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Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people. It is this that puts global terror into the bang. While we take ever more extravagant steps to ward off the bangs, we do the opposite with the terrorist aftershock. We turn up its volume. We seem to wallow in fear.

Were I to take my life in my hands this weekend and visit Osama bin Laden's hideout in Wherever-istan, the interview would go something like this. I would ask how things have been for him since 9/11. His reply would be that he had worried at first that America would capitalise on the global revulsion, even among Muslims, and isolate him as a lone fanatic. He was already an "unwelcome guest" among the Afghans, and the Tajiks were out to kill him for the murder of their beloved leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud (which they may yet do). A little western cunning and he would have been in big trouble.

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Bin Laden might boast that he had achieved terrorism's equivalent of an atomic chain reaction: a self-regenerating cycle of outrage and foreign-policy overkill, aided by anniversary journalism and fuelled by the grim scenarios of security lobbyists. He now had only to drop an occasional CD into the offices of al-Jazeera, and Washington and London quaked with fear. The authorities could be reduced to million-dollar hysterics by a phial of nail varnish, a copy of the Qur'an, or a dark-skinned person displaying a watch and a mobile phone.

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Originally posted by Rom Manic

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You misunderstand me. I meant that if the US and Al Quaeda actually took the time to sit down and talk and sort out their differences, Jihadists lose their reason to fight the Americans and focus their energy on other things.

PROBLEM SOLVED. If only George Bush wasn't such a proud man.

"We do not negotiate with Terrorists. Period."

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Originally posted by Rom Manic

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Nothing is too late. I'm more than sure Bin Laden and his followers will co-operate if the president himself went into the depths of the enemy territory to confront him diplomatically.

Of course, there will be insults and possibly violence, but in the end it's the message that strikes peoples hearts.

I ask you this: If the president was killed in cold blood begging for forgiveness by the feet of Bin Laden in true sincerity, how many followers would Bin Laden have after 1 year?

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Originally posted by Dr_Death16

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This may not seem correct to most people, but I fail to see the point in debating whether or not terrorism is a threat. Why? Well, because frankly, none of us have all of the relevant information we need to make an informed decision as to the subject. Foreign matters are just that, foreign, so we as americans or europeans or etc. can't really know for sure what exactly is going on in the Middle East. The government pretty much does what it wants for all we know; only thing we as the people can do is vote for who we think will do what we want. In politics, nothing is a given, and you can't always believe everything you perceive. For instance, in a simple example, the government says that around 2500 soldiers have died in combat. How can we be so sure? How can we even know that all of these "huge terrorist leaders" such as Al-Zarqawi are really dead or captured, and that we're not just being led on by lies? We can't really be sure of something that we don't personally witness.

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This may not seem correct to most people, but I fail to see the point in debating whether or not terrorism is a threat. Why? Well, because frankly, none of us have all of the relevant information we need to make an informed decision as to the subject. Foreign matters are just that, foreign, so we as americans or europeans or etc. can't really know for sure what exactly is going on in the Middle East. The government pretty much does what it wants for all we know; only thing we as the people can do is vote for who we think will do what we want. In politics, nothing is a given, and you can't always believe everything you perceive. For instance, in a simple example, the government says that around 2500 soldiers have died in combat. How can we be so sure? How can we even know that all of these "huge terrorist leaders" such as Al-Zarqawi are really dead or captured, and that we're not just being led on by lies? We can't really be sure of something that we don't personally witness.

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Originally posted by emcee

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Its possible that everything we're being told about whats going on in the Middle East has been lies. But unless you have any real proof were being lied to its just a crackpot theory. It think the majority of those who think the government is constantly lying about everything from casualties in Iraq to whether or not 9/11 was an "inside job", don't believe that based on any real proof, but just because people tend to assume that anything that seems powerful and secretive must be up to no good. But really the government isn't that good at keeping secrets, and if there was any case to be made for these conspiracy theories, it would have been leaked to the New York Times a long time ago. Just like NSA wiretapping and secret CIA prisons.

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Originally posted by Dr_Death16

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You don't understand. The point is not what I think or you think is being done in this war on terror, the point is that we can't know exactly what is going on. We're the uninformed masses, and that's why we elect leaders who know what is going on better than we do. So, unless you claim to have vision similar to an omniscient godlike being's, then I see nothing here to disprove my point. Don't assume that all you see and feel is real.

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Originally posted by Neitzluber

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Terrorism is the excuse, petroleum is the objective. It is quite obvious. The media makes a big deal out of it to gain an audience.

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