Everyone knows it happened: no denying that. I'm no historian, but I've read about terrorists dislike for America and the like. Ergo, this debate.


Questions for Debate:


Was a similar attack like 9/11 impossible to avoid? What made it unavoidable?

If not Al Qaeda then who and why?

Was a similar attack like 9/11 impossible to avoid? What made it unavoidable?

There are two causal agents to consider: the final cause and the efficient cause. The final cause was the ill-will that America had been garnering among the Islamic peoples for three decades. In the 1970s America was a relatively even-handed player in the Middle East game, even though it was the only factor keeping Israel alive. American insistence on Israeli survival was grudgingly accepted by many in the Arab world, even though many more did not like it. The peak of American prestige was reached with the Camp David accords, which the Arab world accepted as fair even if they didn't go far enough. If we had maintained the standards of even-handedness of the 70s, we might have retained the overall goodwill of the Arab world.

However, in the 1980s it became clear that Israel was intent on annexing the West Bank and Gaza, using its settlements program to establish "facts on the ground". We did protest these violations of international law, but our protests never had teeth in them, and the Arab world waited with growing impatience for America to bring Israel to the negotiating table. The American intervention in Lebanon did, overall, buy some goodwill as it did show some fairness to both sides, but the extemists drove the Americans out.

The big breakthrough was the Oslo process and the Madrid negotiations, which seemed to herald a final solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Arab confidence in American goodwill revived somewhat, although there was still a strong residue of distrust. The Gulf War generated mixed feelings among most Arabs; they didn't like seeing Iraq beaten so badly, but they also didn't like Saddam Hussein. It was a blow to their pride, and they couldn't get over the sneaking suspicion that the Gulf War was fought to protect oil, not to defend the territorial integrity of Kuwait.

The rest of the 1990s saw a series of catastrophes for American prestige in the Middle East. Our impressive performance in Iraq was countered by our miserable performance in Somalia. Our intervention in Bosnia was seen as a bright spot, but our continued absolute support for an increasingly uncompromising Israel generated a great deal of ill-will. We continued to issue tut-tuts as Israel dismantled the Oslo accords; we condemned Palestinian terrorist acts while expressing concern about Israeli violations of the accords. The last straw was the collapse of Clinton's Camp David talks. This failure, of course, was due primarily to Arafat's intransigence, but in the Arab world that was overlooked; what they saw was the collapse of the peace process and the loss of all hope for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict peacefully.

That was the tipping point. There had always been plenty of Islamic extremists intent on bloody revenge against America, but until that tipping point, they were too few in number to constitute a serious threat. Moreover, they were restrained by their more moderate co-religionists who felt that there was some hope for the future. After the Camp David failure, these moderates gave up hope; indeed, most of the Islamic world gave up hope of a peaceful resolution. The radicals flourished in this atmosphere, garnering recruits and funds. The success of the Taliban in Afghanistan gave them a demonstration of their ability to win as well as a base from which to work.

From that point forward the Islamic extremists were certain to attack America; it was only a matter of how, where, and when. Here we come to the efficient cause of the attack. They found and exploited a hole in the American security system. However, that wasn't the only weakness; there can be no such thing as a truly secure and free hi-tech civilization. There remain a great many avenues of attack available to terrorists. They will strike again, and we will never be able to close all the security holes in our society.

This is, of course, a quickie review of an immensely complex story; there are lots of places where it oversimplifies. But I offer this simplified view to demonstrate the basic truth that American policy towards Israel made the 9/11 attacks inevitable.

The 9/11 attacks were the next logical progression given Bin Laden's Jihad against the US. The attacks against this country started in the mid 1990's and continued; escalating each time. He declared war against the US and was (and is) intent on fighting it to the end.

9/11 was possible to avoid if our former President Clinton would have killed Bin Laden and his leadership when he had ample opportunity. His head-in-the-sand strategy, along with the delusional Madeline Albright, made the 9/11 tragedy inevitable.

Our timid response to prior attacks just emboldened Bin Laden to up the ante. I believe it was his sincere belief that the US response would have been to pull out of most of the Arab world. Nuts like Bin Laden see the US as soft, without conviction, and a degenerate society. He had been attacked before and thought that we'd do the same thing this time; toss a few cruise missiles into empty tents and refuse to send troops into harm's way. I don't think that in his wildest dreams Bin Laden thought the US response to 9/11 would be to remove the Taliban, kill or capture most of his terrorist group, invade Iraq, and essentially attack Islamist terrorist groups in hundreds of nations across the world. He just didn't see the US resolve that he would ignite. His mentality was nearly the same as the Imperial Japanese of 1941 who thought that the US response to a Pearl Harbor sneak attack would be to withdraw into isolationism. Bin Laden made exactly the same miscalculation.

Bin Laden's hatred for the US is based on his fundamentalist Islamist beliefs. That's the motivation, not "US support for Israel". They hate Israel because they see it as a mini-US right in the middle of an Arab region. The worldview of these people has a long-term objective of destroying the United States (and the west) and replacing it with a GLOBAL Islamist state. Which president is in office is not relevant to a guy like Bin Laden. He sees no difference between Bush and Clinton and expected Bush to act in the same ineffective way as Clinton did when attacked.

But, 9/11 was a wakeup call to the inevitable confrontation of radical Islam which has spread nothing less than death, destruction, and tyranny everywhere it exists on the globe.

So it was all bin Laden's fault. Which means that all we have to do is kill bin Laden and all our problems disappear! Right?

Well, actually no. That would be a very simplistic approach and would not work at this point given the fact that his organization has been dispersed. As I pointed out, the time where a decapitation strategy had a chance to work has long passed. Our president had other priorities at the time such as a young intern named Monica and illegally raising campaign funds from the Chinese government.

We need to get a lot more than just Bin Laden. And we're in the process of doing exactly that.

