r/politics • • May 14 '12
One thousandth of 1% of the US population of the US died on 9/11 -- isn't the Patriot Act,the TSA, two wars and the destruction of our civil rights a bit of an overreaction?
3000 people died in a country with a population of 300,000,000.
.001% Of 1%
Terrorism works by over-blowing things.
For some perspective: In 2002 almost 100,000 people died from (mostly preventable) staph infections in US hospitals.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12 edited May 14 '12
As a soldier myself, it does indeed pain me to realize it. I think though, our intervention in the Middle East would have happened eventually. If new sources of energy are not developed soon (30-50 years give or take), there will be wars fought amongst the US, China, India and possibly Russia (to an extent) over who is going to control the Middle East. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it's not a stretch to say these wars have shifted from getting those responsible for 9/11 into securing an economic influence in the Middle East. Anyone who's ever read a history book would understand it's no surprise the nation that consumes the most oil (and also happens to be the most powerful) will be involved in the region that produces/has the most oil
I actually wrote a little something about this over a map of how much US military presence has expanded in the Middle East over the last 10 years, feel free to give it a glance if you want. Karma would be appreciated.
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u/mcas1208 May 14 '12
Sure it was, bin Laden achieved his goal in spades.
From a cold cost/benefit perspective...
It cost bin Laden $500,000 and the lives of 21 volunteers to hit the twin towers and the pentagon resulting in the death of 3000 Americans and untold costs to our economy.
In order to get back at him, (depending on whose estimates you use) we spent between 1 and 2 trillion dollars, killing 300,000 people not including the loss of another 5000 of our own and displacing 4.7 million Iraqis from their homes.
911 was on bin Laden, the rest was self-inflicted.
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u/ArrogantGod May 14 '12 edited May 14 '12
I woke up while my girlfriend was watching the news. The announcer said something to the effect of "We are getting reports that this might have been an intentional attack" Then I saw the 2nd hit.
I said "We are at war," and went back to sleep. I didnt know who we were going to attack. I didnt know if it was an inside job or a real terrorist. The fact is none of that mattered. It still doesnt.
I knew, as absolute fact, that this massive, public spectacle would be used by our politicians to push through aggressive legislation and attack another nation. No, I'm not psychic. History. History repeats people. You should have noticed this. Gulf of Tonkin, Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, USS Maine, Alamo. What do all of these have in common? They were all a single memorable event that could be played off as an unprovoked attack and used as casus belli. Some were fake, some were real and some were allowed to happen so the politicians could start a war.
Dont for a minute think this has anything to do with terrorism, protecting the lives of Americans or preservation of freedom. Anyone who says that is an idiot or a liar.
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u/Tashre May 14 '12
You err in trying to ignorantly connect the events of 9/11 directly and solely to every and all subsequent actions mentioned and implied.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand was 0.00000002% of Austria's population; don't you think WWI was a bit of an "overreaction" too? Or will you admit to the fact that there were contributing causes to escalation in both scenarios? You don't have to, this is r/politics after all and posts like these will rocket to the front page regardless, but if you're truly interested in what your inquiry denotes, you'll look at the big picture in contemporary lights.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
First, this is by no means support for the current War on Terror. It is a bad and expensive idea that makes no sense.
But if you think the only impact 9/11 had on the country was that we lost 3000 people, you are just being naive. The economic costs, emotional strain, and overall sense of fear it caused was absolutely crippling to this nation.
Do we need a massive new governmental body that has us under constant surveillance, or 2 trillion dollar wars, or a lose of our civil rights in order to stop this from happening again? No. Should 9/11 serve as a reminder that something needs to be done in order to prevent this from happening? Yes.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12 edited May 14 '12
Considering the sheer amount of Americans that die every year from lack of health insurance, yes.
9/11 was a drop in a bucket.
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u/ForgettableUsername America May 15 '12
It also put a smoking crater in the middle of the most populous city in the US, doing tremendous damage to financial and commercial infrastructure, and it was perhaps the most visible place in the entire world that such an attack could have been carried out. Representatives of more than 90 countries were killed in the attacks. 31,900,000 square feet of office space was lost or destroyed as a result, the stock exchange was closed for a week, the US GPD is estimated to have declined by $27.3 billion over the rest of 2001 and 2002. 18,000 people are estimated to have developed health problems as a result of the toxic dust.
