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To be perfectly honest, I'm a little amazed that in the past fourteen years, there have been so very few terrorist attacks on US soil. Any group of suicidal, m
by douche 11y ago
To be perfectly honest, I'm a little amazed that in the past fourteen years, there have been so very few terrorist attacks on US soil.
Any group of suicidal, minimally-trained jackasses with a couple thousand dollars, access to Craigslist or an Uncle Henry's, and the ability to go to a WalMart, could obtain enough weaponry and ammunition to stage a significant attack on the scale of what happened in Paris this week.
I have to conclude that the pool of such people that would be willing to commit such acts is vanishingly small.
- fouric 11y agoIt is also possible that the United States' security agencies are simply better than the vast majority of us are aware of. Or some combination of both.
- richmarr 11y agoPossible, yes. But it's a fact that we're terrible at evaluating how likely/dangerous terrorism is. We percieve far more risk than there actually is. Terrorism is designed to play to our cognitive biases, as is the news, as is politics. A triumvirate of douchegoblins taking advantage of our inability to correctly assess risk.
- kbart 11y agoExactly. Our infrastructure is so vulnerable, that I can think of multiple ways to disrupt daily routine and kill multiple people even without a gun, let alone suicide bombing -- dismantle/block the rails, drop an obstacle on a busy highway, poison the drinking water, cut electric wires open, sabotage industrial/power plants, set buildings on fire etc. heck, even shouting out loud "he's got a gun, run!!" in a crowded space could result in multiple injuries/deaths. If there were so many determined terrorists on our soil as various governments and agencies want us to believe, they would cause a significant damage, not just stage occasional attacks that are statistically insignificant. The smallest dog barks the loudest.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoI have heard that one of al Qaeda’s biggest problems was attrition of “infiltrators” to the American way of life. The example I heard was truck-drivers, once they got real jobs and were welcomed into western mosques they assimilated fast. Thus the 9/11 hijackers were ordered to quarantine themselves in their hotel rooms until the actual event… (I have no idea of the veracity of this story; it sounds a little trite, but compelling like so many trite things)
- rootlocus 11y agoAccording to a few articles, the pool of people willing to take on suicide missions is too damn high: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3092635/ISIS-fighters-complain-not-chosen-blow-suicide-missions-leaders-friends-family-waiting-list.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3092635/ISIS-fighter... (although it doesn't talk specifically about US)