I see. If we had gotten bin Laden back in the 1990s, none of this would have ever happened. None of the other members of his organization would have taken over, nobody else would have stepped into his shoes, and, without his inspiring example, the whole Islamic terrorist system would have dried up and blown away. Right?

Yes. It would have thrown that network into disarray and almost certainly disrupted their 9/11 planning. Of course, if was just a typical Bill Clinton type action (in other words zero follow up), then the victory would be short lived.

The time to nip that in the bud has long passed. But, at least Bush is doing the right thing and taking the fight to the terrorists instead of just sitting back and inviting them to make more of us victims.

So you maintain that Osama bin Laden is soley responsible for the 9/11 attacks? That if he had never been born, nothing like those attacks would ever have happened? If he'd been killed in 1998, all the other thousands of terrorists would have said, "Aw, shucks!" and shuffled home? That all those people who provided funds for his efforts would have decided to keep their money? That the Taliban would not have set up training camps for terrorists?

Boy, you must think this Osama bin Laden guy is one helluvan organizer, inspirer, fund-raiser, teacher, planner, and leader!

I sure do. That's why he's the most wanted man on the face of the earth.

Please remember to keep this thread civil, do not force this topic to be shut because of personal attacks or the like. Please also remember that one-liners offer little to debate, offer evidence to support claims.

If I'm recalling correctly Dubya was the president on September 11, 2001. Not Bill Clinton. It was Clinton who issued the last military strike against Al Qaeda prior to September 11, 2001. Not George Bush.

It was Bush who was on vacation for the entire month of August prior to September 11, 2001. Not Bill Clinton.

And the guy who sat dazed and confused reading a children's book for seven minutes while planes were crashing into the Twin Towers, people were falling or jumping to their death and America was under siege was George W. Bush. Not William Jefferson Clinton.

And almost four years after the fact it is George Bush that has failed to hunt down, capture, kill or bring to justice, Osama bin Laden.

Not Bill Clinton.

Scapegoating President Clinton for his sins and mistakes in no way absolves President Bush of his sins and mistakes. There is enough fault to lay at both their feet. I really think this was not a Democratic or a Republican tragedy, but an American tragedy. In the time that has passed it seems some of us have forgotten that it was any and all Americans that were the target that day.

In the partisan urge to assess blame for what happened that day----a nightmarish scenario only a sick and twisted mind could dream of, I don't chose to point the finger at Bush or Clinton for all those pointless deaths.

I blame Bin Laden. First, last and most.

I blame Bin Laden too. He, after all, declared war on the United States when Bill Clinton was in office. He then initiated his war effort with a series of terrorist strikes on our embassies, our allies, and one of our naval vessels. He's the man that our special forces are hunting around the clock as you read this.

The response to Bin Laden from Bill Clinton was to...... well, he now claims anyway.... that he did manage to come up with a plan that he allegedly gave the Bush administration sometime before leaving office and before pardoning all those felons. There was no mention as to whether this alleged plan was written on computers before or after his staff stole the "w" keys from their keyboards on their way out of office. But, I digress...

Yes, 9/11 was an American tragedy. And it was the inevitable result of an incompetent foreign policy that, for 8 long and tragic years, essentially taught terrorists like Bin Laden that we'd not confront them seriously and that we'd run, like we did in Somalia, when the terrorists inflicted any level of pain on our people. It's what happens when you refuse to confront terrorists and instead invite them to the White House (like Clinton did with Arafat).

That is the legacy of William Jefferson Clinton whether you like it or not. You can take cheap shots at our current President about what he did when told of the first plane crashing (frankly, after the first plane hit we didn't even know it was a terrorist attack) and his "vacations" (as though the President does nothing from Crawford or Camp David) but the historical record remains. Bin Laden could have been stopped, on numerous days, by our former president and he chose to DO NOTHING because he feared the POLITICS that would result from his ACTIONS. Because, as the record shows, politics came first, second, and third to WJC. Oh, and babes. I can't forget about them.

The finger needs to be pointed in this case. Right at Bubba. Clinton had 8 years to deal with the issue, not the 8 months that Bush had. And 8 months is even being generous given the fact that the normal transition was totally screwed up by Gore's attempt to steal the election through selective (and creative) recounts in Florida and the resulting irrational ill-will between the two transitioning administrations. The level of blame is NOT equal in this case. Not even close.

Unfortunately history is proving you wrong, Lord Helmet. In spite of not killing OBL (for which I blame both Clinton and Bush), we basically disrupted their network in Afghanistan. And they've been attacking more in the past two years than they were any year prior.


Also noted further in the article is that the attacks in Iraq by insurgents and Al Qaeda aren't even included in those numbers. Yeah, we're really stickin it to the terrorists.

Doc

We are in a war. What you are calling a rise in "terrorist attacks" are battles in our current war. Yes, we are pushing the rats into a corner and they are fighting back. That is to be expected. But appeasement in the face of Jihad is suicide. We have done more that "disrupt" them in Afghanistan. We have replaced their entire regime. Now, they are underground, scattered, and on the run. They don't have the power of an entire state behind then like they did prior to Bush taking action against them.

The absurd notion that the terrorists are somehow "stronger" today than they were on 9/10/01 is hogwash. The US and our allies have killed, imprisoned and similarly disrupted huge portions of their network and that effort is ongoing. Their state support from Afghanistan and Iraq has come to an end and support from other states such as Iran, Libya, Syria and others is being addressed aggressively.

History is proving Bush correct. The election in Iraq has proven that what he has said all along is absolutely true; that the people there yearn for the chance to be free. I can't help but notice that the elites on the left all predicted, without exception, that those elections would not occur and if they did, would be a disaster.

I've been trying to get lordhelmet to acknowledge some sort of limitation on his claim that Osama bin Ladin is the sole cause of the 9/11 attacks, but he has stuck adamantly to his claim. He has agreed that, if Osama bin Ladin had not been born, nothing like the 9/11 attacks would have occurred. That, if he had been killed in 1998, nothing like the 9/11 attacks would have occurred.

