Why has America escaped the terrorists?

[Ubiquitous]

I really hope I am not tempting fate here, but is anyone else surprised that America has not seen a major attack since 11th September? Considering the ease that terrorists seem to have attacked England I am puzzled as to why the Great Satan has not seem equally terrible attacks. Are the zealots content with killing American soldiers? Or can we expect an attack sooner rather than later in NYC, Boston etc?

[DrkHelmet]

It's obviously the patriot act that's protecting us .

In all honesty, I can't answer that question. Maybe they are concentrating on the troops overseas or on scaring our allies?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Soldiers in Iraq are easier targets. Bomb the hell out of the Americanised Iraqi nation being formed, and you achieve the same goal far more effectively than if you went to D.C. and risked a highly secretive plot to bomb civvies. America is not getting off lightly.

[Wicked Pilot]

The farther the target from Islam the more it cost to attack.

[The Kernel]

My guess would be that they want to wait and hit something as big as possible, when you are dealing with a country far away from your base of operations, it makes more sense to go for big attacks seldomly than small attacks frequently. They want something that's going to be on CNN for years, high profile bombings like Madrid, the WTC and (to a lesser extent) the London bombings.

[wolveraptor]

With all the security on planes and boats, the sea itself must be the big obstacle. Look at the London bombers. They lived in London, but were able to travel back to Pakistani schools and get brainwashed. Had they lived in America, it would've looked very suspicious going to Pakistan and back. But Britain didn't exactly expect terrorists to come from Europe's mainland. Plus, his target was relatively minor compared to the destruction of the WTC.

[Chmee]

Soldiers in Iraq are easier targets. Bomb the hell out of the Americanised Iraqi nation being formed, and you achieve the same goal far more effectively than if you went to D.C. and risked a highly secretive plot to bomb civvies. America is not getting off lightly.

Unfortunately true ... no need to concoct elaborate plots to kill Americans in America when their government is going to march them over to your back yard and line them up like shooting gallery targets for you.

Of course, that same logic would apply to Britons, so ...

Our turn will come again, unfortunately.

[SAMAS]

Soldiers in Iraq are easier targets. Bomb the hell out of the Americanised Iraqi nation being formed, and you achieve the same goal far more effectively than if you went to D.C. and risked a highly secretive plot to bomb civvies. America is not getting off lightly.

Unfortunately true ... no need to concoct elaborate plots to kill Americans in America when their government is going to march them over to your back yard and line them up like shooting gallery targets for you.

To paraphrase Bruce Lee: "Shooting galleries don't shoot back."

[Chmee]

Soldiers in Iraq are easier targets. Bomb the hell out of the Americanised Iraqi nation being formed, and you achieve the same goal far more effectively than if you went to D.C. and risked a highly secretive plot to bomb civvies. America is not getting off lightly.

Unfortunately true ... no need to concoct elaborate plots to kill Americans in America when their government is going to march them over to your back yard and line them up like shooting gallery targets for you.

To paraphrase Bruce Lee: "Shooting galleries don't shoot back."

... and neither suicide bombers nor IED's care much if you do shoot back.

[Sea Skimmer]

Probably because the people who want to attack the US and are in a position to do it, are smart. Attacks like those on London will never accomplish anything, the Israelis soaked up countless scores of them. Berlin was hit by over nine thousand heavy bomber sorties in the space of four and a half months, an assault of far higher intensity then the Blitz on London, and yet its civilian moral didn't crack. These attacks are just hardening the population against them. It's not a good state of affairs for either side. That's why Bin Laden launched very few, but very big attacks, they maximize shock value. The actual tally of material damage and deaths is only relevant so long as it increases that shock.

[wolveraptor]

Oh for fuck's sake, you act like we're actually losing to Iraqi suicide bombers. No, America will probably not lose in the long run, even though it'll be a collossal waste of lives, for an objective that could been much more easily achieved with different circumstances.

[Chmee]

Oh for fuck's sake, you act like we're actually losing to Iraqi suicide bombers. No, America will probably not lose in the long run, even though it'll be a collossal waste of lives, for an objective that could been much more easily achieved with different circumstances.

We're inexorably closing in on 2,000 KIA American kids, that fits the definition of 'losing' in many people's minds. We have to achieve something colossal to justify that loss, and we certainly haven't done that yet.

[SirNitram]

Oh for fuck's sake, you act like we're actually losing to Iraqi suicide bombers. No, America will probably not lose in the long run, even though it'll be a collossal waste of lives, for an objective that could been much more easily achieved with different circumstances.

We're inexorably closing in on 2,000 KIA American kids, that fits the definition of 'losing' in many people's minds. We have to achieve something colossal to justify that loss, and we certainly haven't done that yet.

For all that I do oppose the Iraq war and admit there's not much we can really acheive there, America, if it is as you say, couldn't have won the first world war.

More people were killed than that for a few inches of the Somme.

[Netko]

It seems Al-Qaeda decided to target US allies and not the US itself for the time being.

Relevant article

RP: Al-Qaeda appears to have made a deliberate decision not to attack the United States in the short term. We know this not only from the pattern of their attacks but because we have an actual al-Qaeda planning document found by Norwegian intelligence. The document says that al-Qaeda should not try to attack the continent of the United States in the short term but instead should focus its energies on hitting America’s allies in order to try to split the coalition.

What the document then goes on to do is analyze whether they should hit Britain, Poland, or Spain. It concludes that they should hit Spain just before the March 2004 elections because, and I am quoting almost verbatim: Spain could not withstand two, maximum three, blows before withdrawing from the coalition, and then others would fall like dominoes.