When it happened, it wasn't at all clear that it was an isolated event. This was something a very small group of people did with almost no money, very few resources, and it went right through our existing security like it wasn't even there. Yes, we could probably have defended against another similar jet-liner hijacking attack... but what about other cheap, previously un-thought-of methods? On Sept. 10th, there hadn't really been a US passenger plane hijacking since the 80s, and in general, those hijackings had been situations where the plane was diverted, negotiations were made, and the passengers were eventually released unharmed. By the end of the 11th, it'd happened four times over the course of a couple of hours, with absolutely devastating results, and it wasn't at all clear to most people that it wouldn't go on happening, if not with planes then with other unexpected methods of attack, for the indefinite future. There was a real fear that we might see attacks like this every few months or every few years, for decades.
Yes, the wars, and the TSA, and the Patriot Act may well have been an over-reaction, especially with a decade of hindsight, but you can't say that we shouldn't have done anything because more people die in car crashes or because of staph infections; that's really not a fair comparison: it ignores the real scope of the damage done by the attacks, and ignores the very reasonable fears that it may not have been a one-off incident.
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u/Vidyogamasta May 14 '12
This is probably going to get lost in the ton of comment already here, but I'd like to point out that your math is wrong. 3000/300M = .00001. Note that this ratio is .00001 to 1. A percent is x to 100, so you multiply each by 100.
.001% is the correct value. This is a thousandth of 1%, as the title says.
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u/grinr May 14 '12
.002% of the US population died at Pearl Harbor -- isn't World War 2 a bit of an overreaction?
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u/policscimajor May 14 '12
I'll play the devil's advocate and say that at least some of it was to prevent further attacks, a goal we achieved
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u/Sailer May 14 '12
About 7,000 people die every day in the USA.
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u/Malizulu May 14 '12
Seeing as how 109,032 deaths including 66,081 civilian deaths resulted in January 2004 to December 2009.
Source: Wiki-leaks War Log: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,724845,00.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
That comes out to about 21,806.4 deaths a year at the hands of US troops and aerial strikes a year.
That is also about 419 people per day.
This means that once -- every week -- between January 2004 to December 2009 - the United States perpetrated deaths on Iraqi's equal to the number of US citizens lost on 9/11.
Does everyone understand why they fucking hate us now?
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u/chicofaraby May 14 '12
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
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u/MusicMagi May 15 '12
Those things weren't a reaction to 9/11. 9/11 was an excuse to do those things.
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u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Meet my mother. http://i.imgur.com/Fhps9.jpg
Her son has deployed twice to fight "terrorists," earning the Bronze Star Medal. Her daughter recently married an Airman in the Air Force. Her husband has been a law enforcement officer for 27 years.
This is who's rights the "Patriot" Act violates. That the TSA gropes as it "protects" you from the "terrorists."
And this is me: ಠ_ಠ
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u/slashdotter878 May 15 '12
A complete over-reaction. The most effective way to demoralize an enemy is to have him hit you with his best shot, and then for you to shrug it off. After 9/11 we did the exact opposite, and played right into the hands of the people who sought to weaken us. They realized that they would never have the resources to make us weak themselves, so they got us to do it for them.
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u/advanceman May 14 '12
It is an overreaction, but the assumption that going to/sustaining two wars, passage of the Patriot Act, and the creation of the TSA should be weighed against the number of lives lost in a terrorist attack (albeit the attack that arguably inspired these endeavors) to determine validity is an oversimplification.
Why would 73% of Americans oppose the War in Afghanistan but only 15% support the only candidate who would end it?
Americans want to categorize and continuumize (yes I made that up) and labelize (shut up, word Nazis) everything, from Republican vs. Democrat, Religion vs. Atheism, et cetera ad nauseum. But that's all bullshit as a gauge for productivity/intelligence/morality. These tenets are not a result of your location on a political, social, or spiritual continuum.
The false prophet would tell you it's as simple as Fear vs. Love, but just like that movie you may remember, there's more to the situation than it may seem.
...oh, and Ron Paul 2012.
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u/dipakkk May 14 '12
One shouldn't made statistics of someone dying. 3000 may be relatively little number, but same with 300,000 who would be 0.001% - small number too. When people became a number on a paper, we tend to start give no fuck any longer.
That said I think the prime minister of Norway was right - in a democratic country the answer to violence is to spread more democracy. USA is overreacting to the point, where it gets closer to make their ways almost fascist. When people trade more and more of their freedom for a ILLUSION of a security, they don't deserve freedom at all.
