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You know, I've been thinking about the ones from here and Europe that go over there to fight with ISIS and all of the other Islamist terror groups. We should take their families. Yup, round them up. The next time they take a guy and threaten to behead them, we should offer them a family member in exchange for their prisoner. They go ahead and do it anyway then we should drop the family member over their training site from a plane.
I believe Russian Spetsnaz have done that in the past to great effect. Couple of their officers were captured, idiots tried to collect money, Russians figured out who the captors were and captured their families and made a fair trade, lol!
Now, let's not cross the line between prudence and paranoia.
Remember how everyone acted after 9/11? I do and much of it was actually pitiful. Today, whenever we fly thousands of people have to take their shoes in every airport security line. A mere inconvenience? Yes, but when you multiply that X thousands of people every day X 365 days a year for the last decade it has turned into an example of an enormous waste of energy and resources. Worst of all, its because one person, one time attempted to bomb an airliner with a homemade bomb in his shoe. I have a number of items confiscated from me by the TSA because I had trouble understanding their Byzantine and often downright stupid regulations.
TSA costs this country $7.5 billion a year. Multiply that by 13 years (since 9/11) and you'll realize that TSA 's airport security alone has cost this country over $100 billion. That's $100 billion that wasn't spent to decrease our budget deficit, bolster social security, stabilize medicare, pay some of the costs of medicaid, or improve our children's education. Nor, did it find its way into our pockets in the form of a tax cut.
We can run around like chickens with our heads cut off or we can try to act rationally. We have good intelligence and surveillance in this country now and there is a good chance of us detecting possible terrorists.
Other than the incident in Boston, I cannot think of one person killed in the United States by a terrorist since 2001. I will not stand by while Americans part with more of their freedoms and hard earned tax dollars because someone is hysterical about a group in the Middle East. Honestly, the real threats in this country are things that people almost never talk about. Between 30,000 to 40,000 Americans die every year in motor vehicle accidents. Deaths from homicides are down, but still way too high.
One thing I've learned watching the news for years. There is always a "threat" of some sort. When my parents were young it was the Nazis. When I was a kid it was the communists who were going march ashore at some California beach and make us all slaves if they didn't first exterminate us all in a nuclear war. Now, its Muslim terrorists. First, it was Al Quaeda, now its ISIS. Who will it be next? What will the next excuse for making us surrender our tax dollars be?
Our military budget is greater than that of the next ten nations combined. Yet, I see an effort to get us to expand it further.
I'm fed up. Its a shame what happened to these people in the Middle East who were beheaded. However, everyone of them chose to go there and put themselves in harm's way. For that reason, I just can't get too excited. The President is doing what he thinks is appropriate. I prefer his judgment to yours.
I was with you ALL the way up till now. Perhaps I am taking it out of context but at the same time I read it as "Oh, they should have known better and therefore its their fault they got beheaded". Most these people who get beheaded from foreign countries in the Middle East tend to go there for humanitarian or journalistic purposes. It's different if they went picking a fight but that's not what they did. Yes they knew the dangers but NO they don't deserve to have gotten beheaded.
I doubt Obama is willing to do what it takes to get the job done. Bring in AC-130 gun ships, A-10 Thunderbolt's, and Apache gunships for close air support and be done with it. Real air power can change the outcome fast with even untrained ground troops. I think it's also going to take ground troops to hold the land. I bet in a few months Obama will start calling up all reserves for a ground invasion again.
Air Power can't do squat.
Air power is a temporary stop gap and only makes what happens next worst.
We've already bombed Iraq into the stone age. We destroyed their army and later went in after the terrorists and rooted them out too.
You are correct though, unless you hold ground, all you've done is bomb, strafe and feel good about it.
ISIL doesn't have an Air Force and look at what they've done.
Yeah.....our current honest, open and transparent administration is going with the term "work place violence" instead of terrorism as it might hurt his legacy.
The OK beheading and the Ft Hood shooting are 2 for sure. There have been a few others as well.
