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2nd successful terrorist attack during Obama's term

D'rok said:
Actually, it's your bill of rights that makes that next to impossible, not the left. Are you prepared to dismantle your constitutional order to preempt attacks like these?
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It's completely silly to argue that people making international calls to known and suspected terrorists have a protected right to do that. Equally silly is the argument that compiling a database of what phone numbers call other phone numbers (no names attached and only accessed when a terrorist is discovered making a phone call) is prohibited by the Constitution. The Constitution was not a suicide pact.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Yea but that guy had nothing much to do with America. It is not like he got through an American airport.
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Except his intent wasn't to get through an American airport. His intent was to blow up an airplane filled with Americans just before it landed in a major US city (where doubtless some on the ground would also have died).
 
ponderingturtle said:
Except all the bits around building a real bomb.
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Well, there again, it was more terrorist incompetence, not the government that kept that from happening. And that's correctable by the other side.

I'm not sure we can do much about government incompetence and the naiveness of the left. Those seem to be ingrained qualities.
 
BeAChooser said:
It's completely silly to argue that people making international calls to known and suspected terrorists have a protected right to do that. Equally silly is the argument that compiling a database of what phone numbers call other phone numbers (no names attached and only accessed when a terrorist is discovered making a phone call) is prohibited by the Constitution. The Constitution was not a suicide pact.
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A simple yes would have sufficed. I think you are in the minority, and most of your countrymen/women would prefer to keep their open society.
 
BeAChooser said:
Except his intent wasn't to get through an American airport. His intent was to blow up an airplane filled with Americans just before it landed in a major US city (where doubtless some on the ground would also have died).
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So America needs to conquer the world so that we can control the airports in Europe and such that this guy actually got through?

Being attacked while abroad is one of the risks of international travel.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Well they are nuts enough that the other militias in the area contacted the FBI and worked with the FBI to catch them.
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I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. The fact that the judge is going to release suspected terrorists is pretty telling, however.
 
ponderingturtle said:
And the guy who flew the plane in to the IRS. And that Milita group of course.
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Well, the militia group was caught before they could do anything. That's a pretty solid victory there.

Other victories include the NYC bomber from 6-8 months ago. The cab driver I think (or a vendor). Then there was the other cab driver in Dallas who was busted.
 
Whats the point of topics like this? How do you blame these incidents on the president?

BTW, you have more chances of dying to drunk drivers and or getting mugged in NY then you will ever have dying to a "terrorist"..
 
What is with blaming the President for every societal problem? It flabbergasts me that people blame the President for every single thing, most of which are completely out of his hands. And this includes any president, Republican or Democrat.
 
funk de fino said:
You better get used to it. We had many years of attacks from Irish dissidents. We didnt cry like babies and blame our leaders however.

You cannot stop all attacks.
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THing is, the IRA attacks never acheived the body counts that the Islamic extremist rack up.
I agree with your basic points, but although I have no love whatsoever for the IRA,who I consider just another bunch of fanatic thugs,they did not seem to have the hunger for huge body counts that the Jihadist do.
 
barrymore said:
What is with blaming the President for every societal problem? It flabbergasts me that people blame the President for every single thing, most of which are completely out of his hands. And this includes any president, Republican or Democrat.
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Some people actually make the mistake of believing that U.S. Presidents are somehow all-powerful (for good or ill); in a way, we deify them - look at how many people pointed at Bush (or now point at Obama) and call him the Devil or Anti-Christ.

And, I might add, to a certain degree our political system has reinforced this notion for a long time.
 
BeAChooser said:
Actually, yes, from the standpoint that they defeated all efforts by the government to prevent an act of terrorism. For all intents and purposes, the other side was successful in enlisting someone in their cause, getting him trained, evading authorities during multiple trips between the US and Pakistan, conducting multiple phone conversations without detection, improvising a potentially deadly bomb, delivering the bomb to a location crowded with people, setting the fuze on that bomb and walking away. And in fact, he almost was able to fly away due to the system NOT working. The ONLY thing that stopped this from being a complete tragedy was the incompetence of the terrorist in building the bomb. This is nothing to laugh about or ridicule because that part of the process can be improved by them quite easily. The next time we may not be so lucky and hundreds or even thousands may die. The ONLY way to effectively fight terrorism is preemptively, and unfortunately, those on the left have made that next to impossible with their attacks on virtually every intel program that might have allowed that to happen.
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Crap. Simply crap. You want a free society, right? Probably you are even for the right to bear arms. How will you, in a free society, keep somebody to purchase a bunch of wisely available stuff (fertilizer, propane tanks, fireworks, alarm clocks, batteries) and rig a bomb?

Heck, how would you even suggest to do that in a pure police state?

Hans
 
MattusMaximus said:
Some people actually make the mistake of believing that U.S. Presidents are somehow all-powerful (for good or ill); in a way, we deify them - look at how many people pointed at Bush (or now point at Obama) and call him the Devil or Anti-Christ.