[wolveraptor]

We're inexorably closing in on 2,000 KIA American kids, that fits the definition of 'losing' in many people's minds. We have to achieve something colossal to justify that loss, and we certainly haven't done that yet.

Well, the simple military definition of victory involves destroying your opponent's military power; we've long since defeated Saddam's forces. What we're experiencing now is a completely unconnected insurgency, by people who did not necessarily support the former regime. In a greater sense, we've not beaten Iraq, but technically, we've beaten Saddam fair and square.

[Chmee]

We're inexorably closing in on 2,000 KIA American kids, that fits the definition of 'losing' in many people's minds. We have to achieve something colossal to justify that loss, and we certainly haven't done that yet.

Well, the simple military definition of victory involves destroying your opponent's military power; we've long since defeated Saddam's forces. What we're experiencing now is a completely unconnected insurgency, by people who did not necessarily support the former regime. In a greater sense, we've not beaten Iraq, but technically, we've beaten Saddam fair and square.

If the objective was the elimination of Saddam as some kind of ideological objective in a vacuum, without any other geopolitical considerations, then we also would have achieved 'victory' by just waiting for him to DIE. Saying that we were victorious simply by changing the faces at the top of Iraq's org chart without making the regime actually less of a risk to American security in the long-term is goalpost-moving of the first magnitude ... and yeah, I'm quite confident Dubya and Uncle Dick are more than willing to do it. That doesn't mean educated people should pretend it's not complete horseshit.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

For all that I do oppose the Iraq war and admit there's not much we can really acheive there, America, if it is as you say, couldn't have won the first world war.

More people were killed than that for a few inches of the Somme.

To be precise, allied gains at the Somme were 12 kilometers over the period of 4.5 months. These gains cost the lives of some 150,000 entente soldiers, or 12,500 fatalities for each kilometer of advance, or twelve and a half men being killed for every meter of ground gained.

Scaling for length of time in Iraq (about two years and four months) we would get 937,500 fatalities. Scaling for the population of the United States (296 million vice 41 million for UK + 39 million France = 80 million) that figure increases to approximately 3,472,200 fatalities in the US Army to date were the fighting in Iraq at the same intensity as that of the Battle of the Somme. That would be more than 4,100 soldiers getting killed every single day in Iraq on average, or rather more than twice the amount which has been killed in the whole occupation to date.

At the same time that the Battle of the Somme was being fought, the French were launched in a bitter struggle at Verdun, which had similar levels of casualties, at the British were fighting in around three different secondary theatres. Adding those actions into the total would come close to doubling it.

And the nations of WWI took that scale of punishment, and kept fighting for another two whole years!

[Chmee]

And the nations of WWI took that scale of punishment, and kept fighting for another two whole years!

'Achieving' what is widely recognized as one of the greatest wastes of lives in modern history ... not exactly a standard anyone would hope to emulate.

[Guardsman Bass]

And the nations of WWI took that scale of punishment, and kept fighting for another two whole years!

'Achieving' what is widely recognized as one of the greatest wastes of lives in modern history ... not exactly a standard anyone would hope to emulate.

Are you talking about the War, or the fact that they did a post-war solution that was basically asking for a second round? I agree with the latter.

[Chmee]

And the nations of WWI took that scale of punishment, and kept fighting for another two whole years!

'Achieving' what is widely recognized as one of the greatest wastes of lives in modern history ... not exactly a standard anyone would hope to emulate.

Are you talking about the War, or the fact that they did a post-war solution that was basically asking for a second round? I agree with the latter.

Either way ... feeding a substantial percentage of your nation's youth into a meat grinder because you're all too full of pride to admit you fucked up was the kind of stupidity you'd like to see come around much less than once a century.

[Johnny Ipcress]

Either way ... feeding a substantial percentage of your nation's youth into a meat grinder because you're all too full of pride to admit you fucked up was the kind of stupidity you'd like to see come around much less than once a century.

And what would you have done, genius? How exactly did whoever 'fuck up'?

[Chmee]

Either way ... feeding a substantial percentage of your nation's youth into a meat grinder because you're all too full of pride to admit you fucked up was the kind of stupidity you'd like to see come around much less than once a century.

And what would you have done, genius? How exactly did whoever 'fuck up'?

I think a Master's Poli-Sci thesis on why WWI was avoidable and what major mistakes were made by every side to prolong the conflict and exacerbate the casualties would probably be somewhat excessive derailing of the topic. But if you think 8 million dead and 31 million wounded isn't argument enough that some serious fuck-ups occurred, I don't think we share a common set of definitions on fucking up.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Either way ... feeding a substantial percentage of your nation's youth into a meat grinder because you're all too full of pride to admit you fucked up was the kind of stupidity you'd like to see come around much less than once a century.

I agree completely, and coincidentally, it has never happened since. That is the whole point that Nitram and I were trying to make, duh. Scale of casualties alone is not a fault of the Iraq War, no matter how many other faults there may be.

[Chmee]

gah, ghetto edit, 21 million wounded, sorry for the typo

[Ender]

Either way ... feeding a substantial percentage of your nation's youth into a meat grinder because you're all too full of pride to admit you fucked up was the kind of stupidity you'd like to see come around much less than once a century.

And what would you have done, genius? How exactly did whoever 'fuck up'?

I'd have told my allies "Shut up, it was one guy, not worth the deaths of millions". They fucked up by escelating the situation for no real fucking gain. I mean hell, germany was at least trying to get resources when it started WW2. WW1 started because a terrorist assisinated a duke.