I maintain that this position is patently absurd. There were and are thousands of people involved in the entire Islamic terrorism movement, and to suggest that a single man made it all possible is ludicrous. Nevertheless, I will provide some of the historical background behind the idea.

lordhelmet may not know it, but he is an extreme exponent of what is known as the "great man" theory of history. This holds that history is shaped by a few extraordinary men who stride onto the stage of history and change everything. This theory was popular more than a hundred years ago, when romantic notions of history tinted everyone's view. The great man theory is now regarded with some derision by historians.

This is not to say that there are no great men. There are lots of historical moments that turned one way or the other due to the intervention of an individual. This is most often used with respect to some highly successful military leader, such as Alexander the Great or Napoleon. And again, there is some truth to this in some cases. Indeed, I like to think of Erasmus as one of the great men of history, an individual who single-handedly changed the course of history. I would go so far as to say that Erasmus was the greatest of the great men in that his contribution was most outside the normal range of historical forces. But that's another lecture.

The counter to the great man theory is the Marxist approach. Now, most Americans identify Marx with socialism, but that was only one of his ideas. He is most influential now as the exponent of the idea that historical change is not random nor based on the actions of a few great men, but is instead the consequence of historical forces that grind forward inexorably. A Marxist historian dismisses Napoleon as merely the man who rode the tidal wave of French nationalism over Europe. He was at the right place at the right time, nothing more; if he had never been born, the details would have turned out differently but the overall historical picture would be the same.

(At this point I must ask the indulgence of those who have a firmer grip on history than I have; I realize that Marxist theory is far more elegant than my representation, but the most elaborate developments of Marxist theory have been carried out by French scholars and I must confess that I have never understood French intellectualism.)

Anyway, the great man theory that lordhelmet espouses so enthusiastically is about as dead as Lamarck's ideas about evolution, or lumeniferous aether, or phlogiston. And I ask other readers, how would you go about debunking a proponent of any of these hopelessly obsolete ideas? Where would you even start? That is my problem in responding to lordhelmet

Two points here. First, I do think that UBL was a fairly unique person in history...someone who had both the desire and wherewithal to create Al Queda. However, I think focusing on that detracts from the question. If 9-11 were inevitable, it would have to be a likely outcome with or without UBL, or perhaps even Al Queda. If it does get down to just UBL, I think the answer to the debate qustion must be no, as Erasmusso pointed out. If UBL died from accident or disease, which is possible, then 9-11 would not occur....making the answer to the question certainly no.

Out of curiousity lord Helmet, what is your view that if we had not interfered in Iran in the first place by installing the Shah, that the whole fundalmentalist movement might never have gained the ground it did. The Shah treated his people so badly that support for the extremists grew.
So if we had left well enough alone the whole Wahhabinism might never have gotten the traction it has now.

To blame Clinton for UBL is a stretch.

In the same vein if we had stayed out of WWI and left it to the europeans they could never have subjected germany to the extreme sanctions that so depressed german society that the breeding ground for the Nazi's would have grown so very fertile.

Anything is avoidable--if you see it coming. The conditions that gave rise to the fundamentalists are not the results of a single action--although there are some clear points of birth and other points of malignant growth. Perhaps had we followed a path to energy independence in the 70s--Carter had some vague ideas that may have born fruit--perhaps our need for oil would be much lower and we would not have the strange bedfellows we have today--the Saudis everyone seems to say are with us in the WOT, because they are in danger from Al Quaeda--yet the Government Sponsored Madrassa(Churches) at this point in time STILL preach jihad against us. these are friends?

Was 9/11 avaoidable? Yes. Could it have been avoided--No!
our extreme competition between political idealogies prevents the kind of integrated teamwork needed to truly take advantage of what Americans are capable of doing.
Clinton walked in and went the opposite way of Bush I, Bush II did the same after Clinton. by the time each new regime sets itself up in power it is time for a new one.
Add the beauracratic nightmare that is government itself and it is no surprise it happened.
Add the laxity and incompetence of Security by the lowest bidder and it Should have happened earlier.

Questions for Debate:


Was a similar attack like 9/11 impossible to avoid? What made it unavoidable? No, it was not impossible to avoid. A foreign policy and intelligence community that made the shift from the Cold War to the post-Cold War world without taking a vacation first would have done quite a bit to avoid it.

The biggest contributing factor was a lapse into reactionary thinking, rather than proactive. A second factor has been our handling of the Palestinian issue. Let's simply say that I find Eramussimo's analysis of the matter "fanciful." We should never have legitamized Arafat, rather we should have encouraged the Israelis to riddle his putrid body with massive quantities of lead. As long as the Palestianians have as their stated goal the annihilation of Israel, they should be treated as deadly enemies of Israel.

A third factor was our failure to put the screws to the despots of the Middle East. Without the overarcing paradigm of the Cold War, their internal behavior shouldn't have been countenanced.

A fourth factor was our failure to react swiftly, boldly, and with ruthless lethality to the terrorist attacks of the 90s.

If not Al Qaeda then who and why? Aside from Hamas, Hezbollah, and the sundry other elements of Jihadistan? Nobody. No other "group" in the modern world has managed to separate themselves so utterly from reality that they would provoke America as have the Islamofascists.

Was a similar attack like 9/11 impossible to avoid? What made it unavoidable?

If not Al Qaeda then who and why?


No, 9/11 was avoidable. Our response to other terrorist attacks on airliners was weak due to the lobbying efforts of the airlines. Our lack of attention on how easy it was to take control of airliners gave the terrorists an in to a weapon that could do great harm in a dramatic way. Rather than a car bomb that failed in the past and didn't get anything as dramatic in the press, we left the door open to flying bombs large enough to bring down a major icon of business.

Some saw the danger. Some ignored the danger. Some were simply not aware. Everyone was shocked, or so we thought. Some saw this as an opportunity.

