American Hiroshima: yes to if, no to when
POSTED BY: HKCavalier
UPDATED: Friday, July 25, 2025 19:29
VIEWED: 11080
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I do see some type of terrorist attack on US soil as inevitable. Some gas, some fertilizer, it doesn't take much.
As to whether or not a nuke attack (probably dirty bomb as it's easier to do) on the US is 'inevitable' - I guess I wonder in what time frame 'inevitable' happens.
In the short-term I'd say no. The US does not have a large enough radical Muslim population to do that internally (though one well-connected radical Islamist could prove me wrong).
In terms of foreigners, they could enter the US and try to obtain materials, but they would probably not have enough of the right kind of contacts. And getting both the material AND personnel into the US would take a concerted and possibly repeated effort. Not that this CAN'T be done, but the difficulties multiply compared to conventional bombs.
So I see a nuclear strike on the US as a matter of opportunities. Opportunities go up with time and with the lack of a coordinated int'l effort.
As I mentioned before, from a security/defense perspective, terrorism can't be defeated on the battlefield, it can only be dealt with by international cooperation. The longer the world goes along without cooperation, the more opportunities there are for nuclear terrorists. With time, the more inevitable an attack like that becomes. OTOH, should the world change direction on terrorism, the less likely an attack.
And that is just from one perspective. Should the world be able to deal fairly with freedom-seeking groups, the motivation for the attacks would decrease.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
" They hate us not for some specific thing we've done (at least, not originally for some specific thing), but because our way of life is an affront to Islam. "
What ? Thats a load of crap.
Now there's a compelling argument for you.
In one breath, you've lowered the whole tone of the discussion into the type of emotional slugfest that I hate so much about RWED. It's not enough to disagree--no, we have to insult and belittle each other.
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I wish I had a magical wish-granting plank.
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Quote:
The clincher is this: the strongest motivation, according to Pape, is not religion but rather a desire "to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory the terrorists view as their homeland."
Ron Paul is awesome. He's one Republican I'd truly love to see in the white house.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:
Originally posted by InevitableBetrayal:Quote:
Originally posted by perfessergee:
Killing all the terrorists (even though they may richly deserve it, and I confess that I personally find that it's a very tempting idea) just makes us as bad as they are.
Actually, I have to disagree on this point. The reason that you claim the moral high ground over terrorists is all in who you're visiting violence upon.
Terrorism, by its very nature, inflicts violence on the innocent (e.g. people on the underground, market-goers, people at work in an office building). These people are not a threat to the terrorists or their way of life. In military parlance, they are "non-combatants" and cannot be specifically targeted.
On the other hand, an individual who would visit violence upon your nation, its people or its military forces (e.g. terrorists) is fair game, because they are a threat. We enter into the "kill-or-be-killed" economy of combat.
Regardless of the propaganda that spins around the RWED, the U.S. military does not specifically target non-combatants. As a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq I can assure you of that fact. And that is why we have the moral high ground on terrorists. Killing terrorists and killing civilians can't be considered as ethically equivalent. One is self-defense, one is murder.
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I wish I had a magical wish-granting plank.
IB, your point is well taken here. I was doing a poor job of expressing my thought, and I conflated the killing of individual terrorists (i.e., people who have in fact killed innocents to achieve their political goals, or who are an imminent threat of doing so) with less discriminating acts of violence such as bombing. I'll try to maintain the distinction in the future. But the problem remains that it's virtually impossible to kill the real terrorists in such a discriminating manner, and we do need to keep in mind the issue of how we would identify the real terrorists and what might constitute due process. Simply claiming someone is a terrorist and killing him/her doesn't really qualify for the moral high ground. So, we're left with the use of indiscriminate methods like the nuclear weapon idea (or any form of indiscriminate violence) that started this thread. I'm glad to see that so many people reject that approach.
But on a point of historical correctness, the US military has in the past deliberately targeted non-combatants (Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki). Perhaps not recently, but it is not without precedent. I would hope that we don't follow that precedent.
perfessergee
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Quote:
Originally posted by perfessergee:Quote:
...the problem remains that it's virtually impossible to kill the real terrorists in such a discriminating manner, and we do need to keep in mind the issue of how we would identify the real terrorists and what might constitute due process. Simply claiming someone is a terrorist and killing him/her doesn't really qualify for the moral high ground.
Ooh. Point. (zero sarcasm, seriously) That is a sticky one. Again, this is why assymetric warfare is infinitely more irriatating than conventional warfare. No uniforms=difficulty IDing the bad guys. You can't just pop every guy carrying an AK. On the other hand, you never know if that cute little tyke is gonna role a concussion grenade under your Humvee...
See, here's where I make what I hope will be my final point of the evening (since I have class in 45 minutes): deep down, I'm afraid that nothing will work. Deep down I really feel that diplomacy will merely embolden terrorists and military action enrage them. The only path I see is to do everything they want and then seal the borders and cut off all contact with the world (which would tickle them pink, no doubt). Seriously, we're up against an enemy that's more committed winning than we are. Yikes.
Quote:
But on a point of historical correctness, the US military has in the past deliberately targeted non-combatants (Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki). Perhaps not recently, but it is not without precedent. I would hope that we don't follow that precedent.
perfessergee
Point again. What I was referring to is that we are not now, to the best of my knowledge, doing any such thing. You ought to see the gyrations we go through in mission planning to prevent such things.