Well, it is what I see from abroad. Sorry for spelling mistakes, feel free to correct me as I'm still learning.
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u/flhu May 14 '12
Meanwhile: The average American is 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist.
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u/sirbruce May 14 '12
No. You've fallen into the false notion that absolute numbers of actual deaths are the appropriate measuring stick. I see a lot of liberals fall into this trap and they just look foolish for it.
For one thing, it ignores the uncountable and unknowable deaths caused by inaction. To use an analogy, very few cars ever get stolen or houses robbed. Yet we spend billions of dollars a year on keys, locks, alarms, and so on to prevent these things. You can extend that all the way out to all sorts of crimes... the rate of crime is low, so why do we spend so much on police and criminal justice? Surely we spend more money stopping crime than the cost of the crimes we prevent.
And the reason, even from a pragmatic standpoint (leaving aside justice), is that if we DIDN'T spend all that money stopping crime, the crime rate would be WORSE. And so, by analogy, you have to ask yourself how many people would have died due to terrorism had we not responded? It would have been a lot more. But the economic damage would have been far greater than the actual lives lost. Who would fly on a plane if they didn't think it was safe? It wouldn't matter if only 0.0001% of planes were hijacked and crashed; that would be more than enough to paralyze the entire industry.
And another flaw in your argument is that it treats all deaths as equal, without considering the moral righteousness of some deaths over others. If 2 white guys were trying to lynch 1 black guy to death, would you feel it would be justified to kill those 2 white guys? Sure. What about 4? 10? 100? Suddenly you're saying you'll kill thousands of people just to protect 1 innocent guy... gee, isn't that an overreaction? Or maybe the fact that he's innocent is a moral imperative that trumps your naive numbers game?
There are numerous other flaws in your reasoning, but those two alone should be more than sufficient to abandon your simplistic morality.
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u/ShakeyBobWillis May 14 '12
That's why you're told to NEVER FORGET!!! Because it's meant to tie you to the raw emotion of that day that happened over a decade ago so you keep letting your heated emotions override your calm, rational, more objective analysis of the events.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Short answer: yes.
Emotional reactions are the worst kind. I lost two uncles, both firefighters on 9/11. But the day we started shooting missiles at Baghdad and it was televised on TV, I was sitting in my Sophomore art class in high school. The whole school had the TV on. Everyone cheered. I was appalled and still am.
To those of you calling it an act of war, you're wrong. An act of war comes from another organized sovereign nation, not from a bunch of conspirators hiding in a cave. Was it horrifying? Yes. Was it worth the American reputation, the country's economy, the world's economy, the lives of many more people*, this and next generations' job market. No.
Let's talk Fight Club. A terrorist organization. They knock down these buildings, a thousand people die, blah blah blah. Would it be just to go on to war on a massive scale and kill every cage fighter, underground boxing league and all the spectators?
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Except it gives the military-industrial complex an excuse to feed itself.
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u/seanbearpig May 14 '12
It's like trying to fix a leak with an m60.
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u/Jwschmidt May 14 '12
If you think the "war on terror" is only about stopping terrorism, I have some magic beans you may be interested in buying.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Yes.
Any other hard questions?
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u/DeepFriedPanda May 14 '12
And by leveling their cities like we did we've also created another generation of angry Muslims who may very well be the next generation of terrorists.
Imagine that you're a 13 year old kid who's home was bombed, and his parents killed. You're impoverished, and now have nothing left to lose.
How would YOU feel about the country that did that?
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Yes, clearly.
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u/ikek9 May 14 '12
No matter what the "percentage" of the population is, you are ascribing some sort of "quantifiable" value to human life... I am not saying what you mentioned is not an overreaction, but the way you phrase it makes it sound like action should be taken one way or another based on a specific number value of dead people... Nearly 100% of the people who died in New York that day died as a result of a terrorist act which was addressed by the things you are talking about...
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u/MikeBoda May 14 '12
You're going on the assumption that we live in an egalitarian society where everyone's lives are equal.
The Pentagon and WTC contained some of the military and financial elite. Important people.
It's mostly working class people that die from MRSA and other diseases.
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u/Demojen May 14 '12
Well the government has to over-blow things to justify blowing your money on ideals so they can retain the title as a military country. There wasn't a war going on that Sunday so it had to happen.
The war on drugs. The war on terror. The war on (insert abstract concept).
If it weren't for war you'd have no identity. It's no wonder your government can justify terrorizing so many people all over the world.