And that aftermath of opportunism is what we deal with today.

I guess we can argue forever about who caused 9/11 to happen, but when it comes right down to it, the lack of security on airlines allowed 9/11 to happen. If you leave the keys in the ignition with the door open, expect your car to get stollen.

The real question now is why. Why did we leave the keys in the ignition and the door open? Was it simply a pro-business stance that kept undue regulations off the airline industry? Let's say it was. Well, that was taking a chance, and the cards fell badly.

What happened after 9/11 told an eye-opening story. The aftermath keeps on going, and all we can do is try to keep the efforts to transform this country into something unrecognizable as a free democracy at a minimum.

As to who else than bin laden and the Saudi terrorists, it really doesn't matter. That's history. Speculation doesn't change the story.

With respect to Carter and Iran, his failure to support the Shah and allow the Islamic radicals to take over that country was one of the most misguided acts by an American president in the past 50 years. It was yet another example of the failure of the Carter presidency.

I do not blame Clinton for "UBL". I blame Clinton for not confronting UBL after he declared Jihad on the United States and perpetrated a series of terror attacks on us and our interests. That failure emboldened UBL and resulted in 9/11.

To your last point, I completely agree with you that Clinton set off in a different direction than George H.W. Bush in 1992. Where we had Bush confronting Iraq and the thugs in Somalia, we had Clinton beating a hasty retreat in Somalia, allowing Saddam to defy the terms of the gulf war cease fire (and kicking out weapons inspectors), coddling the terrorist Arafat, and generally ignoring the Jihad that Bin Laden declared on our country.

Was a similar attack like 9/11 impossible to avoid? What made it unavoidable?

Sometime during late '98/ early '99, when I was living in England, I read an article in the Independent newspaper that looked at the security situation of the then impending 21st century.

In that article a CIA report was quoted that predicted a large scale terrorist attack on New York using aircraft. Several hypothesis were put forward, none of which made any particular mention of either passenger jets or the WTC, but they did talk of potential attacks using dirty bombs exploded above Manhatten and even that known Islamic terrorists were known to have been looking at crop dusters and this could indicate a possible chemical or biological attack.

The illustration that went with this article had the Twin Towers placed directly below the supposed attacking aircraft.


When in 2000 GW Bush was elected I had little interest in the matter, but I had the distinct feeling that with his election we would see global conflict. I had no basis for this feeling except in the character of the new president and how he spoke. I've never understood why so many people take comfort in him when to me he gives the distinct impression of a very dangerous man who has little empathy for other people, little understanding of other people and no regard for them.

At the time of the 2000 election I shrugged and told my GF I thought we were in for a rough four years now and so much for peace.


When I understood what was taking place on 11th Sept, my first thoughts were echoes of both the Indepedent artical and the sinking feeling I had when I saw Bush elected.

There was almost something poetic (in the Greek tragedy sense of the word) about that day and although I felt a horror for the people trapped in the aeroplanes and the people falling to their deaths, at the same time I fet that there was no surprise in that the attack took place. The only surprise was the severity and scale of it.

It may not be wise to say so, but I even felt a grudging acknowledgement of the genius of the attack for it succeeded in so many ways for those who had carried it out.

The perpertrators were all dead and the few people who have been brought to account since 11th Sept have been no great loss to the terrorist organisation that is known as al qaeda.

Maximum trauma was inflicted on the USA in one single attack and it is apparent that this was because the attackers understood that such a event would be impossible to duplicate.

I think, not only was everything pointing to an attack taking place but the direction the USA was taking in the later Clinton years, but most especially with the election of GW Bush, made the attack inevitable.

I don't believe that the people of America deserved to be attacked. I don't believe anything justifies the murder of innocent people, no matter who they are or what their nation may have done in their name.

At the same time though, I believe the complacency and indifference of the people of the USA allowed the attacks to happen. Such things are the natural consequence of the decayed and corrupt political system which passes for democracy in the USA and all we've seen since 11th Sept is merely an angry retaliation that has mostly targetted the wrong people and made terrorism acceptable in many parts of the world. We have not seen any indication that the USA is prepared to accept any measure of responsibility for what took place, or accept any notion that US foreign policy may have been indirectly responsible for the ground swell of support in the third world against the USA that has fostered the terrorism that led to the destruction of the WTC.

It is a fact that can no longer be ignored that the 'war' on terror generated more terrorism in 2004 than in any year since 1985, and the response to that by the US governmenthas been to increase the US military budget to so great a degree that the USA is set to equal the whole of the rest of the planet in military spending within the next twelve months. Eisenhower was dead right.

And this is at a time when the USA has not fought a real war in over six decades.

For my part, I have to say that any nation that has been pushed so far on to the ropes that in order to maintain itself it is forced to fight wars with out legal declarations and to kill many tens of thousands, if not millions of people without due consideration of what this means, is a nation in dire peril from within, not without.


If not Al Qaeda then who and why?

I don't know who al qaeda really represents because I don't know how great their following is, so I can't answer his question specifically. What I can say however is that when people are oppressed, they eventually fight back.

And, whilst a good many Americans do not perceive themselves to be imperialist, oppressors or in any way responsible for anything at all. Such denial is the mentality of all oppressing people's.

For as long as the USA continues in its self absolving, global confrontational course, we shall see no end to either the rampant military spending (and the inherent dangers this brings with it) or the terrorism and violent backlash that is the inevitable consequence to the break down in international cooperation.

I love our debates and am loathe to go off-topic given warnings, but please. Here's one week from Bush's "entire month of August at the ranch on vacation." Compiled from docs at whitehouse.gov. Not the kind of vacation I'd like to take. By the way, was Congress in session in August 2001? Didn't think so.



Yes, Bush bears some of the blame for not dialing up our response to the terrorists, but 12 years of Bush I / Clinton largely ignorining and mis-managing the terror threat would have been impossible to right in 8 months of administration, working "vacation" or not.

