Thinking as a Hobby 3478240 Curiosities served |
2006-08-17 10:09 AM Was the Liquid Bomb Plot Real? Previous Entry :: Next Entry Read/Post Comments (3) Kevin Drum points to an AP story that says the prospective bombers hadn't attended terrorist training camps and were relying on information they got from books. So he wonders:
It's right to maintain a certain level of cynicism, but when you're dealing with the lives of hundres of airline passengers, seems to me it's just fine to proceed with an overabundance of caution and give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt. Imagine if they'd actually foiled the 9/11 hijackers. What would we have? A bunch of young Muslims with box cutters in their bags, only a few of whom had attended a couple of weeks of flight training. How serious, or pathetic, would they have seemed in retrospect? The reason these people didn't attend terrorist training camps in Afghanistan is because of our actions in Afghanistan. And I wouldn't underestimate knowledge people can get from books or the internet either. In today's climate, isn't it much wiser to assume the worst, to take people who might seem like relatively incompetant fringe radicals more seriously? Wasn't that our mistake after the first attack on the World Trade Center? I admit you have to be somewhat cautious, but the important thing here is intent, not perceived capability. A lone, motivated nutjob with a very poor education can do a lot of damage. Kevin and others are debating the capabilities of the prospective terrorists, but no one is questioning their motivation and intent (at least so far). And that is the far more important factor. How capable were they of actually carrying it out? I care far less about that than the fact that they had set their minds on it and fully desired and expected to carry it out. If so, lock them up and throw away the key. Read/Post Comments (3) Previous Entry :: Next Entry Back to Top |
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