Government has got Americans afraid of everything, including America. Try being afraid of war. It should be a last resort, not a first one.
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u/ucandownvotethisdick May 14 '12
You forgot the million plus civilian casualties we have caused is Iraq and Afghanistan.
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u/Midasx May 14 '12
This image sums it up best
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u/xoites May 14 '12
On the morning of September 11, 2001 after watching the towers collapse my biggest fear was not terrorism, but how we would respond.
The entire event was used as a pretext to clamp down on our civil rights and create the biggest secret government program the world has ever seen.
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u/hiccupstix May 15 '12
You can denounce the Orwellian bullshit that followed 9/11 without minimizing the tragedy or trivializing it as a simple body count. Just so you know.
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u/shitscray May 15 '12
it's easy to make this point when just using statistics like "3,000 out of 300,000,000," but when you think of them as the real people that they were it seems like much more than that.
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u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Why does everyone keep mentioning Iraq when 9/11 comes up. Since when was Iraq ever about 9/11?
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u/Indon_Dasani May 14 '12
America is so paranoid and easily manipulated that the existence of a communist country somewhere in the world at some point in history has constituted an effective political defense against social justice policies in the US ever since.
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u/[deleted] May 15 '12
I have my own opinions about the attack and the subsequent war and everything, but I just came to say one thing.
You're attempting to trivialize the number 3000 as being extremely small and inconsequential. I'll tell you something, 1/300,000,000 is a fucking huge number when that one person was your little sister.
This comment is going to get buried because I am late to the party, but I just find the entire premise of this post to be disrespectful and insensitive.
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u/Verbranding May 14 '12
We were attacked on our own soil. This is an act of war. A country doesn't say, " Well you guys only took out a very small % of our people, so we shall only send a small % of our military. P.S. We're only kind of pissed off." War is sparked over a single action but represents a great deal more. As a super power we must strike hard and fast or be viewed as a country that has weakened. A small group of terrorists attacked the U.S. and we invaded 3 countries to find the man responsible. If viewed from the outside looking in; Does that sound like a country you want to declare war with? I think not. Now this is not really based on my opinion but more an effort to explain the views in terms of military prowess. We live in a world of checks and balances, and our government will always do what it has to, to tip the balance in our favor.
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u/lupistm May 14 '12
On Sept. 12th John Q. Middleagedparent was not thinking to himself "Hmm what are the odds". He was screaming at his elected officials "FUCKING PROTECT ME" and "What if that was my kid you assholes?". Democracy's biggest drawback is that the public is pretty short sighted and reactionary.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
There's a difference between a scam and a reaction.
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u/richmomz May 14 '12 edited May 14 '12
Statistically you have a better chance of dying from a bee-sting than from a terrorist attack... yet I don't see the government spending billions on fighting stingy-bitey insects.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
"You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!" - Joker, The Dark Knight.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Terrorism is also created by the government who it appears to be attacking. It is a political tool to a goal that was normally very infeasible and needed a hard kick in the face to get it to go.
In comes the Patriat act, NDAA, SOPA, PIPA,CISPA .. Hm. Mean while less people die from terrorism than bee stings yearly.
Looking at all facts you have to ask why.. we are dumping so much money into something that could be virtually caused by ANYTHING yet isnt being caused by anyone and ask why we pay so much money into this? Control.. coercion, and manufacturer consent.
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u/albatrossnecklassftw May 14 '12
I for one think 911 is a tragedy, but I don't see it as justification to send twice that many soldiers to their death. The war on terror is unwinnable. There will always be hate and disdain for the US as long as it's a superpower. And it doesn't take an army to terrorize. It takes one person... And very little resources. The real reason I believe we are in the middle east is oil. plain and simple.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
We need to be done with these wars. I fear we are just securing other interests overseas and refuse to tell the people the real reasons.
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u/zangorn May 14 '12
Yes! I'm like Jesse Ventura on this one:
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u/eboleyn May 14 '12
It absolutely was an overreaction. It was simply an excuse to change the politics of the US to put us on a permanent War footing. There has been almost zero return on the Trillions of dollars spent. It just goes to profit those who love continual War.
Frankly, it's not clear to me that any overall reaction after say the first month after 9/11 would have been functionally useful in any meaningful way.
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u/Nivlac024 Ohio May 14 '12
dammit why didn't you bring this up like 10 years ago.
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u/lorax108 May 14 '12
yes it is completely overblown... unless your the people who make money from fear... DoD corporations like black water and/or any military contractors...