All in all, I do think it was probably impossible to avoid. Easy to have 20/20 hindsight but there are so many factors that made it possible to plan and execute an attack, there always would have been some opportunity to do something. There mere existence of America and Israel would have been enough to spur something eventually.

Now - watch this drive

Really? If I tie you to a post, and run a car at you, you'll see it coming, but still be unable to avoid it. Even if I untie you, but keep trying, I would eventually hit you, whether you saw me coming or not. The relevance here is that if sentiment existed for such attacks to continue, eventually one would succeed. It is simply impossible to avoid them all. Do you think Israel is unaware of suicide attacks? Of course not...they absolutely see them continuing. And they probably stop a lot of them....but they can't stop them all.

Gee, you aren't emotionally involved in this issue, are you?



Then they are no longer deadly enemies of Israel, as of about 15 years ago.

The remainder of your post argues for a strong, and presumably military response to most of the Islamic world. I therefore ask you to specify the magnitude of the military response you would have recommended. Would you have invaded the entire Middle East? Or merely nuked every city in the Middle East?

Was a similar attack like 9/11 impossible to avoid? What made it unavoidable? If not Al Qaeda then who and why?

Given US foreign policy successes and failures over the years, the hatred of the West and the US in particular made something like 9/11 unavoidable. It doesn't seem to take all the much for a certain percentage of the population to radicalize enough to attempt to blow things up. Terrorism has been with us as long as there's been civilization. In the later 20th century alone we had groups like: the Baader-Meinhof gang of West Germany, the Japanese Red Army, Italy's Red Brigades, the Puerto Rican FALN, the Shining Path of Peru (and that's just left-wing terrorists). And let's not forget our own homegrown terrorists like McVeigh. No, there's nothing particularly unique about Al-Qaeda as far as terrorism is concerned.

Let's also not forget that if you wait long enough, "good" terrorists will become "bad" terrorists and "bad" terrorists will become "good" terrorists. Certainly, UBL was considered a "good" terrorist when fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation. At about the same time, Khadafi was considered a "bad" terrorist. Wait 20 years and, voila, the roles are reversed. Apparently, it's okay to negotiate with terrorists if they're "good" terrorists.

All that stated, the US is a big target with an enormous foreign policy footprint (the largest by far I'd say). It is only logical that terrorist attacks will happen against such a power. So, yes, expect attacks to continue and expect some of those attacks to involve non-Al-Qaeda terrorists. Al-Qaeda got there first but it will by no means be the last. Al-Qaeda may have a "head start" but it would be imprudent to assume it is the only entry in the "race".

I would have to counter that with we should have had nothing to do with the Shah. If one makes deals with devils one eventually gets burned. We support tyrants then get surprised when things go sour.
As for Clinton and UBL I really cannot remember anyone else actually talking about UBL at the time. Eveyone was so vey "concerned" with Monica--some priorities we have.
Anything he could have done would have been shot down by republicans to prevent even the slightest positive press for Clinton.


Streeetch 2 3 4
Really Hobbes. Perhaps if our need for oil were not so great we might not have supported Islamofascists like the House of Saud--the very people who created the religion that flew planes into our buildings. Perhaps if the C.I.A. hadn't "helped" overthrow the duly elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mossadegh,
in 1953, and installed the Shah in his place-- An action the Iranians
were so resistant to that they rioted in the streets so badly that in 1953
the Shah fled to Italy-- things might never have reached where they are now.
While in power, the Shah and his secret police-- Savak-- terrorized the Iranian population so badly the fundamentalists seemed a better choice to them.
So we end up supporting another tyrant--Saddam--because he will fight the Iranians and keep them and their revolution at bay. Until he gets to power hungry and decides to start his own expanded kingdom........ and so on and so on.
We were and are more than capable of finding alternate and even better forms of energy. We are Americans after all.
We can build anything.
As for Israel, I place a lot of blame on our government--Arafat should have been put down a great many years ago. He was human garbage of the worst sort and we actually negotiated with him like he was worthy of respect.....

Notice my theme Hobbes/Helmet
?
Stop supporting Evil people for political gain. Simple.

We are more than capable of taking care of ourselves and not just creating whatever we need--but making a handsome profit and selling it to the whole world in assorted shapes and colors.
Its time we began to stop following the advice of people who have no faith in America and just have to meddle in the affairs of foreign nations.
This was indeed seen back in the 70s--and while I am not a great fan of Carter--he had some good points back then and we are indeed now having to send our troops out to fight in places we don't need to be.

From Pat Buchanan's "A Republic, Not an Empire" speech March 25, 2000:



Later, same speech:



It is time to change nations through liberalized trade and to stop being the world's policeman.

Hugo for President of Arizona.
My map seems to have lost a few pages but I have the only one worth keeping.
Although there is a somewhat skunky smell when the wind comes from our western border. And yes while we have a serious immigration problem--we hope Arnold will be successful and tempt the californians home.

Was a similar attack like 9/11 impossible to avoid? What made it unavoidable?

If not Al Qaeda then who and why?

I don't want to sound like I'm riding the fence on this, but both yes and no answers apply here.

No, in the sense that, in this era of modern terrorism, it was just a matter of time before someone thought of a plan like this and executed it. If someone is determined to do something, they'll find a way hell or high water to do it, the best one can do is be prepared which is where the yes answer lies.

We had plenty of time to prepare ourselves for airline hijackings. Remember folks, they crashed the planes after they were able to gain control of them, so from anywhere between the baggage screen and the moment the terrorists went for the cockpit, 9-11 could have been prevented. But hindsight is 20/20, so it's easy to say what should have been done.

Now, as far as who is to blame for the ascending threat of Al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism, we could all speak till we're blue in the face. What we have to focus on is not who was on vacation or who wasn't, but who had the chance to act while in power, and why they did not.

