Have the terrorists won?

Saying they won is to assume they’re done with us. That’s doubtful. So I’d say no, just for that reason.

I wouldn’t say that they’ve won since we’re still fighting. But I’d definitely say that they’re winning.

There’s been a jihad against us for, what? decades? We just kind of ignored it. So if their goal was to draw is into a fight, then yes. They won that.

yes they have, but not completely. No need to surrender.

I picture terrorists sitting in their cozy caves watching CNN listing the civil rights our supposedly “free” country has taken from us this week then laughing and clinking their bottles together. Even if the populace at large isn’t exactly terrified of their shenanigans, a government that has cornered the market on fear mongering in order to promote its own twisted agenda is just as good to the terrorists. In that respect, yes the terrorists have won.

@Mouse: I didn’t think you could use “shenanigans” and “terrorists” in the same sentence.. LOL

@Poof, I guess I used it to demean the work of terrorists,referring to their nefarious deeds as “shenanigans” is a way of showing how ludicrous their tactics really are.

Ripped from today’s headlines.

The NY Times site requires a subscription, so I’m linking elsewhere.

And for the record, I believe the terrorists (in their current incarnation) are a construct of elite, globalized interests to promote a war and fascism agenda. Yes, there are bad guys strapping on suicide vests and blowing stuff up, but the infrastructure that is causing this to happen on the scale that we’ve seen was put in place by “shadow” elements of the CIA, ISI, and Moussad. If all goes as planned, the “winners” won’t be us or the terrorists, it will be the powers that be, both seen and unseen. Here’s one take on this idea. The lady in the video, by the way, is on the TSA watch list.

When you win something, you cease any/all activities that resulted in you winning whatever it was, that you were attempting to win.

Because the terrorists have not ceased their ways, I think we might be able to assume that they have not “won.”

August 30, 2008, 4:11 PM EDT

see…I knew we should have changed the national anthem to Eye of the Tiger…...

The 09/11 attack resulted in the terrorists meeting their objective of reducing the personal freedoms enjoyed by Americans. The administration played the fear card and handed the terrorists the win. Our objective has been to bring the terrorist leaders to trial or eliminate them. Have we met our objective? Hell no! In my book, they are on the winning side of that objective, as well.

They haven’t won yet. Yes, they’ve gained some yardage, but they haven’t won. Terrorism is here to stay. It won’t be going away—it’s the 21 century. Having said that, we need to make ourselves less of a ‘target.’ Right now, we are the poster-child for signing up young idealistic terrorists.

We need to also reclaim some of the yardage we’ve lost. We didn’t lost it, cause they ‘took’ it. We fumbled it away. How? By taking our own citizens civil-rights away [spying on us, arrest without cause, torturing in prisons, and when anyone in America says that anyone else in America should not criticize the President.

We cannot act like terrorists while saying we want to stop foreign terrorism.

You know the saying, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely….” Well, it isn’t just the powers that be that are corrupt; it is our nation—us. When we quake in fear and make knee-jerk decisions that set horrible precedent—hurt our own citizens, and watch and listen and have a debate on just what torture is—while we watch it, we have crossed the line from fear into paranoia…and the power doesn’t need to corrupt absolutely. We are already corroded.

But the terrorists haven’t won yet. Because many of us who spoke up 7 years ago, are still talking. And many who didn’t speak up at all and called us names for speaking out are joining us. And we are welcoming them with open arms. No recriminations, no finger pointing, just a ‘glad you are here.’ It’s only with knowledge, hope, and justice and fair treatment for all that we can regain our yardage.

History teaches us many valuable lessons, like the fact that after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941, many Americans asked themselves, “Have the Japanese won?”

The honest answer was, “Yes, they have scored a short-term victory,” but on August 6th and 9th of 1945, they discovered what could truly happen, once you “awaken a Sleeping Giant.”

It was on those two days that they learned the meaning of a new American idiom: “Payback is a BITCH!”

The terrorists (“and those who support them”) will eventually discover what the Japanese citizens of Hiroshima & Nagasaki painfully learned, and that is, how to “evaporate.”

Don’t think for a nanosecond that the USA will NOT use its stockpile of nuclear arms, “if pressed.” That’s why we HAVE nuclear stockpiles, Kids!