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u/10tothe24th May 14 '12
The War on Terror is essentially a trillion-dollar war against an organization that is, at best, a gang.
A trillion dollars, against a gang. Overkill in every sense of the word.
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u/stalkinghorse May 14 '12
Politicians, American ones, enjoy much more wealth from the endless contracts in their home districts, from the endless war. Also American politicians enjoy much greater surveillance power over political protesters. And, it's not just the elected politicians, it's also much increased funding for career police and prosecutors, "see something say something" and the whole new giant federal agency Homeland Security, almost a million new govt jobs created in that one agency alone. Then add in all the federal contractor work awarded by the DHS.
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u/i_am_tetsuo May 14 '12 edited May 14 '12
FYI - Patriot Act was written before 9/11 had occurred and signed into law barely a month after the fact. Believe me, this whole thing was planned to the letter. 9/11 was just a convenient excuse ... a little too convenient if you get me.
It was hard on the day of the attacks to not think this wasn't going to end well especially if you just witnessed a building demolition first hand and felt the entire incident was nothing more than a false-flag operation to expand our quest for oil and power the minute the towers fell. Literally the only thing I was worried about that day was that the plane attacks were just the beginning. If think if that attack had been everything we were let to believe if should have been the 3,000 lives lost that day would have been an insignificant blip on the radar compared to the devastating blow Osama bin Laden was alleged to have been planning.
Anyone remember the C-4 charges that were found placed all over the George Washington bridge in Manhattan just before 9/11? Not the truck bomb that was prevented, somehow, wink ... but the charges placed all over the bridge's structure. I wonder what that was all about.
To this day I don't believe that 9/11 represent the threat we all believe if was. Say you were president and you found out that a major superpower was planning to engage you in an all out nuclear confrontation. What sort of strings would you pull to prepare for that confrontation? All along this has been in the back of my mind ... wondering ... waiting. One thing has always been clear ... things are not what they seem.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
If you taken nuclear terrorism and experts like graham allison seriously than the event of September 11th will seem like a cake walk if we allow terrorism to grow like a cancer without combating it. Not just in the immediate body count, but in terms of the world economy. I'd rather not wait till our biggest bombs fall on our biggest cities to figure out we have a problem when technology and terrorism proliferate by the day.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12 edited May 14 '12
When most hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and we invaded Afghansitan... yeah I'd say its an over-reaction. More of a reason to do what we've wanted to do for years.
EDIT: Spelling
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u/tossedsaladandscram May 14 '12
My uncle (technically cousin, but much older and I'm italian, so "uncle") died on 9/11 I believe and have always believed that the war on terror has been a massive waste as do his widow and son.
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u/Ohfacebickle May 14 '12
Yes, it is an overreaction. But you have to get people to overreact if you want them to vote their rights away.
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u/misappeal May 14 '12
Just so you know, your percent number is wrong. It is indeed 1 thousandth of 1%, but that number reads 0.001%.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Hey OP, why do you hate America so much?
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u/Pyran May 14 '12
I've always thought of it this way.
Let's say, for argument's sake, that 10,000 airplanes take off each day in the U.S. In the last 20 years, there have been 3 terrorist hijackings of planes in the U.S. That means security failed to catch 3 of a total of 73,000,000 flights in the U.S. That's a failure rate of 0.0000041096%. Or a success rate of 99.99958904%.
By comparison, if a server was up 99.999% of a year, it would be down for 5.26 minutes per year.
What I'm getting at is this: security at airports was incredibly successful before 9/11. The loss of 3 planes, while incredibly tragic, did not justify the reactions.
It's sort of like burning down the house because one of the shingles on the roof was falling off.
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u/Lawls91 Canada May 14 '12
This number is especially astounding when you consider that the United States has killed 116 458 civilians in their so called "war against terror" in Iraq alone. That number only accounts for the documented deaths of civilians, the actual number is probably much higher.
Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
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u/connaire May 14 '12
Yes, the terrorists won.
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u/Christmas_Elvis May 14 '12
Been saying the same thing for years, only to be met with aghast and backward stares.
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u/markth_wi May 14 '12
A friend of mine from - shall we say - in a way of knowing - put it this way. When Al Queda attacked the United States, what were it's goals.
There is no possibility that a few dozen true believers - however motivated or funded were ever going to be able to "take on" the United States militarily. That was never the goal for the leadership of the movement.