Alan Dershowitz makes a good case in Why Terrorism Works for laying some of the blame on Europe's appeasement of Arafat, the PLO, etc. for emboldening Islamic terrorism.

One could argue that in the eight years Clinton was in office, he did very little to combat the rising threat of Al-Qaeda and other Mid-east terrorists, even though we're attacked as early as the begining of 1993 in the United States.

Others blame business intrests that were placed ahead of security intrests, which allowed the hijackers to board the planes. Or was it the state's fault because they issued the terrorists driving licences, which allowed them to train.

The truth is, they're all factors that conrtibuted to the tragedy that was 9-11. So here we are, 1,332 days, over three and a half years after the fact, and what is being done to ensure that the preventative measures that were not in place on September 10th, are there now?

I'm sure, whether or not we believe that the gears are spinning in motion for such a change, that more efficient plans could be in place. That is what made 9-11 "unavoidable".

Hobbes' analogy is an accurate one. We first allowed ourselves to be tied to that pole. Now, we've been hit, we have a chance to untie ourselves and make sure that the freakin car doesn't hit us again, yet we seem to have fallen back into the old habbit of complacency.

I agree with Hugo here. Nation building, or “shaping” can provoke terrorism and actually provide targets for the terrorists. I believe 12 years of stationing troops in the land of Mecca and Medina to police the airspace over Iraq was a bad idea. It enraged the radical factions and provided some of the incentive for 911.

Actually, no, I'm not. I simply consider Arafat to be morally worse than Adolf Hitler. Hitler at least improved the lives of his people before he lead them into disaster, whereas Arafat's corruption is legendary, their lot in life has never improved, etc. Hitler killed more people, only because he had more opportunity. Arafat was a despot of the worst sort, matched only by Castro, Kim Il Jong, and Robert Mugabe today. There were three great American foreign policy blunders of the 1990s. The failure to remove Saddam (Bush I), the legitimization of Arafat (Clinton) and the nuke deal with North Korea. The first two contributed to 9/11.

Odd, that's not what Arafat said...

On September 13, 1995 - the same day that the peace agreement ceremony was held in Washington D.C., Yasser Arafat spoke on Jordan Television:

Since we cannot defeat Israel in war we do this in stages. We take any and
every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish sovereignty there,
and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can
get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.

Arafat in a speech to Arab diplomats in the Spiegel Salon at the Grand Hotel in
Stockholm, Sweden (Jan 30, 1996) said:

We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem. Peres and Beilin have already promised us half of Jerusalem. The Golan Heights have already been given away, subject to just a few details. We will take over everything including all of Jerusalem! We of the P.L.O. will now concentrate all our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps. Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living on the West bank and in Jerusalem. All Palestinian Arabs will be welcomed back by us. If the Jews can import all kinds of Ethiopians, Russians, Uzbekians and Ukranians as Jews, then we can import all kinds of Arabs to us! You understand that we plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; Jews will not want to live among us Arabs! I have no use for Jews, they are and remain Jews!"

Renouncing the stated goal of eliminating Israel isn't what brought Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the PLO, joining forces and sticking with the 'Strategy of Stages'

You misunderstand. I don't believe that a military option would have been necessary during the early to mid 90's in order to bring about liberalization in the Middle East. Diplomatic and economic measures would likely have sufficed, along with support for local freedom activists.

You won't see me defending Yassir Arafat; the man was the worst combination of foolishness and general badness. I was taken aback by the emotional intensity of your wording. Neither will I dispute with you the question of his sincerity in living up to his word, primarily because it's too far off-topic. I think you overstate the case but I won't press the point.


OK, your reference to our failure to react with "ruthless lethality" seemed rather militaristic to me, but if that's not your meaning, then we can move on.

It seems to be the overall position of a number of conservatives here that, had we kicked some Arab butt back in the 90s, 9/11 would never have happened. I am curious to understand the presumed mechanism behind this. Are you fellows saying that cracking down on Islamic governments would have induced them to put an end to the terrorists within their borders? Or are you saying that we needed to go after the terrorists directly?

I believe I can explain the confusion. My hindsight call for "ruthless lethality" applies directly to terrorist attacks against us. Such lethality would have involved the minimum amount of force necessary, but it would most certainly have either been military or covert ops. This limited, relentless, and lethal response to direct attacks upon us is not what I meant by "putting the screws", which is directed simply at changing the internal tenor of the assorted Middle Eastern despots. That task is diplomatic, cultural and economic.

That is close to my position, yes, however, I would have been much more selective about the butt kicking. Terrorist butts only, race irrelavent. It would have been even better if we had done so in the 80s, but the very real constraints of the Cold War pretty much ruled such an approach out. The #1 priority in the 80s was containing the Soviet Union without igniting a hot war. The other aspect is arm twisting, primarily of the Arabs, perhaps some of Israel if it were needed. (I believe that most of our arm-twisting of Israel from after the Gulf War up to today has actually been counterproductive.)

I'm saying that we should have gone directly after the terrorists who attacked us, and leaned on the Middle Eastern governments to address their own festering internal problems constructively.

I blame the failures to properly address the rising terrorism during the 90s on two primary factors. First was the fecklessness of Clinton and his Administration, by which I mean the guys and gals he brought with him to Washington. Second, the Cold War mentality that still dominated the defense, intelligence, and diplomatic communities when Clinton came into office. While the mentality was eroding, it was still pervasive enough to think in terms of very limited responses, countering massive armies, building coalitions. I believe GW Sr. would have done a better job than Clinton, but he was a Cold Warrior himself and would have been content to stick to limited responses, building coalitions, and turning a blind eye to the internal corruption in the ME. The upshot is that something akin to 9/11 would have been a possibility, oh, probably sometime around now....