Not to mention NUMEROUS others that have been stopped. There are dozens if not hundreds. Most of them are not even mentioned in the media though. Nothing to see here....move along
The fallacy in this reasoning is there has been no connection shown between these incidents and other people. The perpetrators may have done this because they were pro-Islam and hated America. However, they were not part of some huge plot. They were "lone wolfs". Had this been this case, it would have been shown in the long trial that the Ford Hood shooter received. I don't see these homicides as being particularly different than other homicides committed in America.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Emigrations
It's hard to not think of the Moore, OK beheading as anything but terrorism.
See above. I guess we won't know this person was a "lone wolf" until the case works its way entirely through the judicial process. However, it was committed by one person and has the earmarks of not being part of a conspiracy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lital_The_Best
I was with you ALL the way up till now. Perhaps I am taking it out of context but at the same time I read it as "Oh, they should have known better and therefore its their fault they got beheaded". Most these people who get beheaded from foreign countries in the Middle East tend to go there for humanitarian or journalistic purposes. It's different if they went picking a fight but that's not what they did. Yes they knew the dangers but NO they don't deserve to have gotten beheaded.
I am sorry for what happened to these people and they most certainly did not deserve what happened to them. The point I'm trying to make is that this is a dangerous part of the world to be in. There has been a civil war going on in Syria for the last couple of years. Thousands of people have been killed in this civil war. I think going to such a country to be a journalist or to deliver humanitarian aid is a risky proposition and one would have to be oblivious to reality not to realize that. No one made these people go there. Soldiers sent to Afghanistan don't get a choice where they have to go. They simply have to follow orders. Adults have to take some responsibility for the choices they voluntarily make in this world.
No government of any country can offer complete protection to its citizens when they journey abroad to dangerous places--often there is a State Department advisory telling them not to go. Americans also die in foreign countries from car accidents, street crime, and things like heart attacks. These are risks of traveling abroad too, yet such stories are not even considered "newsworthy" most of the time when they happen.
I hope I am wrong. I see America being dragged into another conflict in the Middle East that it cannot afford. The OP has a point. Yet, its my observation that some people in this country think America can and should be the policeman of the world. If we ever could have managed that role alone, those days have since passed.
I note that a number of people here fault the current President and his administration. Yet, they are very vague indeed on what he should be doing differently. Using phrases like "doing more", "making a more coordinate effort" etc. don't mean a thing. I personally believe the use of ground troops is inappropriate.
We should be very careful what resources we put into this conflict with ISIS and how much we escalate it. The Iraq experience should have taught us that it is much easier to get into a war than to get out of one.
The US gov can assist in preventing this by NOT ISSUING VISAS TO THESE IDIOTS!
But of course the State Department loves issuing visas to terrorists, all the while denying family members of US Citizens simple visitor visas.
It is amazing how the sister of the Boston bombers can still stay in the US, yet the US gov will routinely deny visitor visas to family members under the fallacy of "they cannot prove they will not stay in the US".
The State Department (and agencies involved in the refugee/immigration process) is at fault for allowing terrorists into the country, yet has not taken one single step to correct this issue.
Here's where the problem is:
If you think that in your lifetime you'll never be the victim, when you become one, and you will become one - (to violent crime - a robbery - a burglary - car jacking, etc) you'll be devastated... "I never thought this would happen to me...' will be uttered.
If you prepare yourself for what may happen, and have a plan, you'll survive that horrible event. If you deny it will ever rear its ugly head, you've become impacted before it even occurs.
What gets me is that known terrorists that have valid US Passports do NOT get them revoked even knowing that they are known terrorists... If the State Department has good proof that someone has bad intent but does not cancel/revoke their passports, they're then, part of the problem.
I live in Evanston IL and work in a home office. I run from 6:30-8 and ride my bike to the gym in the late afternoon. Other than that I am mostly around my home. As I mentioned before, one of my siblings is in Kuwait right now and I have other family who are retired.
Just one bit of specific advice on how I could improve vigilance for myself and my family would be useful.
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