timmah said:
That has to be one of the most bull-headed, insensitive things I've heard (also flat wrong since a campus police officer was also killed)!What about all the people that were severely injured and lost limbs? Do they not matter? Still not that many compared to things we can usefully do something about. Like lifestyle diseases in the West or easily curable diseases in the developing world. I'm insensitive to their specific precious "loss", because they're special flower Americans, while many more nameless people die in Syria every day? Do you think the goal of these wackos was to kill 'only' 3 people? NO! They had several more bombs and a stockpile of ammo they were planning to use and their goal was to kill as many as possible. The main reason many more didn't die was because bystanders and first responders sprang into action so quickly and because those 2 were caught before they could use the rest of their bombs. Even a few hundred people dead wouldn't be a big deal - unless we let it be one. Then we're terrorised; the terrorists win. Terrorism doesn't kill that many people in the West largely *BECAUSE* we spend money preventing it. Lololol. This particular line is the least true thing I've read this week. Our preventing it doesn't do shit. It's covered by normal police activity. But instead, we sacrifice our civil liberties ( indefinite detention without trial, wiretapping) and waste a ton of money preventing a very small number of deaths, in comparison to if we spent that money on education. There is always the possibility of another mass casualty event like 9/11, and mass death is the goal of these Jihadists. Correct. I just believe we are powerless to prevent it if it's gonna happen, and in all likelihood it won't happen. We'd have to monitor everyone 24/7 to prevent it, or restrict movement and trade so much it wouldn't be practical. And even then it might happen, because you know people in charge of security screw up all the time. For example, plenty of people have got through airports with guns, possibly explosive substances, and so on. It's a leaky sieve. Despite this, thousands of hours of people's time and billions of dollars are wasted on this security. It's just not cost-effective and nothing can prevent it 100%. You also don't understand jihad if you speak of it as an organised movement, or claim "al qaeda" wanted this. It's a bunch of individuals who have an idea. You can't kill the idea with bombs or bullets, it's stupid to treat it as "us and them". It's more like, super empowered angry people. Anyone could be one of them to be honest. The important bit isn't the alliegiance. Thousands of potential lives have been spared just in terror plots that have been broken up by law enforcement. Point to some. Oh and if you're gonna use the Canada one, they were directly tipped off by the public. Such things could be handled with normal police powers and budget. Show me what the extra funding and loss of civil liberties has done for us. Also, if you don't think these guys were inspired by radical Islam, you have your head in the sand. Suspect #2 has already told investigators that they were inspired by their religion (a radical brand of Islam), and that they got the knowledge to make the bombs from Al Qaeda's online magazine. All evidence at this point indicates radical Islam as the inspiration for these attacks. My comment was before we knew more about the case. Yes, they were inspired by radical Islam. But it'd be the same if they were inspired by a dream about a chocolate wonderland. Does it really matter? The "knowledge to make these bombs" can be found many places. Nothing can be done to stop public information from being shared, the efforts of governments and media companies for years should be proof enough. |
So my point isn't that terrorism isn't bad, but that it's just not cost-effective to devote special resources to, those resources are ineffective, and the costs for our liberty are also too great.
My solution is to ignore it. It won't go away but we honestly have bigger problems.