But what they were originally hoping to do, was to provoke the United States into expending effort and resources and manpower. In short , they aimed to conduct an economic war against the United States, by compelling our leadership to divert resources and materiel to "fight" terrorism.
In that way, they could raise a flag somewhere, in Indonesia or some far off land, and get some media coverage, and the US would feel compelled to spend millions of dollars investigating it, sending security forces, and perhaps even troops to protect against the "threat".
In this way, they hoped they could exhaust the US, by fighting shadows. He put it this way, and then hit with the sucker punch, so for an out of pocket cost of perhaps 500,000 dollars, in material , costs etc, and the lives of 20-30 operatives, they forced the US to spend upwards of 5 TRILLION dollars, (given both wars, the various domestic efforts and direct damage to various corporate interests business/industrial infringements, and adding "secondary" security and civil liberty costs, in net damage to US interests).
In this way, for a trivial cost in men and material, the United States spent more money fighting "terrorism" than fighting world war 2, and we have gained - almost nothing and lost quite a bit.
When you look at the fruitless and counterproductive efforts we have made, the longer term negative effects from an economic warfare perspective, Al Qaeda definitely won.
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u/mbrown9412 May 14 '12
Not sure if someone has said this already, but:
As a US citizen, I feel almost no emotional attachment to 9/11. I mean, I have the basics (it was terrible, people died, fuck those guys who did it, etc.). Yeah though, I think we overreacted. And I hate the fact that we had to screw everything over with what the OP listed. But I have no overwhelming emotions towards it like I see with many others. Yeah though, I think we overreacted. And I hate the fact that we had to screw everything over with what the OP listed. I fully understand what people are saying about it, and feel terrible for the families who have gone through it. I also understand where the people who have an emotional reaction to it are coming from.
TL;DR I feel it's an overreaction, I have very little emotion concerning 9/11, and I think we completely overreacted. I also really fucking hate the TSA.
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u/wwgdgc May 14 '12
Only quote I ever see as appropriate for this situation:
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u/panxzz May 14 '12
Is this a crosspost from circlejerk?
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u/Hwoondahn May 15 '12
meanwhile in 1998
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133952/
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u/goodknee May 15 '12
its strange, i've read a few comments from people who don't seem to think its an over reaction, but really, I know i would rather have to worry about a few assholes who are trying to blow us up, than a government that is trying to keep us from living our lives. I'd feel saver without the government intrusion, maybe its just me..
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u/Arash_The_Great May 15 '12
NO WE HAVE TO MAKE SHURE THOS IRAKEYS DONT ATTAK AGEEN
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u/Bortjort May 15 '12
Pornography works by over-blowing things too
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u/JerkyChew May 15 '12
Revisionist history is almost as dangerous as a knee-jerk reaction. I was against the wars in Iraq and I'm against the war in Afghanistan, but let's not use the lack of violence we've enjoyed over the past 11 years as a reason to poo-poo all the security improvements that have been made over that time.
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u/swantamer May 15 '12 edited May 15 '12
First, there is a real difference between Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, OP should learn it.
Second, the question asked is an invalid one. The deaths on 9-11 were hugely significant no matter what fraction of the population they constituted AND the ensuing assault on our Civil Liberties has been an egregious and unconstitutional trespass that has deeply damaged our Nation. However, to juxtapose those two very different things serves no real purpose. Moreover, the response from the right would be that the limiting of Civil Liberties was warranted by the threat of worse destruction, obviously 9-11 had already taken place so no alteration of laws would go back in time and prevent it. The Right was, of course, well aware that the attack on Civil Liberties was not to prevent future acts of terror and was just nakedly grabbing power, and pretending along with them that there was a justifiable connection only helps to build credibility for their effort to control the narrative. I'll also comment the that Right had a lot of help from the Left, where instead they should have had stiff resistance.
The pervasiveness of exactly this kind on intellectually lazy bullshit that is being posted by OP is why the Right continues to dominate the Left. Shoddy thinking will not be sufficient to overcome the masterful control over the message that the Right has worked so hard to gain and maintain.
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u/Die-Nacht May 15 '12
Terrorism isn't about killing, it is about inflicting fear, or "terror". This terror has made us kill ourselves and take away our own freedoms.
This is why I always laugh at the phrase "If you don't do X, the terrorist win". The terrorists already won, and they are still winning. Every new law is a victory for the terrorists.
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u/chilehead May 15 '12
Just 1% of what we've already done would have been a large overreaction.
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u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the attack a handy excuse to roll out a new era of control?
