"charlieb" wrote in message
...
You illustrate my checkers vs chess analogy perfectly.
A dozen or so fanatics murder (since none were combatants
they were murdered, not "killed") three thousand plus people.
"Might" did nothing to prevent those murders. It's not going
to be big muscles and lethal weapons that we should rely on,
but rather the effective use of that which evolved after muscles,
intelligence and the intelligent use of intelligence.


One can not prevent any and all terrorist acts, as a absolute criteria of
success that ideal is pretty meaningless...Security or prevention will
indeed diminish those opportunities. As a aside simply locking the pilots
door would have specifically prevented 9/11 and that both private and public
individuals failed to anticipate such a obvious security breach bodes poorly
for prevention of all other creative future attacks.

I am however a bit curious as to when "effective use of that which evolved
after muscles" has ever actually worked, at least without the brawn or the
threat thereof?

It is interesting to note that following our help with the overthrow of the
Soviets in Afghanistan we backed off and meddled not .....But in the 90's we
were however the worlds largest supplier of foreign aid (foodstuffs etc.) to
Afghanistan......In response to our largess they provided safe haven to al
Queda..... and in fact the Taliban could have avoided our overthrow if they
simply had turned Osama over to us.

Again, perhaps unintentionally, you make my point.
It's not that we ****ing forget, it's that we ****ing
don't learn the lessons of history. It's not who "wins"
a war that reduces the likelyhood of another. It's how
the post war is handled that's a good predictor of
the duration of peace afterwards. The Versaille Treaty
almost insured that Europe would have another major
and more devistating war before the century was even
half over.

It may as well be worthy of note that if the WW1 treaty had been enforced
WW2 would not have happened either.....The early appeasement of Germany and
the Allies desire to avoid war at nearly any cost allowed the means. That
the West effectively disarmed did nothing to stop either Germany or Japans
imperialist desires.

I submit that the Marshall Plan did more to prevent
another world war than did SAC, and the economic
benefits of the Marshal Plan resulted in more peace
and prosperity.

As much as I'd largely agree I'd still suggest the Marshal plan without the
utter destruction of the AXIS powers would not have worked.

Rod