"But the world isn't like that"

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> on 17/10/02 2:05 AM, barbara100 at jps.net at barbara100 at jps.net wrote:
> 
> > No need for Americans to get this worked up, is all.
> 
> ... Because you're safer than people in Israel? Is that your argument for
> giving terrorism a free hand?

The USA is certainly safer than Israel. Recent acts of terror (Oklahoma
City, NYC, Washington, etc..) prove that we are more vulnerable and more
a target than  we once were. People in the USA are very much aware that
we are not safe from (domestic or foreign or some combination of these)
terrorism. However, people know that we are not Israel or Germany or
Ireland or Colombia. This is a pretty obvious point: we are safer.
But, since both the threat and the reality of terrorism are now greater,
most people feel that we need to combat it more aggressively. 

The USA is a world power with interests and properties and trading
business partnerships, financial institutions, investments, military
bases, allies, citizens working, and so on, in every corner of the
world. How should it protect these? 
 

Has what the Bush administration, the Congress, the States and
municipalities  done made the USA safer from terrorism?  Or has it made
us more vulnerable? 

Is the cost (constitutional liberties, financial, cultural) of what the
Bush administration, the Congress, the States and municipalities  have
done to make the USA safer from terrorism too high? 

What role should the USA (not a nation in decline but a superpower) play
on the world stage to combat terrorism? 

What is the Bush policy/strategy? What is the philosophy or the ideology
behind it? 

President Bush's new National Security Strategy offers a bold vision for
protecting our Nation that captures today's new realities and new
opportunities. 

The Iraqi regime's violation of every condition set forth by the UN
Security Council for the 1991 cease-fire fully justifies -- legally and
morally -- the enforcement of those conditions. 

Preemption is not a new concept. 

(Rice bends the language here because she is talking about something new
and not something old. this is, I think, the most troubling assertion
the Bush administration has made thus far)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021001-6.html