Good move, seeing Land of the Dead instead. It was probably more substantive than the speech.

At any rate, I didn't actually see the speech live since I was watching Land of the Dead, so I guess we can consider this rhetorical re-animation.

How could you tell when the movie ended?

ash


['It's just one goddamn stiff after another.']

Yes, maybe we showed those Communists what is really worth worshipping, but that was back in the days when a ten dollar bill looked like a ten dollar bill instead of stage money. Now, I'm not all that sure that the stage money is really worth that much worshipping, not having seen a Ruble for comparison.

I fell asleep right after Bush connected 9/11 to Iraq, and that was probably within 5 minutes.  A literal troll smack down, zzzzzz

Also, Bush's speech didn't have any completely gratuitous lesbian make-out scenes.

From last night:

COSTAS: Senator McCain, I hope this question doesn't seem impertinent, but we often hear that if these terrorists are not confronted in Iraq, they'll be in New York or wherever. What is to stop them from being in New York simultaneously, if they could get here? We know that they would if they could, and they still might.

MCCAIN: Because I believe, Bob, that Iraq would turn into a hotbed of radical Islamist extremism and training, with equipping. It would be a center for Islamic extremism, and also a failure on the part of the United States would set a chain of events in motion, particularly in the Middle East, that would eventually reach the shores of the United States, I believe.

Sadly, Costas didn't follow up on McCain's total dodge, but it's one of the few times I've even heard someone ask the question.

NYCmoderate: 

COSTAS: Senator McCain, I hope this question doesn't seem impertinent, but we often hear that if these terrorists are not confronted in Iraq, they'll be in New York or wherever. What is to stop them from being in New York simultaneously, if they could get here? We know that they would if they could, and they still might.

mykej: 

The "we'd rather fight them there than here" excuse is worse than silly.  It's proof that America doesn't give a shit about the well being of the Iraqi people. If we cared about them, we'd be just as happy to fight the terrorists here as in the streets of our good friends.

I always make this point, but I wish Bush would have the balls to go to Madrid or Bali and make the "we'd rather fight them there than here" point. As a non-American, I find the sheer lack of context that the American media brings to this discussion to be somewhat disturbing. Is there nothing to learn from how the UK dealt with the IRA, or how Spain dealt with ETA? Does nothing count if it happens outside the Homeland?

It's proof that America doesn't give a shit about the well being of the Iraqi people.

This is an excellent point.  I disagree with the conclusion, but I think it is not that great an idea to promote that we decided to send the terrorists to Iraq so that they wouldn't come here.  Certaily, if I were an Iraqi, I wouldn't be too happy about that -- even if I were better off now than under Saddam (which is undoubtedly true for almost all Iraqis other than Baathists).  We shouldn't publicize this idea, now matter how true it is.

It apparently takes a sportscaster to ask the really obvious tough questions. Just ask Costas, Olbermann, or Jim Lampley.

Iraq is like flypaper that provides a perfect environment for the flies to lay eggs.

That's probably not true of real flypaper (which is a poor environment for growing maggots), but it reminds me of a point I've tried repeatedly to make ever since the administration started to say Iraq is the "central front" for fighting terrorism: it's less like flypaper than it is like digging a mudhole to fight mosquitoes. It's true that the mosquitoes seem less elusive because so many are visible around the mudhole. The (obvious) fallacy is the idea that there are fewer mosquitoes elsewhere. The ones outside the mudhole are just as elusive as ever and now your resources are tied up fighting ones that didn't even exist before.

 I've often felt that the "central lesson of 9/11" was that even a much weaker enemy can get lucky sometimes. The attack demonstrated gaping holes in our security that needed to be fixed (many still do). But it wasn't the apocalypse. It wasn't even Pearl Harbor, because this was not an enemy with a credible military force. People had been warning for years that this kind of asymmetric attack could happen. If something on the same scale hasn't happened since then, I would argue that it might just be because the probabilty of success is very low rather than because our policies have made a difference.

Al Qaeda needed (and still needs) to be destroyed as a functioning terrorist movement. Other than that, it should not have come as a big surprise that the world's only superpower has enemies. This is a consequence of being on top. Some responses come to mind: you can protect yourself from existing enemies, eliminate existing enemies, and even (I know, I'm a feckless liberal) avoid creating new enemies. But it's a chronic condition, not something that can be fought and won.