The above are governmental actions. From the perspective of American society as a whole, its a lot harder to recommend anything concrete that would have had any realistic chance of being implemented. For instance, the continual demonization of Israel by the Left in this country and the Left's failure to hold the Palestinians accountable for meeting their commitments under the Oslo Accords? A bad thing, but what could have been done to counter it? The blind eye turned to the disaster in Zimbabwe and the Sudan, the utterly inneffectual response to Rwanda, the increasing degradation of our cultural exports, these are all failures, but the causes and solutions are too diffused across our society to offer anything more than pie-in-the-sky alternatives.

To be clear: I consider the "Palestinian cause" to be without merit. They rejected partition in 1947 and launched a war, which they lost. They tried again, in 1956, and lost, again in 1967 with surprise attacks, and lost, and again in 1973, and again, they lost. Since then, they turned to terrorism and have been waging a near continuous "low level" war against Israel. What is without a doubt the most amazing thing in all of this is that the Israelis haven't said "enough!" and annihilated their foes.

Bikerdad, I find myself in agreement with your assessment of how we might have handled the efficient cause of 9/11 (By the way, for those readers unfamiliar with Aristotle, there are several ways to trace causality. One is the "efficient cause": the physical or mechanical causal agents that led to the event. Another is the "final cause": the will or volition behind the act.) Yes, I agree that various military actions during the 90s would have foiled some terrorist actions.

However, I disagree with your analysis of how to handle the final cause. Remember, attacking the efficient cause is only a stopgap measure; so long as the will exists to attack (among a sufficient number of people), then attack will come. There is no effective, complete defense against a determined group of people willing to die in the attack. They will get through eventually. Hence, the only long-term solution lies in eliminating the final cause -- the intense hatred with which we are held by Islamic peoples. Caligula's boastful claim "I would rather be feared than loved" ultimately backfired on him. We're making the same mistake.

Your analysis seems to be based on the assumption that the Palestinians are bad people, and therefore they deserve to be punished. The Israelis have been taking this tack for the last 30 years and have accomplished nothing. They spend a huge fraction of their GDP on security and they are still insecure. They are justified in defending themselves against military assault, but if that were their only concern then they could have made peace long ago on terms that provided military security. But they want land, and that has led to 30 years of bloodshed. They keep punishing Palestinians and Palestinians keep hitting back. It's the Hatfields and the McCoys. Only we're taking sides in this stupid feud.

The lesson that the Israelis and most Americans have failed to learn after thousands of deaths and 30 years of violence is that punishing an entire nation doesn't work. If we continue to back the Israelis and they continue their creeping annexation of the West Bank, then we'll be facing Arab terrorism forever. We can keep raining cruise missiles down on their camps, we can keep bombing their hideouts, and they'll just go deeper underground and keep hitting us back. When we practice "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", we shouldn't be surprised when they do, too.

9/11 was inevitable because we have failed to solve the festering sore of the Arab-Israeli conflict. So long as we continue this failure, more 9/11s are inevitable.

There's something which has been troubling me as I've been reading this debate forum that has direct relevance to this thread. Here are two statements I've read in some form or another:

1. Terrorists "hate freedom".
2. The US is the most free of free nations on Earth.

Therefore, it must logically follow:

3. Terrorists will attack that which they hate, i.e. "freedom", i.e. the US.

Given the above syllogism, I don't see how anyone who believes in 1 & 2 could think of 9/11 as anything but inevitable.

I must also conclude in reference to Erasmussimo's discussion on final cause that those believing in 1 & 2 can derive another solution to the problem of terrorists attacking the US: just make the US less free. That is, if the US were made not as free as it is currently surmised to be, then those terrorists, who "hate freedom", would no longer be inclined to attack to the US.

Excellent point! And it appears that President Bush and the Congress have embraced your logic long ago; by passing the Patriot Act, they began reducing our freedoms. That'll show them terrorists!

Yes, there is, as demonstrated by annihilation of the Hashashan sect (an Islamic sect, whoooda thunkit?) by Hulaga Khan.


You are mistaken. There are two long-term solutions that are acceptable to me. The first is eliminating the intense hatred with which we are held by the Islamic peoples. Whether or not we can do this (without surrendering to them) is an open question, but given the irrationality of the hatred, I certainly wouldn't expect to be able to do so within the next 10 years or so. The second long term solution is the same one as used by Hulaga Khan, and by lotsa folks since then. Eliminate those who hold the intense hatred. Kill em or convert em, and frankly, while I'd prefer the latter I've got no problems with the former. "Speak softly (convert them, not necessarily religious, just into non-hating folks) and carry a big stick (kill em.)"

You appear to be making an even greater mistake, believing that we can make somebody else love us and thus stop attacking us. We cannot control their emotions, whether it be love, fear, or hatred. We can only control a small element of the circumstances. We can set forth before them choices: incentives and punishments depending on the actions they take. Attack us, we kill you. Don't attack us, we trade with you, allow you to visit us, we visit you, etc, etc.

My analysis is based upon the historical behavior of the Palestinian and Arab leadership over the last 60 years. I have no idea whether the average Palestinian on the street is a "bad person" although every homicide bombing on a bus, every shrapnel packed exploding vest in a pizzeria lends weight to such an assumption. On the other hand, I have no doubt that the average Palestinian leader is a very bad person.

Insecure, but still alive.

How do you define military security? Seriously, when you're surrounded by nations whose leaders have repeatedly stated that their goal is your annihilation, and you have an indefensible geography, security is a relative thing.

No, the desire to annihilate Israel has led to 60 years of bloodshed. The Israelis have no desire for expansion. They've given the Sinai back three times already!


Stupid feud? I don't consider a nation fighting for its very survival against enemies that outnumber it 10 to 1 to be a "stupid feud." We take sides because on one side you have a democratic nation, on the other side is a kleptocracy and a batch of tin-pot dictators.

