On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 10:01:31AM -0500, Paul Morgan wrote:
[snip]
There are always people (often good, well-meaning people) in every country
and government who seek greater control over their citizens, because they
honestly believe that they know best how people should behave and run
their lives. When a dreadful event like 9/11 occurs, these folks take
advantage of people's fears to incrementally encroach upon freedom in the
name of security.
Yeah but there *really are* people out there who want to kill us.
It's your job to prevent them.
There are three basic approaches: aggressive (the current approach),
passive (give in to them completely and abjectly -- as yet untested), or
diplomacy.
You probably favor "diplomacy" -- some people who hate Bush say Clinton
did this. What *really* happened is we got a false sense of security
that the world was at peace while the criminals really operated with
impunity. The Clinton approach seems best on the surface, and is worst
in reality.
The aggressive approach at least truly messes up the terrorists plans.
Another approach, complete and utter passivity, the "Quaker 'I Wont
Fight Even To Save Myself'" approach, has not yet been tested. Let's
just completely and utterly acquiecse to all of the terrorists demands.
It's never been tried, but it to would keep the terrorists from killing
us.