The Iraqi insurgents are mostly people who were not engaged in terrorism against the US before the Iraq invasion, so this seems obviously counterproductive. To the extent that it's a magnet for foreign terrorists, it could have a limited flypaper effect. But it's a little silly to assume that our enemies have so little imagination as to devote all their effort on attacking hardened military targets in Iraq and are not planning another large scale terrorist attack in our borders.

I haven't seen the movie, but I could see how paper money could maintain and even increase its value in a society that could no longer print new bills. Obviously, it has little intrinsic value, but the social order could be preserved to the extent that pre-apocalypse property rights were still respected. As long as acceptance of cash remains common, there's no reason to switch immediately to a barter system; people would still rather carry a wallet than push a wheelbarrow full of potatoes. Of course, if there was just an outpost of civilization with access to huge caches of money from ruined cities, then money would cease to have any meaningful function.

The Straight Dope published a pretty comprehensive (and highly entertaining) analysis of how long it would take for the power to go out should zombies ever take over the world.  The conclusions - if zombification spread quickly, power would be out in most places in 24 hours and almost everywhere within a week.  If it spread slowly, the power could stay on as long as 6-8 months.  Worth a full read.

You really think that was luck though? That chances of success on their part was low? That even today, when we hear about the gaping security holes across this country, we ought not worry because the chances of success are low.

To me, the fact that 3 out of the 4 planes successfully hit their targets have nothing to do with luck. It was skill. The ones who are lucky were us, in the fact that terrorists don't try to attack us more often.

To me, the central lesson was that as long as their are determined people out there willing to harm you, you will have do one of two things about it depending upon your societal goals. If you want to maintain a free and open society, you have to do "something" to cut down on those numbers of people and then also be willing to accept a certain level of insecurity in your society as some people are beyond reproach.  This means focusing your efforts on protecting citizens from those situations that could cause the most harm easily. Or, you institute a police state, basically like how Saddam controlled Iraq. I think we know which one we all wish to have. But this means taking real forward steps to protect sites like existing nuclear sites and hazard material transportation, instead of the half-assed measures taken now.

To me, the fact that 3 out of the 4 planes successfully hit their targets have nothing to do with luck. It was skill. The ones who are lucky were us, in the fact that terrorists don't try to attack us more often.

When I say "luck" I mean the success was probabilistic with respect to what we knew before 9/11 (i.e. over the sample space of likely terrorists and likely tactics).

The probability of a successful attack conditional on those skilled hijackers exploiting those specific security holes may have been quite high. But I think on average, the hijackers are not that skilled--you have these knuckleheads like the shoebomber; just being a zealot doesn't automatically make you a skilled fighter--and there has almost certainly been an ongoing effort before and after 9/11 to prevent the worst attacks. Attacks were planned for the millennium New Years, for instance, and surely some would have succeeded if we weren't actively preventing them. We f---ed up once, very badly, and that's not to be excused. But I think that it is unreasonable to conclude that our security was ineffective.

Considering that the 9/11 hijackers planned and executed a skillful attack, it's good that they at least are not around to repeat it. This is why I don't really think that suicide attacks are a good military strategy and I am always frustrated with some of the panicked reactions I heard to 9/11. Sure, you can create mayhem by strapping bombs on kids, and this can be an effective component of a terrorist campaign. But when the ones who plan a difficult attack kill themselves in the process, the gains are limited. There are no returning veterans, and no one to communicate hard won tactical lessons. I never understood why it is useful to cast this situation as "war" when the enemy has no reasonable hope of winning in any military sense.

>Considering that the 9/11 hijackers planned and executed a skillful attack, it's good that they at least are not around to repeat it. This is why I don't really think that suicide attacks are a good military strategy<

>Sure, you can create mayhem by strapping bombs on kids, and this can be an effective component of a terrorist campaign. But when the ones who plan a difficult attack kill themselves in the process, the gains are limited.<

>There are no returning veterans, and no one to communicate hard won tactical lessons. <

>I never understood why it is useful to cast this situation as "war" when the enemy has no reasonable hope of winning in any military sense.<