solitaria said:
Could you list some examples of the numerous other AQ attacks please.
There were a slate of attacks on embassies in various countries, the attack on the USS cole, an armed attack on a compound in Saudi Arabia, all within a year or two of 9/11.
In my view what changed was increased co-operation between the CIA and the Jordanian, Pakistani, and Saudi intelligence service. The Middle Eastern intelligence services did what the CIA never could do--they infiltrated Al Qaeda on the ground and fed good human intelligence back to the CIA who then used traditional methods (predator drones, etc.) to disrupt Al Qaeda.
It is now a major undertaking for AQ to get a message out from its leaders, they have lost the operational capability to carry out a sophisticated operation like 9/11.
What has grown up in place is, as a result of the public opinion polls you like to quote, a bunch of "home grown" Al Qaeda cells that have spontaneously popped up. These are the guys who did things like the London subway bombing--no real connection to Al Qaeda prime other than in name.
The thing is that these home grown terrorists just aren't sophisticated enough to pull off anything scary. They can bomb a subway car or a bus, but they don't have the financing, the training, the know-how, or the planning skills necessary to do anything really significant.
So the effect of the war on terror has been to replace a small organization capable of sophisticated attacks with a larger number of amateurs who are only really capable of hitting soft targets like subways.
Is that a success or a failure? I think it's a mixed result. The US achieved the objectives it set out to achieve and can say that it was operationally successful in shutting down Al Qaeda prime, and realistically put a halt to the major threats coming from that sector.
On the other hand I agree it'd have been nice to have done that in some way that did not spawn all the amateur threats against softer targets.
The CIA source is wrong. See the OECD and IMF sources beside it which have Canada in a better position than the USA.
It's not wrong, it's different. One source is counting more things as "debt" than the other is. For example, whether or not you count future unfunded pension liabilities.
In either case the debt carried by the USA is fairly equivalent to the debt carried by Canada even though we didn't fight in Iraq, and less than the debt carried by many other Western countries. Moreover the US is carrying far less debt load now than it did as a result of WW2 or as a result of Vietnam.
So yes it's been a big expense, but the US has shouldered larger expenses in the past, and has AMPLE financial room to maneuver.
Canada is on track to eliminate its total government net debt by 2021.
This is a real side point, but--not anymore, that prediction assumed $100/barrel oil. We aren't going to run the same kinds of surplusses in the future that we ran in the past, and in fact it may be a LONG while before we run surplusses again, despite claims to the contrary from Harper.
Regardless the war in Iraq crippled them very badly which was the point I was trying to make.
I don't see ANY evidence that the US has been in ANY way crippled by the war in Iraq. It has far more financial freedom at this moment than it did during and after WW2 and Vietnam. Neither of those events crippled the US. Further, there is not any evidence of the US being unable to respond massively to financial pressures: Despite the war in Iraq it was able to throw $1t at the financial crisis, and looks to be able to throw another $2-3t at it if it has to. Even with all that US debt will be lower in GDP terms than after WW2.
Those are just words. The USA still hasn't caught Bin Laden for all the "never before seen closer co-operation".
They're not just words--the US has taken out every pretty much every active Al Qaeda operative and the only ones (like bin Laden) that have survived have survived by remaining buried so far underground that they are completely ineffective.
It's got so bad bin Laden has trouble putting out videos because the Arab intelligence agencies are getting pretty good at tracing his messengers back to the source and calling down CIA launched Hellfire missiles on anyone involved in the communication chain.
Sure, there are three ways we can look at this question: Legalistically based on historic customs and traditions, morally based on various religious principles, and ethically based on social contracts and rational fairness.
Morality is probably the worst method to use because nobody agrees. Hamas thinks what they are doing is moral. I think what they are doing is immoral. Changing someone's morality amounts to changing their religious views in some cases.
It is MUCH easier to come to an agreement on ethical or legal terms than on moral terms. This is one reason why I have concentrated on things like international law and the UN Charter--there is broad, global, general agreement on those things.
In any case I am not particularly fond of utilitarian morality. I prefer a rights based approach.
We may never agree on what is the most moral course of action but I can show comprehensively that Israel's actions are in line with the broadly agreed on principles of international law.
