We didn't do jacksh**. Case Closed.
Thankfully someone put this pompous, arrogant ass Professor (read: no real world experience) Bell's comments into the context they deserve.
No, Professor Bell, had we "overreacted", a large portion of the ME would be one large glass parking lot right about now, and people might actually be able to park there in a few hundred years.
"Did America overreact to 9/11?"
No.
Wanna see over reaction? Suspend tenure for this ivory tower fool and you'll see over reaction!
This prof. is another uesful idiot for the left.
Internment camps were always an option. NOTHING! Nothing could be considered an "over-reaction" when your country is successfully and brutally attacked. With the right approach and less PC BS (thanks to the ACLU, dems and a country filled with appeasers) America could still dominate under Reagan's "Peace through Strength" montra. Not any longer. We're proving ourselves time and again, to be no different than France or Germany. The latest antics from our new "leadership" in Congress in respect to Iraq, will leave us vulnerable to attacks for generations to come. Dangle the "Overreacted Crowd" by one leg from 90 stories for a minute. Let's see what their reaction is then.
Well 9/11 was a Zionist plot...
(It's true! I read it on the WWW)
Hindsight is 20/20. I bet Pf Bell never had AQ on his radar before 9/11.
no, half the country has 'under'reacted
IF ANYTHING WE UNDER REACTED. LIBERALISM IS A MENTAL DIEASE.
Since Damascus, Tehran, Kabul, Riyadh, Mecca, Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad are still intact, we obviously didn't overreact.
In WWI 8.5 million people died from direct combat action. And all that was triggered by the killing of a single prince in Sarajevo. By that standard, if 3,000 were killed on 9/11, we would not reach WWI's ratio until 25.5 billion people die. And there's only 6 billion of us on earth.
What a typical moronic liberal Dem overview. No wonder the jihadist enemy was jumping for terrorist joy when those appeasing pinko schmucks won the last election. G-d help US!
Skull and Bones! FOREVER! and EVER!
AAAAARRRGGGH!
IMO, the US didn't overreact. If anything, the US showed considerable restraint.
These whining 'academics' would have really been in a tissy if I were the President, I would have had nucs raining down on Afganistan within minutes of discovering who was responsible. There is no way I would have let that camel-humper escape.
Bell's argument is self-contradictory. The terrorists would, in fact, have the capacity to destroy us if not for our willingness to resist. Bell and other pacifists would argue against any use of force in response, their claims to the contrary notwithstanding. This is because his arguments are not proportional; they would be equally valid or invalid regardless of what level of force were used. This uniform rejection of force would invalidate the superior strength that leftists invoke as a reason not to use force against terrorism. According to leftists, we shouldn't fight back because we are too strong to be threatened, but we are so strong only because we do fight back.
What should be put into perspective is the 3000 dead in this war so far.
If the media were following each car crash victim the way it follows each of the war dead, we'd have Americans afraid to leave their homes.
There are approx. 40,000+ deaths on the highway each year.
Bell is arguing that a response on the scale of the World War 2 Soviet Union would be unjustified. Nobody to my knowledge has alleged that our response rises to that level. He does not compare the responses at all, he merely invites the inference that they are somehow equivalent or proportional, which makes them excessive in light of what he claims to be a smaller threat.
Since our response is demonstrably not equivalent to Stalin's response to the Nazi invasion, Bell's analogy is absurd on its face. It is miserable and deceptive logic, a smart man aiming a message at a stupid and pretentious audience. He certainly has them pegged, but I give his presentation an "F."
Nope.
America under reacted before 9/11.
After 9/11 Bush did what we should have done long ago.
I'd say we've also under reacted to the threats of radical Islam since 9/11. The rest of the world has done next to nothing.