War on Terror, & Heaps More

A very interesting paper on nuclear war, the Cold War, neutron bombs, military and political manipulation of fear, and various other things.

http://boingboing.net/profits_of_fear.pdf

“Rebuilding America’s Defenses” urged the United States to use its unique wealth and power to intimidate potential foreign adversaries before they could grow big enough to intimidate us.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center almost seemed to validate this call to action—except that the attack was launched by a handful of religious nuts armed with box cutters. A bigger arsenal to fight foreign wars could never prevent guerrilla actions of this type. Nevertheless the fate of the Trade Center somehow helped to justify deployment of stealth bombers, cruise missiles, tanks armored with depleted uranium, and many more state-of-the-art munitions including massive (conventional) bombs which George W. Bush described as inspiring “shock and awe.” None of this could compare with the glory days of megatons and megadeaths, but the prospect of mobilizing a huge high-tech force (with a little old-fashioned torture on the side) still created perhaps a frisson of horriied fascination. More to the point it delivered an overdue dose of drama for those who still dreamed of playing an historically signiicant role on the global stage. When you factored in the fringe beneits, such as unifying an electorate that had been bitterly divided over an allegedly illegitimate presidential election, “Rebuilding America’s
Defenses” must have seemed irresistible.

We have given up sitting around wondering what we will do if there’s a four-minute warning of armageddon. Instead, we have been induced to worry about primitive explosives in the hands of semi-literate fanatics who might kill perhaps a few thousand of us in tall buildings or a few dozen of us in public transit systems. Such numbers are utterly trivial compared with the mass annihilation that seemed plausible and imminent during the 1950s and 1960s. They are small even by comparison with highway trafic fatalities, yet the anxiety induced by the possibility of domestic terrorism has become comparable with bygone fears of communism. This makes no sense at all, but fears are seldom rational, especially when they are manipulated by elected representatives who somehow continue to command some trust and respect.

who might kill perhaps a few thousand of us in tall buildings or a few dozen of us in public transit systems. Such numbers are utterly trivial compared with the mass annihilation that seemed plausible and imminent during the 1950s and 1960s. They are small even by comparison with highway trafic fatalities, yet the anxiety induced by the possibility of domestic terrorism has become comparable with bygone fears of communism. This makes no sense at all, but fears are seldom rational, especially when they are manipulated by elected representatives who somehow continue to command some trust and respect.

I would love to have in front of me the fag who wrote this and beat him until my boots are bloody red.

The iranians killed 200 people in Argentina, but of course according to this line of thinking we should not even worry because more people is killed trying to cross the street.

Comparing the victims of terrorism with traffic accidents ? What a f…k

I agree…

Statisticaly, RS is right. The problem is that a Terrorist attack you think cant control but your car, you think you can control.

Wait a sec. Explain that to me slower. I think you contradicted yourself.

The Iranians killed 200 Argentinians? When???

Yeah, that’s a good point. Why haven’t the rest of us heard this?

The last paragraph of the article really says it all. Of course the profit of fear also works very well for the likes of AlGore and the Global Warming scare mongers.

crap, misstype… you think you cant control terror but you think you can control your car. bugger, I was carried away by all the “bold” and “italics” buttons :smiley:

Not least because we live in the age of unparalleled bullshit and spin doctors, ably assisted by news media looking for sensational stories and taken up by well meaning people who lack the capacity to research and analyse things for themselves. As do most of us when it comes to things like global warming or, if you want to take the other lot predicting climatic Armageddon, the looming new ice age. One of them has to be on the right track, unless nothing much is happening.:confused:

Glad to see you’re still alive. I thought global warming up north might have wiped you out, being closer to the sun. :smiley:

Hahaha, I would too.

I like how everyother post is a conversation. RS with Digger, and MWS with myself. That’s kind of humorus.

When ? pfff, here you 583,000 sites to improve you history knowledges

http://www.google.com.ar/search?hl=es&q=iran+argentina+terrorist&meta=

Here you got two more specific ones about the attacks against israeli targets in argentina by the iranian Hezbolla.

http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/eng_n/argentina_e.htm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/argentina.html