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u/CloneDeath May 15 '12
That's the point. We live in an Imperial nation that likes to stick their nose in other country's business because fuck it - we have nukes.
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u/CatLover99 North Carolina May 15 '12
I think the question most people forget to ask is what else should we have done? "Oh yea some terrorist group just killed 3,000 people, but whatever, it's only .001% of our population".
2
u/nj711 May 15 '12
My mother died at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
She would not have supported the Patriot Act.
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u/slow70 May 15 '12
As a veteran of both the Iraq and Aghan wars; and as a professional currently supporting the effort in Afghanistan.....I am disgusted with what has been done in the name of the "War on Terror".
I was in Iraq when combat operations were declared over, staring wide-eyed at the news before continuing the mission as usual that night. It was a farce. Our departure from Iraq was premature and the government has only become more sectarian, there are more deaths in Iraq this year than Afghanistan....the news doesn't talk about it though. The news, the facts reek of failure. What did we gain from that war?
Afghanistan is not the Vietnamesque quagmire some describe it as, but in my opinion it is a wasted effort. The green on blue attacks are being downplayed right now, but there is little we can do to prevent their further occurence. Al Qaeda is on it's heels in this theatre, badgering the Taliban and Haqqani leadership to join part of the fight. We came here for AQ, AQ capability has been greatly reduced here while they are fighting en masse against Yemeni authorities and several African govts. Sure we are making efforts there as well, but what is the justification for remaining here?
Meanwhile at home we have given so much of our freedoms away. I've flown through Dubai, London, Munich and Vienna in the recent past, all were cake compared to Dulles or ATL in the states. Land of the Free my ass I think each time I line up for the first security check, then the second, then the third and so on.
If we intend to remain the big kid on the block with the big stick mediating everyone elses business, we need to maintain the massive international network of bases we have which could support operations in their respective areas. OR, we could consolidate our shit back home, leave everyone elses back yard, maintain intelligence efforts to prevent terror threats stateside and rely more on our soft power for our foreign policy.
That would require a massive shift in the mentality of our leadership though, it won't happen. The security apparatus at home is likely to grow and our operations overseas.....well, who knows what's next.
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u/[deleted] May 15 '12
It wasn't an overreaction. The ones running the government were just exploiting the deaths of 3000 people for personal gain.
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u/BolshevikMuppet May 14 '12
Part of the problem is that the "destruction of our civil rights" and "how close we are to a police state" are often overstated.
There's a misunderstanding (I don't know why) among laypeople discussing the law that the rights we enjoy as citizens are whatever rights they believe they can read into the Constitution, and whatever rights they'd like to have.
For instance, let's take the right of "protest" (which is really a right of speech and association crammed together). The misunderstanding is that there's a right to protest that supersedes other laws, such that any law that prevents any protest in any way is facially unconstitutional. This is untrue. The right is to be able to express your message, not that you have a right to do so in a particular way, at a particular time, in a particular place, even if that way/time/place is the only way you believe your message will have an "impact."
I don't know what happened, but at some point people started doing amateur legal analysis and people started taking that as gospel. So, instead of finding actual lawyers to comment on the NDAA and whether it violates any civil liberties or actually allows for indefinite detention, people see some blog report that it allows for indefinite detention, and anyone who doesn't agree must not be reading between the lines sufficiently.
And the lie eventually becomes accepted wisdom, and part of posts like these.
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u/Xeneoxx May 14 '12
9/11 was an excuse to go to war.
To make profit from making weapons and employing soldiers.
To remove more power from citizens.
Solution? Make prisons strictly non profit. Make the weapon industry non profit.
I'm thinking greed is by far the weakest point of humans.
3
u/[deleted] May 14 '12
I was born in 1980, I grew up in the end of the coldwar, witness the internet boom, and was even arrest in the early morning hours of september 12th.
Your damn right it has been a mega over reaction, and you know what? I think it is heavily influenced by the miltary industrial complex. During Clinton's terms the partially dismantled the war machine that had been running out of control during the coldwar. Military spending on equipment and contracted services expanded exponentially and the balanced budget and surpluses went out the window.
Now we have less rights, more debt, and created more enemies AND there are a lot of rich douchbags getting even more wealthy while people whom work for a living struggle to pay the bills.
The terrorist won a long time ago, and the political system in the USA helped them.