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Originally posted by piratejenny:
I have to disagree with this for the sake of sanity. If someone nukes us..in your opinion we should nuke them back ..thats just madness, because then everyone will be bombing eachother.
Its not madness, its MAD'ness. Mutual Assured Destruction. Sounds wacky but that little idea kept the peace for what? Over fifty years. That and other ideas thought by liberals to be sure fire recipes for global destruction.
MAD, collective security, engagement, containment, cowboy diplomacy, military buildups...basically anything we tried that worked was opposed at some point by the liberals at some point or another.
H
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I'm just curious as to why hardly anybody seems to be making a case for actively preventing a nuclear attack in the first place (and I don't mean waving big sticks and taking up threatening poses).
It's a truism that people lose perspective when stressed. They focus on the acute rather than the essential. (Which might be your friend's problem, HK. Perhaps something's got him stressed and he's responding in crisis mode, which leads to a further loss of perspective. The problem with that is, once your nervous system is amped up, it can be hard to restore it to a neutral state.)
Perhaps instead of focusing on who's *ss to kick, when to kick it, exactly where to kick it, how to kick it and why to kick it; we could focus solving the problems in the first place that might lead to a situation where people would end up wanting to kick *ss.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
we could focus solving the problems in the first place that might lead to a situation where people would end up wanting to kick *ss.
Ah, the 'its all our fault' line of thought. I say there's too much understanding from the Democrats and not enough ass kicking. Thats why they keep getting their collective asses kicked in national elections.
They've lost nearly every race since 1994, including control of the House, Senate, Presidency, the majority of State legislatures and Governorships.
One good example is Howard Dean who urges us not to condem Osama Bin Laddin without a trial but demands we jail Karl Rove without one.
You want us to step back and solve the underlying problems. Problems that are the legacy of cold war, colonialism, corruption of international institutions and thousands of years of religeous conflict. And while your studying that, they are murdering innocent men, women, and children on the streets of our friends, allies, and brothers in arms and dreaming of the day they can do the same thing on every streetcorner in every town of our own country.
The only underlying issue now that needs solved is this: we are at war. War means fighting. Fighting means killing. And victory means killing them until they are all dead or they give up. We can address their other concerns at the peace table and in the history books when its over, but we should be dictating the terms: liberty, democracy, opportunity to our former enemies (just like we did for Germany and Japan). Because their terms: fear, death, intollerance, dispair; wont don't seem as desirable.
H
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Quote:To some extent Hero is correct. Israel (with multi-B$ assist from the US) has stalled local terrorists to the point where Palestinians and their suporters no longer want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, they merely want SOME of their land back. (Thanks to the Brits for setting up this conflict, and the Jews for immigrating far beyond the originally agreed-to limit) Of course, the Israelis have a totally militarized society and spend a large portion of their budget (and our aid) on "defense", and have engaged in a form of state-sponsored terror that even many Israelis aren't comfortable with.
...we are at war. War means fighting. Fighting means killing. And victory means killing them until they are all dead or they give up.
So, could the USA reproduce this kind of success? It depends on how narrowly or how broadly you define "them". Every dictatorship in the world? Every dictatorship in the Mideast? Every nation that activley or tacitly supports internal and/or international terrorism? Or every nation that actively supports anti-USA terrorism? None of these are do-able. We simply don't have the military resources for this kind of response. We COULD use the nuclear option. But then China and Russia would wipe us off the face of the earth, to universal applause.
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I spent quite a number of words on international security/defense cooperation to avert attacks. I specifically said the longer the world goes without that cooperation, the greater the chances of a nuclear attack on US soil. Improved relations with our allies to develop coordinated security is a must.
I also said that terrorism can't be defeated on the battlefield, which I think the US is finding out.
"there's too much understanding" If you are talking about actually knowing what's going on and what to do about it, there can never be 'too much understanding'.
But there are other aspects to the effort to combat international terrorism. Diplomatic efforts to address grievances against the US would ALSO be fruitful.
http://www.isim.nl/files/newsl_14/newsl_14-8.pdf
"... ultimately those strategies addressing and lessening the grievances and humiliations of populations that give rise to suicide attacks are required for their elimination. Support for suicide attacks is unlikely to diminish without tangible progress in achieving at least some of the fundamental goals ... "
http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=400&issue_
id=2975&article_id=2368050
While "Osama bin Laden (and others) ... seek no compromise, and will probably fight with hard power to the death", "... tens of millions of people who sympathize with bin Laden ... are likely open to the promise of soft-power alternatives ..."
And "study after study finds suicide terrorists and supporters to be more educated and economically well off than surrounding populations. They also tend to be well-adjusted in their families, liked by peers, and – according to interrogators – sincerely compassionate to those they see themselves helping. A report on The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism used by the Central and Defense Intelligence Agencies (CIA and DIA) finds “no psychological attribute or personality distinctive of terrorists.”"
http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=5035
"I have compiled the first complete database of every suicide terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to the beginning of 2004--315 completed suicide attacks by 462 suicide terrorists who killed themselves in order to kill others. The facts show that suicide terrorist attacks are not primarily an outgrowth of Islamic fundamentalism and are, almost always, part of an organized campaign to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider home." In another extended quote, Robert A Pape, from "When Death is an Option: The strategic logic of suicide terrorism and how to defeat it", equates evolutionary survival not with freedom, but with control of the territory you think belongs to you. He indicates that is the driving force behind most suicide bombers.
So, do you not agree that preventing a nuclear attack on US soil is worth diplomatic effort?
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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