outrage, and McVeigh showed us we have just as much to worry about from our own fruitcakes as we do from those from across the globe. They'll never convince Americans that we share the same insecurities our friends in Israel live with. And since they took us into an unecessary war, based on lies and warped ideologies, we probably won't even be willing to do the reasonable things we might otherwise have to help out our friends in Israel. The abnormal ideological ones among us have steered us nearly off a cliff, and exacerbated the initial probelm in the process.
But the rest of your essay is brilliant. Taxes are no longer at 70%, so a vast majority of Americans now realize it's not worth the whole country being in permanent bankruptcy so the top 1% can have an extra mansion in Europe. No, we need the economic security you suggest to keep us feeling content enough to pursue our freedoms, and a 50% tax rate on anybody making over a million will easily allow that to happen. Hell, Clinton balanced the budget with less than 40% top rate. I won't mind paying 50% from here on in. I make so much more when the budget is balanced, plus we won't be in hock to China. Great call on that one Brooks!
And govt sponsored health care for every single American will not scare us away from the Big Govt Bogeyman any more! The security it will bring will make it easy to convince those abnormal ideological Americans that it's time to join us normal folks. You nailed it there. Big govt can do so much to provide us all with the security we need to pursue gegnuine freedom: not the phony Goldwater/Reagan freedom for corporations to pollute the world with impunity, but the real freedom to grow spiritually into our place in the universe. Right on David Brooks!
Tell you what. I'd be willing to help our friends in Israel with their security issues as well. They deserve the same freedoms from worry that we have. Put them in Utah. Nobody in Utah will threaten them the way the Arabs do, and America will finally be putting it's money and land where it's alleged politics are. This will defuse the whole Islamic outrage thing and the Arabs can go back to beating their camels instead of attacking us all for the fact that we helped put Israel in their Palestine. It works for everybody.
I have to compliment you on this one Brooks. You have a way of explaining what we normal, non-ideological types really think, and what we can do when we work together to put the abnormal, ideological freaks in their place.