Hello,
I'm hoping that this thread can stay in the lounge, since I'm much more interested in discussing how regular people deal with terrorism than I am with US foreign or domestic policies...
My theory goes like this: in many ways, terrorism is just a dressed up sexy way of talking about nothing terribly new, and perhaps has become something that politicians (all politicians) can use to evoke fear among us.
Some time ago in the Political Lounge, I asked what the difference between terrorism and crime was. I got a great answer which basically said that terrorism is usually crime committed by somebody or some group that has setup shop outside of the country, and is usually driven by political ideology. I haven't been able to come up with a better distinction yet.
What I think people tend to forget is that many domestic crimes have been committed based on political or religious ideology. If you look at gang warfare alone, the gangs are driven by their own politics. I bet if you were to look back at the madman of our time, several of them probably thought they were fighting for some demented political cause. Crime and terrorism are both inspired by a feeling of helplessness, a feeling of "what do I have to lose?"
However, to the victim's families, at the end of the day the outcome is the same: lives are lost. Whether the assassin came from inside or outside the country, and whatever their political cause might be would seem to me to be somewhat incidental to the family.
Now, I'm not trying to blow off terrorism and say that it isn't a concern at all. It is a real concern, I just think that perhaps it is over-hyped and used as a tool against us. In many cases, you can replace "terrorist" with "criminal" and the meaning could remain pretty much the same in many ways. Politicians saying "we have a beat on the terrorists" sounds sexier than saying "we have a beat on this here criminal racket". The latter sounds like something that Chief Wiggam or the Batman Police Commissioner might say.
Fast forward to just recently where the US received a failing grade in counter-terrorism measures. Many of these counter-terrorism measures don't seem too much different than counter-crime measures. Many need to occur on our soil, and many can be monitored and administered by our police force. I'm wondering if part of this was due to our hyper-intense focus on terrorism, perhaps at the expense of our police and traditional counter-crime measures? I haven't read the 9/11 report yet, so I'm hardly the expert on this. If this doesn't apply, mentally delete this paragraph - it's just food for thought.
My main point here is this: I think that we should put the terrorism thing in context, and help it from spreading FUD and being basically the word of the day. While we are focussed on our foreign policy and thinking about terrorism as originating from the Middle East, we don't want to lose sight of good old fashioned crime fighting and funding for our police departments.
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