What you appear to have failed to learn after millions of deaths is that punishing a nation CAN work, or have the lessons of the postwar Germany and Japan escaped you? The problem isn't "too much violence", its not enough violence. It took concentrated high level violence on the part of the Israelis over the course of 5 wars in 25 years to convince their homicidal neighbors that overt military action was not going to succeed in pushing the Jews into the sea. As a result, the Arabs have turned to "low level" violence, i.e. terrorism. The Israelis have not come anywhere near to conducting the same level of violence against the terrorists, and as a result, the terrorists keep on coming.

CREEPING ANNEXATION??!!? The West Bank was designated by the UN Partition as part of the territory designated for the Palestinian Arabs, a plan that the Arabs rejected. In 1948, when Israel declared its independence, Transjordan (now Jordan) annexed the West Bank, forget ! In 1967, after the Jordanians started shelling Jerusalem from positions in the West Bank, the Israelis drove the Jordanian military from the West Bank, "annexing" it as you seem to believe. "Annexing"

correction: Transjordan invaded the West Bank in 1948, annexed it in 1950

As losers in FIVE wars of aggression, the Palestinian Arabs have no rights whatsover to the lands from which they've launched their wars. Again, its incredible that the Israelis were willing to turn 91% of the West Bank over to the Palestinians, when morally they don't have any obligation to give any of it over.

Well, we do agree on one thing, that the festering sore is one of the underlying issues. We clearly disagree on both the diagnosis of the affliction, and the cure.

How would you thusly eliminate those holding the intense hatred without simply creating even more people who have an intense hatred of you? This seems to be an unworkable alternative...for every 1 you kill, you would likely create 5 more than hate you. Who exactly would be the target of such a campaign? I just don't see this as workable....which leads back to other long-term solution (eliminating the intense hatred) as the only workable long-term solution. Converting them, I think, falls into that option as well.

However, I agree with the following:



...although I don't think the goal needs to be to make them love us...just to get to where they realize their hatred is not rationale, nor is it in their best interest. There have been several instances where the core underlying social causes of terroristic sentiment have been eliminated (poverty, lack of involvement in the political process), and terrorism has essentially gone away. How does that saying go...no one revolts on a full stomach?

You're right. I was assuming that we have placed genocide outside the range of policy options. Are you recommending genocide?


Again, you seem to be advocating recourse to genocide. While I must admit the immediate short-term effectiveness of genocide as a policy option, I think that in the long run the damage to US reputation of killing millions of people might lead to undesirable diplomatic consequences. Aside, of course, from any moral qualms some of the more sensitive people among us might have.


Technically speaking, you contradict yourself. First you claim that we cannot control their emotions, then you propose offer them incentives and punishments. What is the point of punishment if it does not cause fear?

But the more significant error lies in your false statement that I believe that we can make somebody love us. I said no such thing. The point of the Caligula quote is (and has always been taken to mean) that fear doesn't work as a means of controlling people over the long term. Of course, modern tyrants have demonstrated that a truly universal and ruthless application of terror can produce fear that works over long periods. We could do this, too -- if we wanted to place ourselves in the same boat with Stalin and Pol Pot. I don't. Do you?


What bothers me about this attitude is the emotionalism behind it. Let's assume that all Palestinians are actually orphan-raping communist litterbugs. That in no way changes the nature of our problem in dealing with them. We still have to find a solution. Complaining that they're evil doesn't make them go away, nor does it make the problem go away. The only policy option such moralizing can lead to is genocide. Is that what you want?


Then why have they been building settlements in the West Bank?


If their only concern were self-defense, then why don't they just hand over the West Bank and Gaza, build their wall along the established international boundary, and be done with it?


That's bad manners on your part. Shame on you!


You really seem to have a penchant for violent solutions to conflicts. Would you recommend genocide here?

You are arguing in favor of what's called "the right of conquest": what you win in battle is yours to keep. This notion was popular with a number of aggressors until World War II; afterwards, the US built into the UN Charter the fundamental notion that conquest confers no rights whatsoever to the conquerer. This principle has been embraced by every country on the planet, and is now a fundamental component of international law. What you call moral has been denounced by the whole world as illegal.

Was a similar attack like 9/11 impossible to avoid? What made it unavoidable? It was inevitable because there were issues of concern to Arab Muslims that the United States consistently ignored or at the least failed to address.

The United States has a habit of backing dictators and governments that stand against Communism, and it is willing to overlook oppression of the people at the hands of these dictators and governments.

Richard Clarke's book states that the United States made an enemy of Osama bin Laden when George Bush, Sr. chose to attack Saddam Hussein's forces and invade Iraq. Osama bin Laden had approached the Saudi royalty and told them,"I can take care of this problem," and the Saudi prince told him, "No thanks, the U.S. is going to take care of it." Osama bin Laden had been an ally of the United States in Afghanistan when the Soviets were driven out, and he saw the effects on that country when the United States left them flapping in the wind. That's how he became our enemy.

What if bin Laden and the forces he mustered had actually been the ones who drove Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait? Then it would have been an Arab matter, and the United States would not have incurred the animosity of these peoples in that region.

If not Al Qaeda then who and why? Possibly groups from Central and South America who have grudges against the U.S. for similar reasons.

We think that we can support any tin-horn dictator with little or no consequences as long as that dictator opposes Communism, and then we're bewildered when we have made enemies of those "little people" suffering under a dictator's rule, and that includes the mess in Vietnam. When are we going to figure out that wrongdoing is wrongdoing, regardless of whose flag is flying when it happens?

Um no. First off, the original partion plan would've given Israel alot more land...remember, Britain promised land to both parties so theirs a reason the Arabs rejected the plan. Second, after Israel won the six day war, they basically just stayed in the territory they overran. It doesn't matter who started it, you can't occupy land under Int'l law.



Funny, then why did Bush just tell Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank?


edited to add:
Well, shucks Erasmussimo beat me too it.

It was impossible to avoid because of the extreme Zionist influence on this country's policies. This country supports Israel unconditionally, which makes it a target for Arab Nationalists. I suppose that if the U.S. did not have Zionist influence, it would have been avoidable, but I am speaking within the framework of the status quo.