In it, he postulated that America's response to the 9/11 attack constitutes an "overreaction".
Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies' objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.If I understand this correctly, Bell presumes that a World Power should not react as strongly as possible to an attack on home soil because they/we have too much military might to responsibly use it ALL in reaction to a casualty list which is 'too low' to justify the effort.
Yet a great many Americans, particularly on the right, have failed to make this distinction. For them, the "Islamo-fascist" enemy has inherited not just Adolf Hitler's implacable hatreds but his capacity to destroy. The conservative author Norman Podhoretz has gone so far as to say that we are fighting World War IV (No. III being the Cold War).
They don't "threaten the existance of the United States", so presumably something less than going to war is called for. He suggests that the threat is less than total extinction, but curiously fails to present his definition of a more appropriate reaction.
(What should America do? Kill 3,006 terrorists and then, suddenly, stop? This isn't any kind of resolution. It trivializes the Attack on America to nothing more important than a game.)
In justification, he points out that the casualty list (including non-combatants and combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan) amounts to "... roughly the same number of Americans die every two months in automobile accidents."
In all fairness, and with due respect to Professor Bell's position at Johns Hopkins University, I can only conclude that he is full of crap.
In this world, there is allowing your country to be considered a Paper Tiger, a soft target ... and there is a determination to never allow aggression against your country to go unpunished.
I support the "No Paper Tiger Zone" (with a red circle around it, and a bold diagonal slash) position.
The following is a comment I submitted to a Randon Nuclear Strikes post titled "Next Time, Kill More Of Us, Please!" (H/T also to John Donovan's post in Castle of ARGGHHH!)
Apologies for this non-IPSC post. (Full disclosure: opinion, supported largely by 'facts' from MSM and Internet Reference sources.) I'm trying to minimize the sociopolitical stuff, honestly. Sometimes, though, the Force is with me.
We hear a lot of complaints against the War in Iraq, not so many against the War in Afghanistan. I wonder why that is?
Nobody from Iraq or Afghanistan is accused of directly participating in the 9/11 attack on America (although Afghanistan is reliably said to be, or have been, the place where Bin Laden lives; the assumption is that warring in Afghanistan may someday result in the death or capture of Bin Laden.)
Still, some people insist that America has no legitimate reason to wage war in, at least, Irag.
They don't understand, and at least this one dimwit doesn't understand why America always "overreacts" to aggression.
The reason is that America, having an open society (nearly unique in the world, even today) can't defend itself against internal attack by keeping potential enemies outside its borders.
Well, can't or won't -- the reason doesn't matter, the result is the same.
The only viable alternative is to establish worldwide confidence in the sure and certain "overreaction" of Americans against ANY assault.
It doesn't matter if we attack the folks who attack us. We'll attack the country which sent the assailants, or the country which trained or otherwise supported them. If no better target is available, we'll attack somebody "like" the folks who attacked us.
This is retalliation, not revenge.
It's a pre-emptive move to insure that the world knows we will punish SOMEONE related to the attackers. If those "someones" fear reprisals, and know that they are a possible target, they may find it in their own self-interest to discourage any individuals or groups who might otherwise have mounted an attack on America.
There's another part of this:
While we're fighting Terrorists in Iraq, they aren't attacking American soil. Instead, terrorists and potential terrorists are lured to the killing ground in Iraq where their targets aren't innocent American civilians but armed and equiped and fully trained combatants.
Isn't it better to establish a beach-head in the Middle east to draw out these wanna-be terrorists, than to provide no better target than the American civilian population?
You bet your ass.
(Comment added to original post: Sure, as soon as America suffers another terrorist attack on home soil, we will read that "Bush's Plan Is Not Working!" from the Liberals and the MSM ... but I repeat myself. Five years of freedom from bombs in the subway and Anthrax in the mail will probably be seen as nothing more than a statistical glitch, apropos of absolutely nothing. Certainly not as the result of a resolute president inflicting an unpopular war on a left-leaning population of Ostriches.)
If we leave Iraq, we'll be seen as nothing more than a Paper Tiger, just as we have been considered after out non-reaction to terrorist attacks since the truck-bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut back in the '80s. Include in this litany of passivity the non-reaction to the slaughter of American troops in Somalia in 1993 ("Blackhawk Down"), bombing of the Khobar Towers in '96, the 1998 bombing of embassies in Africa, and the suicide bombing attack on the Cole in 2000.
As long as America would not react, its enemies continued to attack.
Oh, sure, there was the odd Tomahawk Missile attack which had no more result than the destruction of an aspirin factory in '98. That frightened nobody, and apparently served no better purpose than to distract the American publich from the Lewinsky affair. That was politics, not 'reaction'. Can you say "wag the dog?", children? I think you can.
"No Reaction" is an admission of a failure of will to defend our country.
"Ineffective Reaction" only invites contempt.
The only effective reaction is an over-reaction.
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