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zapatos, on 25 May 2012 - 06:25 PM, said:

Trying to set shoes and underwear on fire to blow up a plane in the air is a very different sort of attack than hijacking a plane to use as a weapon.

It's also worth noting that in those cases, it was again passengers on the planes that thwarted those attempts - not all the people sending luggage through x-rays, groping children and old ladies, and wide-net no fly lists.

zapatos, on 25 May 2012 - 06:25 PM, said:

How many terrorist attacks have been thwarted by fighter jets?

zapatos, on 25 May 2012 - 06:25 PM, said:

They did a lot more than that - they figured out what was happening, reacted to the new information, and changed their strategy accordingly.

I am not saying that there is no place for improved security procedures - but airport security is nothing more than dinner theater. A friend of mine left the country and came back and it wasn't until she was back in Miami that she even realized she had a giant hunting knife in her carry on purse for the whole trip - it went through x-ray both times, it just didn't show up buried in the loose change in the bottom... of course if they found toothpaste on the scan they'd have dug through everything, but they didn't.... and yet again the sad charade we call airport security grinds along at umpteen dollars an hour.
If you think Al-Qaeda is sitting around plotting how, if only they could get around the TSA they could finally make an attack again you're missing the point - Al Qaeda knows US airport security is a joke. The last three attacks I am aware of (Flight 93, the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber) were all thwarted by passengers, and all got past airport security - the last two were even post 9-11. Am I missing some stellar TSA work somewhere? What terrorists have been caught trying to board a plane with explosives?

zapatos, on 25 May 2012 - 06:25 PM, said:

If you really stopped fearing the dog, you wouldn't be staring at a 12 foot brick wall every time you set foot outside your house, you'd be able to chat with your neighbors instead of just hear them walking around on the other side of that wall, and your kids would be playing in the sun instead of under the shadow of a bloody massive 12 foot brick wall.

That's almost as silly as saying "You're not afraid to speak freely" because you feel safe behind a wall of self-censorship. If you're scared to live your life, you haven't gotten past the fear simply because you're not afraid to not live your life.

zapatos, on 25 May 2012 - 02:39 PM, said:

They only succeeded in 3 out of 4 attacks on 9/11 - if you recall, the fourth plane went down before it could be dropped onto a target.

That wasn't because of the TSA, the DHS, enhanced interrogations or any of the policies we now have to keep us "safe" - it was the fact that passengers were able to crowd-source with other civilians (often family members) 1000s of miles away thanks to cell phones that (even in 2001) could connect and maintain calls despite being captives in the back of a 757 screaming through the air.

Just the consumer technology to achieve that in itself is pretty amazing; it's a testament to our passion for open, unfettered communication. A free and open press also had a lot to do with it - had we been the sort of society to impose a media blackout during an attack, the results of Flight 93 could have been very different.

They never attempted that sort of hijacking again because the main trick they used to pull it off (that civilians would cooperate if they believed only a ransom was desired) failed within 29 minutes the last time it was used. Just consider that when "wheels up" occurred on flight 93, no one had heard of a plane being used as a bomb. The hijackers didn't take the plane until 9:28, and the passengers cooperated until 9:57 when they figured out what was happening.

Sorry, but I just can't give that one to the "successes on the war on terror" when it was "American civilians just being civilians" that stopped Al Qaeda's plane dropping strategy in it's tracks, only minutes into the first and last day to ever be used.

zapatos, on 24 May 2012 - 11:25 PM, said:

People are afraid to fly - they are afraid of tiny bottle of liquid they might miss that could cause them a huge delay or the pair of rogue clippers that could get them chastised by the TSA. No one I know thinks terrorists are scary, just the people "protecting" us from them.

zapatos, on 24 May 2012 - 11:25 PM, said:

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree about the civil liberties issue then, I've never felt that knowing someone personally was a prerequisite for being concerned with their civil rights. We march John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson through the legal system without giving into the fears that civilized law may be too soft for such monsters, I think we can address due process for enemy combatants sometime before the end of hostilities in the War on Terror.

Unless that's too scary, of course.

zapatos, on 24 May 2012 - 05:16 PM, said:

Other than fear, why would Americans forfeit so many civil liberties for so long?

We still have the PATRIOT Act, US citizens can be killed by presidential order, we have the TSA groping people in airports, "due process" no longer means "legal process" if the person it applies to is scary enough, we have indefinite detainment, we have gitmo, waterboarding, warrantless wiretaps....

As bad as the money problem is - the shift socially since the Clinton era remains painful every single day. I don't know about anyone else, but as much as I appreciate the gains we've made, the sheer change in mood adds a rather stark contrast between what I see day to day, and what I remember.

There is next to no faith in the three branches of government anymore, in the people we elect, in the economy or our global position in the future. If you can't see the fear, it's because it's too deeply buried under exhaustion and resignation.

ewmon, on 24 May 2012 - 12:58 AM, said:

I agree entirely, with the one stipulation being age of consent primarily (in the contemporary sense) applies to adult sexual relationships - marriage or otherwise. My point is that where consent ages are low, they are that low because people got in the habit of marrying off their young daughters as property, which is tied to fertility far more than the girl's personal development.

ewmon, on 24 May 2012 - 12:58 AM, said:

It is not that simple because Christians do not, and never have agreed on what is a sin. As I mentioned twice before, these little disagreements have literally led to Christians burning Christians over the semantics. I know the church has evolved a lot since it's "burny days" and that is great, but the only real consensus that came out of it is that it's probably a little over the top to set people on fire who disagree about scripture. The actual disagreements have never gone away, and GBLT issues are just a few of the modern ones. It's not like Christians agree on contraception, abortion, sex education, adoption, sex before marriage, divorce, interfaith marriage, interracial marriage, Sunday services, prayer, graven images that are not of The Lord, graven images that are of The Lord, saints, popes, bishops, cardinals, angels, demonic possession, non-Christian holidays, coffee, alcohol, drugs, blood transfusions, modern medicine in general, underwear, rock music, any music newer than rock music, Ireland, profanity... do I need to go on?

The GBLT stuff is just high on the radar at the moment, but there is always vehement disagreement among Christians about what is a sin.