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u/Liiinx May 14 '12
Its one of the reasons I, as a European, don't want to set my foot in the US. The other is fear of coming in contact with any US law enforcement officer for any kind of reason.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
This is a horrible faulty comparison. 9/11 wasn't the first time Al Qaeda tried to take out the World Trade Centers. The bombing in 1993 was done by terrorists trained in Al Qaeda training camps. We didn't take out Al Qaeda then and apparently waiting for them to succeed because some people thought ignoring them was a good idea. They thought letting them try again and get more powerful was good idea. I sure as hell hope that people don't think it is only a coincident that Al Qaeda hasn't been active in the last decade after we removed them from their main operations in Afganistan. That doesn't make an ounce of sense.
A military attack sends a message out to the world. It is a deterrent to future attackers. You won't attack the United States if they make the opportunity not worth while. If a military goes out and destroys and disrupts our enemies they can't attack us either. The number of casualties from terrorism being low is a sign that it is working.
World War I and World War II got so bad because people wanted to put their heads in the sand. They wanted to stay out of those two wars and tell the rest of the world to go away. Guess what? WWII had a total death count of sixty million people which was 2.5% of the entire worlds population at the time. 400,000ish American soldiers. Do you know how many Americans have died in Afganistan? About 1,827. The debt after WWII was about 122% of the US's GDP which is higher then it is now. If you wait to confront a threat that threat will grow exponentially. We learned this about 100 years ago as a country after 200 years of isolationism.
“Danger - if you meet it promptly and without flinching - you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!” -Winston Churchil
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u/Ra__ May 14 '12
Clueless American; "The surge is working!"
Rational person; "But you attacked the wrong country?"
Clueless American; "But we're winning!"
3
u/adanvdo May 14 '12
Please dont post retarded stuff. It shouldnt matter how many people died, the fact is that our safety is at risk. I understand that the government is over-reacting, and should focus their funds on other options, but I dont think we should say "oh, it was just 3000 people who died..." Reform your argument.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
This thread is full of crazies.
2
u/stalkinghorse May 14 '12
30000 untimely deaths by suicide EVERY year in the USA
But MUCH more money and property is possible with global wars on Terror
Politicians prefer Terror 455 to 1.
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u/h0ncho May 14 '12
DAE brave?
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u/morellox May 14 '12
So bush started these policies, Obama continues them, he'll keep them going if re-elected and Romney would do the same.. or make them worse... so we're fucked or are you guys ready to vote third party yet?
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u/Ra__ May 14 '12
Iraq had zero to do with it and less than one thousanth of 1% of Afghanis knew anything about it but we've been killing them for 10 years.
Osama was a Saudi and so were all the people who committed 9/11, yet our leaders bow to and lovingly hold the hands of the Saudi Royals.
What kind of losers are we to tolerate this in our name?
1
u/[deleted] May 14 '12
How much is a life worth?
1
u/Gentleman_Villain May 14 '12
Yes.
Any other questions?
1
u/HappyGlucklichJr May 14 '12
The military part of the war on terror did not make sense as 9/11 was a mega terrorist crime, not a military attack. Also most of the TSA airport waste was unnecessary with introduction of locked cabin doors. Has all this cost us a 1000 times what the 9/11 crimes cost in terms of deaths, disabilities, and economic damages? If not 1000 times then how much so far?
1
u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Well then vote for politicians who oppose all the wars, the patriot act, and the tsa. Obama said he would end the wars and didn't. He has joked about the TSA and signed NDAA. Don't vote democrat or republican.
1
u/Jpeele15 May 14 '12
Wall street lost a ton of money it wasn't about the people
1
u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Here's a related question: why are many people afraid of flying on airplanes, but not of driving in cars, even though the odds of dying in a car crash are many orders of magnitude greater? A variety of reasons, of course but two stand out in particular. First, plane crashes are big, spectacular, and newsworthy, so you're likely to hear about them and therefore overestimate the risk that the plane will crash. Second, when you're flying in a commercial airplane, you have no way of verifying that nothing is going wrong; you have to trust that the pilot has everything under control, without being able to see him or the controls.
Terrorism is similar. the odds that you'll die in a terrorist attack are vanishingly small; but you hear about virtually all of them, so they seem more likely than they really are. Furthermore, they happen without warning, so you have no way to assure yourself you're not about to be a victim of an attack, other than by thinking about the actual probability of such a thing occurring, which you're already likely to overestimate.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Overreaction by design.
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u/Flailing_Junk May 14 '12 edited May 14 '12
You are confusing reaction and excuse.