has it occurred to anyone that terrorists want not to kill us, but to bankrupt us?

[unblock]

remember that mujahadeen (withour help) defeated the soviets not by killing so many of them, but by simply creating a situation where the soviets couldn't help but outspend themselves into self-destruction.

THIS IS THE CORE OF ASSYMETRIC WARFARE. it is not about killing a meaningful number of people. the terrorists couldn't possible defeat us by shear numbers, even if they could take down 3,000 of us every week, hell, every day.

but if they kill a few people in a particularly sensational way, then our fears and culture and politics and special interest drive us -- ourselves -- to spend ourselves into oblivion. eventually, we won't be able to afford to meddle in their region.

THAT is what they want.



and still, we COMPLETELY IGNORE COST and talk only about preventing more silly incidents. this mentality makes it REALLY EASY for them to score victory after victory, as they sacrifice ONE PERSON to talk us out of millions -- no -- many BILLIIONS of dollars.


ridiculous. how can so many public officials completely miss the point?

[applegrove]

1. Yup. They could do more damage to the USA by sending the next bomber somewhere with

a bomb stuck up his ***. That would put the west in an expensive situation. Interesting to note these days that Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan hasn't done much in the way of bombing lately. Perhaps they are under duress.

[Curmudgeoness]

2. I agree. And your final question hits the nail on the head.

You realize that the terrorists are laughing at us right now.

[truedelphi]

37. Self deleting the duplicate.

[truedelphi]

38. And many of us are not at all willing to believe that our "Officials" including our elected

"Leaders" are missing the point.

Those who have studied the acronym agencies tell us again and again that the WTO, IMF, the World Bank and the G 8, G 20 types of organizations have been actively planning the demise of the American middle class for three decades.

And to get anywhere near the WH, you have to agree to further the cause of those agencies.

[elleng]

3. Yes, they want to bankrupt us thru terror, they're doing a good job,

and we're complying.

Qaeda thousand cuts threat ‘very serious,’ says Mullen.

http://www.arabtimesonline.com/NewsDetails/tabid/96/smid/414/ArticleID/162183/t/Qaeda-thousand-cuts-threat-%E2%80%98very-serious,%E2%80%99-says-Mullen/Default.aspx

[BrklynLiberal]

4. That is exactly what they have said they want to do...

They bragged that a $4500 investment in shipping printers resulted in Billions being spent on security...

How much do those scanning things cost? How many more are coming in the future? How much American taxpayer money has been spent on Iraq...Afghanistan?

How much profit has Blackwater, Halliburton and the other Cheney/Bush minions made?

There is a theory that the cost of the Afghanistan War is what finally broke the back of the USSR..

The same thing could happen to the US of A.

[Andy823]

5. So that means

Bush and his clowns must also be terrorists since they did the best they could at "bankrupting" this country! :evilgrin:

Seriously though you have a good point. They already came out and said the last attempt with the cargo plan and the ink toner didn't cost them much at all, but every time they do something we end up paying millions, or billions trying to prevent it from happening again! I think what you said about not having to kill a lot of americans, but simply make us spend trillions, which we have already done, will defeat us in the long run! As long as the right has anything to say about it, we will keep on spending billions upon billions to fight these kind of wars with little or no results at all. We obviously will never "WIN" the war on terror, but we sure as hell can go broke trying to!

[NNN0LHI]

6. Before we invaded some of us knew that the Afghans didn't have to win. They just didn't have to lose

And that alone is winning.

Don

[corpseratemedia]

7. yes, why it isn't occuring to our leaders, or is it that they don't care or

have more sinister or personally lucrative reasons to keep up the same losing battle?

look at the job loop in washington, perhaps that's one reason for the insanity?

[Countdown_3_2_1]

8. Their reasoning is not to bankrupt us...

But to keep us in a state of fear. By exploiting every loophole, they keep Homeland Security reacting instead of preventing.

The goal is to make us see terror everywhere, and to constantly overreact.

I really do not think Napolitano is up to the task.

[NNN0LHI]

9. Bush's goons had people duct taping plastic to their windows and storing tuna under their beds

Did you prefer that? Still got that tuna under your bed?

Don

[Countdown_3_2_1]

16. self delete

[JanusAscending]

18. We Americans have a very short memory....or maybe it's that we have

the "attention span" of a two year old!!!???? Immediately after 9/11...it was broadcast far and wide that Osama B L promised that "WE WILL BANKRUPT AMERICA" !!! or has EVERYONE forgotten that? Bush sure had a large hand in helping him! I'd say he was an "aider and abettor"!

[Sal Minella]

20. Beg pardon, but Bin Laden SAID his long-term goal was to lead

the United States into spending itself into bankruptcy.

The "fear-fear-fear" thing comes more from our own government's attempts to keep us behaving like good little sheep, I think.

[TheCowsCameHome]

10. Didn't bin Laden say that once?

IIRC, he said that was the objective.

It's working.

[Recursion]

28. I can think of 3 times he said that

Now, I speak Arabic and one of those wasn't popularly translated, but I'm pretty sure the other two have.

[KT2000]

11. "they" say that we are always

re-fighting the last war.
The military is not set up for chess.

[OHdem10]

12. BIn Laden said this was his goal. That is why he orchestrated

the Twin Towers hit. Symbolic of the damage he wants
to do to America. This was reported once they knew who
was behind the detruction of the Towers.

[Recursion]

27. Thank you. I sometimes feel like I'm the only one who read that

It's weird. We have an enemy who is very vocal about his intentions, and we ignore that.