And, I might add, to a certain degree our political system has reinforced this notion for a long time.
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And another thing that peeves me is people think that law enforcement has unlimited resources. First of all, how many potential terrorists do you think the feds (and state, and local) are keeping tabs on? You think it was just Shazhad and no one else? Are the feds just sitting around eating too much donuts and joking around, and so completely missed him? If Shazhad never did anything out of the ordinary (conspicuously at least), how do you propose that he would have been caught? Because of the way he looks? What?

We have NO idea who and what the feds are going after right now. Hell, maybe the team that would theoretically uncovered Shazhad was taking down someone much more important than him. I am sure if you put a list of all potential terrorists in the world, Shazhad would STILL be far down on the list in terms of priority. After all, we are throwing limited resources at a problem with pretty much unlimited capacity.

And to conclude the rant: no one necessarily needs to be blamed in this situation. The media always goads the masses into searching for someone's head, but all it becomes is a vindictive witch-hunt. People should be judged on what they are capable of; if the limited resources of law enforcement were not capable (within reason) of catching this guy, it is no one's fault. You find out what CAN be done in the future, but that does not require firing someone just to get your rocks off.
 
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MRC_Hans said:
Crap. Simply crap. You want a free society, right? Probably you are even for the right to bear arms. How will you, in a free society, keep somebody to purchase a bunch of wisely available stuff (fertilizer, propane tanks, fireworks, alarm clocks, batteries) and rig a bomb?

Heck, how would you even suggest to do that in a pure police state?

Hans
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There are some restrictions on "common" items.

A person is only allowed to buy a limited amount of specific cold medicines. They are required to show ID and it is recorded when you do it. This is to cut down on meth creation.

Fertilizer that can be used to make explosives was restricted after the Murrah Building Bombing. I don't know the exact way that they do it, but it is at least recorded.

Firearms require background checks and 5-day waiting periods. Even the most staunch 2nd amendment supporters like the idea of instantaneous background checks to make sure that the buyer doesn't have a felony or is currently wanted for a crime.

The first restricts purchase of a small quantity, the second a large quantity and the third any quantity from people who don't have a need/right to buy it.

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that we have reasonable restrictions that protect us from the most serious threats and we are still an open society.
 
Best to look at a situation like this on two different levels.

On a tactical level, the Times Square bomber was a dismal failure. No explosion, unsuccessful escape attempt and loads of clues left behind.

On a strategic level, things are not so clear. The objective goal of terrorism is to make people uncomfortable with their lives. Are people more scared because of his actions? Some are. Given the tactical failure, many are also not impressed. The measure of success here is how many people are really scared by this vs. the number who cannot take such an effort seriously.

If viewed in context of the van used to bomb the world trade center back during the Clinton administration, I would say this attack is at best a wash for Al Quada. A group that used to be able to crash planes into buildings is reduced to using incompetent agents. They succeeded in getting a US citizen to attack the US. That is their greatest achievement in this attack.

The best evaluation cannot happen until more time has passed.
 
Doubt said:
Best to look at a situation like this on two different levels.

On a tactical level, the Times Square bomber was a dismal failure. No explosion, unsuccessful escape attempt and loads of clues left behind.
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Agree.

On a strategic level, things are not so clear. The objective goal of terrorism is to make people uncomfortable with their lives. Are people more scared because of his actions? Some are. Given the tactical failure, many are also not impressed. The measure of success here is how many people are really scared by this vs. the number who cannot take such an effort seriously.
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Almost no one really cares about this outside of water-cooler gossip. Heck, I live in NYC and I could almost care less, as do most of the people I know.

The thing about it is--is that car bombs are expected. Not only are they frequent in the Middle East, but with any amount of effort I cannot imagine them being too tough to put together here in the US. A car bomb could happen at any minute; it makes no sense to me to worry about this one in particular.

I would worry if there was a whole new tool used. Aside from killing a lot of people, 9/11 was shocking because airplanes were used; the unknown was partly what terrified people.

So, I would say even if this succeeded in killing a handful of people (which thank Allah it did not), it would not have had nearly the same impact as airplanes. Sure, people might be shaken for a few weeks or months. But it would go away after awhile.

For example, take the Munich killings. The body count was not high--probably comparable to what it would have been in Times Square--but it was shocking because it was unexpected. I doubt Obama would launch an Operation Wrath of God-type response to a car-bomb. It's just not going to evoke the same response.

And I think most large, organized terrorist groups realize that. Compared to hijacking airplanes, putting together a car-bomb seems remarkably easy. It's a wonder that it has not already happened. My best guess is that it is just not worth the time of a multi-national terrorist group who wants to make a big statement.

So again, I am worried about the unexpected; the shocking; the big kahuna. That is what we should be afraid of, if anything.


If viewed in context of the van used to bomb the world trade center back during the Clinton administration, I would say this attack is at best a wash for Al Quada. A group that used to be able to crash planes into buildings is reduced to using incompetent agents. They succeeded in getting a US citizen to attack the US. That is their greatest achievement in this attack.
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I have not seen any evidence that Al-Qaeda was involved. I would be shocked if they were.
 
The most important goal of terrorism...is to create fear, panic, and intimidation.

Therefore, these 2 attacks were successful.
 
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