August 30, 2008, 6:38 PM EDT

Just who are you going to use nukes on? This isn’t like fighting another nation. This is like the war on drugs or the war on crime. You never defeat it. All you can hope to do is to reduce to a nuisance.

According to GWB (if you choose to believe him) the terrorists could not have succeeded, thus far, without help from unfriendly (to us) nations.

I agree with part of that attitude, because a small group of terrorists would not have been able to accomplish all that they did (and are going to do) without some major-league assistance.

Personal opinion, based on my experiences in the US military, and Defense Department briefings I have attended in the past.

August 30, 2008, 6:57 PM EDT

“a government that has cornered the market on fear”

“The administration played the fear card and handed the terrorists the win”

“we are the poster-child for signing up young idealistic terrorists”

“taking our own citizens civil-rights away”

“We cannot act like terrorists while saying we want to stop foreign terrorism.”

“a small group of terrorists would not have been able to accomplish all that they did (and are going to do) without some major-league assistance.”

“I picture terrorists sitting in their cozy caves watching CNN”

“referring to their nefarious deeds as “shenanigans” is a way of showing how ludicrous their tactics really are”

“The 09/11 attack resulted in the terrorists meeting their objective of reducing the personal freedoms enjoyed by Americans.”

“This is like the war on drugs or the war on crime. You never defeat it.”

Read between the lines, anyone?

@kevbo: thank you very much for the link to “Talk by Naomi Wolf – The End of America” in your first post above. The talk is over 47 minutes long, but I beseech my fellow flutherers to get away from fluther for that period of time and visit the talk on YouTube via Kevbo’s link and hear what this woman has to say. You will find it to be time well spent.
Aside: If I may, I feel the need to vent…FUCK BUSH…go ahead and put wtf on your fuckin’ lists. I pray this country makes it through these next several months until Obama takes office. I believe he is our only hope.

I would not say really that they have “won” but they certainly have gained the upper hand in collapsing our interior. It is going to take a miracle to gain back what has been lost due to the Bush administration. We have a war on everything and I don’t know if many of you work for corporate AmeriKKKa but the word “attack” is widely used in all presentations. It is sinking in that we have to be at war even at home and that we need to attack anything bad or good to gain something useful out of it. IT is not this generation that will feel the wrath of things to come from this falling out that we have made with other countries it is the next generation and the generation after that, that will be most effected by the faults of what is happening now.

They have already won, whether we see it or not.

proof the terrorist won—my 85 yr old grand mother gets felt up and down at air port security.

@jackadams:

I assume you’ve never heard of Mutually Assured Destruction? There is one reason and one reason only why the US has a stockpile of nuclear weapons: to keep everyone else from using theirs. Once one person launches a nuke, so does everyone else, thus no more human race. Or any other species outside of insects for that matter.

Last year I got into a debate with somebody who defending the Patriot Act. I dare anyone who defends it to read the book 1984. It is scary how close we are and how easy it would be to establish a “Big Brother” government in America. And whats scarier is how many idiots would defend it.

FREE THE ST PAUL 3

I amend my former statement. Maybe the terrorist HAVE won.

Go to www.kyle.tv and see the 3 kids arrested cause they were riding their bikes to a concert. They proved they were, showed rental agreement, directions from hotel, and tickets and were still fined and charged with misdemeanor of ‘unlawful assembly.’

And the terrorists are kicking our asses in Afganistan too.

@EnzoX24: You are indeed right about “1984;” we are living it, right now.

And, I’m well aware of the MAD philosophy.

But, that doesn’t change the attitude of the Joint Chiefs, who are “Hawks,” for the most part.

To buttress that, I call your attention to a quote from Gen. Curtis Lemay who said the following, during the war in South Vietnam (where I served):

“My solution to the problem would be to tell the North Vietnamese Communists frankly that they’ve got to drawn in their horns and stop their aggression or we’re going to bomb them into the stone age.”

September 2, 2008, 8:29 PM EDT

We would be faring better in Afganistan if we hadn’t redeployed so many of our troops to Iraq, a nation that did nothing to us and was of no threat.

we wouldn’t be better off anywhere. even if we didn’t send all our troops to Iraq it would be the exact same in Afghanistan. It wouldn’t change the feeling of the people there not wanting us there. So it wouldn’t change all the bombs and killings that happens everyday there. That’s has killed so many of their people and our soldiers.