harmon44 wrote:The real problem here is we all don't get it. We are at war. A war unlike any other we have had to fight. The enemy does not put on a uniform and fight. The battlefield is the street and the targets are civilians. The more infidels they can kill the better. The sooner,we get this through our heads, we can make the difficult decisions to fight the enemy. It's quite obvious that the battlefield now chosen is mass transit. I don't like they idea of searches, however, the Constitution has always permitted restrictions in wartime. These searches are legal as long as the method of picking the people searched is not random and based upon descrection. There must be a pre-determined method. It is our mindset that is the problem. The terrorist want to kill us all and rule the world. We need to unite and face the real threat. Otherwise we will live in a place that accepts 30, 50 + deaths a month as the blow things up.
A few points:
1) Apparently the "good guys" are
killing civilians too.
2) Perhaps the battlefield "now" is mass transit, but after 9/11 it was airplanes. Each time, security around the last targets goes up, and the terrorists find a new place to strike. It's been said before, but we're almost always "fighting the last war" and not the next one.
3) Ensuring the preservation of liberty during wartime is especially important. Even the 9/11 Commission recognized this, with a line in their report reading "Yet, if our liberties are curtailed, we lost the values that we are struggling to defend." Earl Warren said "It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defense of our nation worthwhile." And most imprtant, I think, is this one from Ramsey Clark: "A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you."
4) "Otherwise we will live in a place that accepts 30, 50 + deaths a month as the blow things up." How many deaths do we accept from auto accidents? How many people are killed each year from being hit by a train? We've come to accept that a certain number of deaths from these are effective inevitable (for auto accidents, according to the US DOT, works out to around 3188 people per month for 2003). Sure, we could tighten the controls on issuing licenses, so that people who drive are more likely to be "good" at it, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Instead, the response has been to try and make accidents more survivable, instead of less likely. What makes terror attacks different, other than the fact that we can point to an "enemy" who looks different and and has different ideas?
Anyway, I've set up a mailing list for discussion on this, if anyone wants to move discussion away from here or if this thread is locked. The page for signing up is
here and the e-mail address is
[email protected].