We’ve gone back and forth over the past month on wether the war in Iraq really is part of the greater war on terror or just a distraction that has nothing to do with catching the 9/11 terrorists or preventing further attacks in the future.
I don’t think anyone’s mind has been changed on either side despite the many good points made.
Lets look at it from a fiscal standpoint.
The Iraq war has cost us $180 BILLION to date and we’ll probably hit a quarter of a TRILLION by the end of the year. Could that money have been spend in different ways to make us safer? to protect us from terrorists?
Lets look at Al Qaeda’s current favorite target, mass transit systems. There have been horrific bombings in Spain and England and you bet your ass they have sleeper cells here to waiting to strike.
BART is the bay area’s rapid transit system and it carries about 315,000 riders every day most of them through the 3.6 mile long transbay tube which lies 135 feet below the surface of San Francisco bay. On Thursday and Friday of last week BART police and employees checked every train before it entered the tunnel looking for suspicious characters or unattended packages. Explosive sniffing dogs walked each carriage.
Today??? due to budget constraints, the checks have stopped. After 9/11 BART identified $200 million in security improvements that it needed to prevent terror attacks and they applied for federal Dept of Homeland Security funding…to date they have received a whopping $6 million…just enough to replace old concrete trash cans with clear perspex ones.
300,000 people a day under 135 feet of water in unprotected trains and the government won’t fund security improvements because they are $180 BILLION in the red in Iraq.
When I lived in Santa Clara I took the BART up to SF a lot. Now, I’m as left as the next guy but here is my problem with your argument.
Yes, the war in Iraq is expensive but that money wouldn’t have been spent else were in my opinion. I wish we could fix all of the problems that the money COULD have been used for but we won’t and we wouldn’t have.
I lived off of Clayton and Waller for awhile (until the bitch dumped me). Man I wish I could afford to live in CA, I hate New Mexico.
You can’t draw a straight line between the Iraq war and transit system security. We are wasting money all over the place. I honstely only see you bringing out you tired hatered for Bush.
The point he’s trying to make is that Muslims don’t oppose terrorism. He’s wrong, but don’t get in the way of Christian self-righteousness when it gets going.
As far as the topic:
It’s an impossible question to answer because it presumsed knowledge of two different future outcomes (terrorism in the US with the war on Iraq & terrorism in the US without the war on Iraq).
But it’s a valid question to ask for rhetorical purposes since one of the stated purposes for the war was to make “us” safer.
As far as spending, I don’t see what other government waste has to do with criticizing war on Iraq spending. This “oh it doesn’t matter because we waste it elsewhere” is not helpful nor is it very insightful. You’re just going to get dirty, why shower?
We are wasting a ton of money and, more importantly, lives in Iraq. The fact that we are also wasting money on pork barrell projects doesn’t take away from the waste in Iraq.
It doesnt’ take away from it but I am just tired of the retirec. You have your side you never stray from the right has thier side they never stray from and in the end this is all bullshit.
We are there, will stay there. No one is being constructive everyone is hanging on to there team like thier lives depend on it.
I lived off of Clayton and Waller for awhile (until the bitch dumped me). Man I wish I could afford to live in CA, I hate New Mexico.
Well, this kind of a non sequiter topic anyway, so I’ll jsut say that I lived at Waller and Clayton (1482 Waller to be precise) from 1997 to 1999. Fun neighborhood, as long as you dont trip on the homeless guy(s) outside your front door.
While security throughout the States could use improvement all it takes is one terrorist slipping through the cracks to create a world of trouble. The cost for a foolproof system would be beyond what could be afforded if not impossible to implement. In addition it would change the everday freedoms that people enjoy.
There is no doubt that the war has stirred up the pot a bit. More money and effort needs to be spent on the high tech/intelligence gathering side of this war. That’s where it will succeed or fail. The current war in Afghanistan is being waged reactively. The war in Iraq was a proactive response. Clean up those two conflicts and lets spend the money on avoiding another 9/11 or London.
“proactive response” is an oxymoron. And I’m not just saying that a policy of pre-emption is flawed blah blah blah, but the actual phrase you just used is complete nonsense.
I believe a proactive approach for the Iraqi effort was the best course of action. We all saw what the result was from 9/11 on reactively dealing with terrorism.
You ask a good question. Your answer seems to be to play defense. Unfortuately, there is no end to playing defense. There are about 500,000 high value targets in this country. You can’t defend them all.
There was a real good article in the WSJ the other day. It was a summary of a security analysis of transit systems. The question was what would be the result of perfect explosive detection capability for transit systems. The answer, was that result of detection in any case would likely be increased loss of life.
Consider a warning that there was a bomb on a train. Everyone would get down. Getting down lowers the individual’s profile and makes the individual less likely to get hurt. Sadly, it makes other people more likely to be hurt. The explosion affects and kills more people as a result.
Defense doesn’t work. The person with the initiative always wins.
Defense doesn’t work. The person with the initiative always wins.
That’s fine in theory. The problem here isn’t that we are being proactive. The problem is that it is mis-directed. It’s like saying, “Hey, somebody broke into my house so I’m going to go out and beat up a bunch of people at random.” Sure, it feels good to punch something when you’re angry, but what are we accomplishing?
