What America Has Lost, It’s clear we overreacted to 9/11

Newsweek ^ | September 4, 2010 | Fareed Zakaria

[DakotaRed]

by Fareed Zakaria September 04, 2010 Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself. Today, Al Qaeda’s best hope is to find a troubled young man who has been radicalized over the Internet, and teach him to stuff his underwear with explosives. I do not minimize Al Qaeda’s intentions, which are barbaric. I question its capabilities. In every recent conflict, the United States has been right about the evil intentions of its adversaries but massively exaggerated their strength. In the 1980s, we thought the Soviet Union was expanding its power and influence when it was on the verge of economic and political bankruptcy. In the 1990s, we were certain that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arsenal. In fact, his factories could barely make soap.

[marron]

To launch 911 he had the help of Iraqi intelligence. We hanged Saddam and wiped out that intelligence service.

He has other contacts, but we’ve sat on enough of those that he is left hiding in a cave. Or in an Iranian compound, one or the other. Or dead, there’s that possibility. That would make it tough for him to launch any new attacks too.

Prior to 911 he was building a network of insurgencies in Central Asia with an eye toward creating a Central Asian caliphate too. In doing that, he had a Texas sized territory to use for his training camps, and he had the Saudis and the Americans turning a blind eye to what he was doing. After 911 all that changed.

Fareed thinks he’s being clever in pointing out that Bin Ladin hasn’t managed to launch any new attacks. But it is because we went after him and everyone who supported him that he can’t mount any new operations directly. He was always a bit of a false flag, anyway. Hanging Saddam did a lot more to snuff out all that stuff than probably most people give credit for.

[American Constitutionalist]

Yes, how about using up all the daisy cutters, big blue, or the MOABS in Afghanistan and Iraq until the warehouse of them is empty.

[nathanbedford]

The author has made superficially persuasive points. His points would have much more substance if we lived in a world before Hiroshima, but we do not. We live in a world in which a handful of suicidal, Islamist zealots could very well smuggle an atomic weapon across our unguarded Mexican border and detonate it virtually anywhere in America.

We live in a world in which those same Islamists could smuggle a mason jar containing a virus and release it virtually anywhere in America.

The Maxim: we must get it right 100% of the time and the terrorists need only get it right one time is absolutely true in our world of weapons of mass destruction. This changes the whole game and renders this article utterly irrelevant.

The relevant discussion can only be how to we wage war against terrorism more efficiently, less expensively, and less intrusively?

But wage it we must

[gthog61]

What an idiot! Maybe Al Quada isn’t as much of a threat precisely because we reacted.

[Lancey Howard]

LOL!
I clicked the thread title, saw “Newsweak” was the source, and had to post this on my way back to the forum.
I can hardly believe there are still enough barbers and orthodontists getting this crap magazine to keep it alive.

[sheik yerbouty]

The butt lifting little weasel ought to be deported..Mecca should have been a smoldering crater on 9/12/01..

[onona]

That sums it up perfectly. Sadly, the list of corrective actions is painfully long.

[DB]

He says since Al Qaeda has failed to stage another major attack over nine years it is proof we over reacted...

The moron can’t connect the fact that our reaction is what prevented another major attack. Some people are too stupid to live.

[tet68]

I’d settle for 9-11-10.
The only way to reform Islam is to call it’s beliefs
into question. That would do it.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Where do you get this “we” crap Fareed? What did you do after 3000 Americans were brutally murdered by a bunch of murdering Islamists?

[doc maverick]

Fartweed can take his “Post American World” and his allegations of 9/11 “over-reaction” and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine.
He’s living in the wrong country.

[rickb308]

Overreacted? Nah. If mecca was a green glowing, glass slag heap, we wouldn’t have overreacted.

[rickb308]

The good thing about those bombs? They’re like Doritos. We’ll make more.

[tet68]

Overreacted? Nah. If mecca was a green glowing,
glass slag heap...

Well, maybe over reacted a little.
We could make it up to them by building
a cathedral on the site.(once the radioactivity
goes down.)

[Little Pig]

No doubt Zakaria also decries the surge in prison populations across the US, since the crime rate is now far lower.

As with most non-conservatives, cause and effect have only passing acquaintance.

[Vaduz]

Zakaria wants to be the first to rewrite history.

[NTHockey]

All I can say is WOW. I guess we overreacted after Pearl Harbor, too. These Mohammedans are so consistently illogical that you would think they are LIBs.

[livius]

Well, the Communists actually were a threat, and they had infiltrated our government, so I wouldn’t say the “Red Scare” was irrational - or that the fear of Muslims infiltrating is irrational. They are doing it and in fact they have already installed themselves in high positions in virtually every part of the US government and, increasingly, the media.

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

He's also publicly stated, repeatedly, that Hezbollah is unfailingly kind and tolerant towards Jews.

Just another lying anti-Semitic douchebag, in other words. Two for a penny, any time, day or night.