[elocs]

13. Sounds like a plan. Less risky, less effort. Maybe it's time to follow the money

because there might be strange bedfellows in all this. The terrorists would like us to spend our way into economic oblivion who lust to profit from this and they really could care less if the country goes bankrupt because they will already have theirs.

[rug]

14. Given their target was the world financial center, I'd say yes.

[bluerum]

15. So many said exactly this on DU 8 years ago. Quagmire. Said it then. Saying it louder now.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

17. Something happened to me in the sixties and in a

binding bash of flight I knew that I could never get back to where I started from, nothing made sense. I wondered why public officials, who I thought were smarter than me, kept getting it wrong. Then in another binding bash of flight, I got it, THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO SAY NO !

[Raine]

19. I think so too

bankrupting and ruining the US economy would be much more satisfactory than killing even thousands of people. Sometimes I wonder when they are going to attack in such a way that is going to bring us to our knees financially.

[JanusAscending]

21. TOO LATE.....THEY ALREADY HAVE !!!

Thanks to Bush/Cheney.

[T Wolf]

22. And whom here will not only survive but profit from the economic destruction of

the US?

There are willing partners to that strategy in charge of this country.

[SammyWinstonJack]

43. +1

[jwirr]

23. That should come as no surprise. We used bin ladin in Afghanistan

to break the USSR. We taught them how.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Many a times I have said it here

the goal of terror is to CHANGE a society in fundamental ways...

So yes, that is one of the objectives.

As to why DC don't get it... this is also a way for our incredible corruption to make a few people rich. They are part of it.

[donheld]

25. Hmmm, The terrorists and Republicans have something in common.

[Recursion]

26. Bin Ladin was pretty clear on that

His statements are available online and translated; I'm not sure why his goals are treated like some big mystery.

eg, "We had only to raise a flag on the farthest mountain and the generals and battalions followed us, to ruinous cost of the enemy."

[SheilaT]

29. Along the lines of what Jwirr said.

It has been noted in the past that the U.S. got the U.S.S.R. to bankrupt itself, resulting in the collapse of communism.

It looks like much the same thing is occurring now.

There's also an amazing narrowness of vision among those supposedly looking out for us: They constantly respond to a threat already past. They absolutely cannot tell the difference between mere rumor and something which has some kind of basis in reality. And they consistently ignore good and honest information, especially if it comes from a woman or from someone not acceptable to the idiots in charge. (I'm thinking of Ambassador Joe Wilson here and the whole Niger yellowcake thing.) These are people with no imagination, no flexibility, and absolutely no ability to consider the possibility that they might be wrong about something.

[rasputin1952]

30. That was their plan from the begining...

doing a damn good job of it too...:(

[Kat45]

31. Yes. n/t

[Marr]

32. I think our own establishment wants to bankrupt us.

The "terrorists" are just a handful of religious fundamentalist nut-jobs. They've been made important by our own fearmongering elites.

We're watching our own system of debt and cannibalization of the state turned on our own country these days. They did this all over south america for decades, and it seems the approach metastasised over the last 15 years or so, and began eating the host.

[RamboLiberal]

33. Hell yeah - I think in this Osama and his bunch have won

As have the military industrial complex in this country.

[Festivito]

34. Does it occur to anyone that it's not the terrorists, rather the ultra-rich?

The terrorists are merely an easily manipulated force for the ultra-rich.

[justiceischeap]

35. It reminds me of a book I read a few years ago

and for the life of me, can't remember the title. Anyway, the book was about a guy that worked for our government and his job was to go to other countries and basically, bankrupt them (this book was non-fiction). A lot of things he talked about doing to other nations' is being done to us by the "terrorists." A small part of my paranoid noggin wonders if ReThugs and the ultra-rich haven't decided at some point to use this as an opportunity to start a revolution the fringe elements of the society have been clamoring for, for so long.

As far as why no one in DC has noticed this or put a stop to it? It's kind of self-defeating. Lets say that the Democratic party is aware of this, are they then going to say to the American public, "we are not going to go further than this in the war on terror because it's bankrupting our nation." Except what most of the sheeple would hear is the following, "Dems are soft on terrorism!" The Bush/Cheney cabal couldn't have planned this better if they tried (which maybe they did). The Dems can never be the ones to step away from the "war on terror" without it becoming a huge campaign issue that makes voters think, once again, the Dems aren't "man" enough to handle war of any kind. Abortion rights doesn't scare up enough voters any more, LGBT issues are starting to wain (except for in the South), so what point does the ReThug party have other than playing on the fears of the nation and shouting "terror" from every rooftop?

[Ezlivin]

40. "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins

If you read that and "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein, then you are as cynical as I am.

Then pick up "The Long Emergency" by James Kunstler.

Damn.

[Martin Eden]

36. YES, and they can do it only IF WE HELP THEM

Case in point: Bush invaded Iraq. Osama bin Laden could not have possibly expected a greater gift in his plan to have America bankrupt itself.

[City Lights]

39. I'm certain I heard after 9-11 that that was one of their objectives.

They wanted to bring America to its financial knees.

Sadly, it's working.

[fascisthunter]

41. Terrorists aren't the only ones who want to bankrupt us

we have plenty of those here in this country trying to bankrupt us all except for their rich buddies.

Many of the rich class have been used, fed like a pig only to be stabbed in the back. Oh they made sure enough people would be happy until they finish doing what they have, then the party is over for them too.

[GSLevel9]

42. my theory exactly...

the Russians and the Chinese are LOL at us now...

they had no chance to beat us with a standing army but were patient and the greed and laziness of the American people has sunk us...

[PurityOfEssence]

44. Well, it IS religious warfare, and money IS our god...

War isn't just about the fight, it's about the deploying for the fight.