To an extent I support coercive tactics in dealing with captured terrorists. I definitely support many of our intelligence gathering methods that have been excoriated on the news, such as the wire-tapping. But when it comes to physically coercive methods, I pause. I understand greatly the role of discomfort, both physical and psychological, when dealing with the punishment and correction of criminals. How does that extend to dealing with extracting information from captured enemy militants? Locking them up is no problem. Subjecting them to hours of questioning is no problem. But after that, I feel that we’re starting to test the boundaries of a realm we shouldn’t even come close enough to know it has borders.

I’m certainly no pacifist, though at times passive aggressive will describe my mentality and behavior. When I express curiosity about what would have happened if we had ignored the terrorists, it isn’t out of any desire not to fight them, or concern about the price that has to be paid in fighting the type of war we’re currently in. Rather, it stems from a wonder if it wouldn’t have been a huge, huge, huge insult to the jihadists to treat their grandest schemes as beneath our notice. (Not possible, I know.) I imagine a world where the terrorists are so befuddled by the inability to rouse any response–military action, certainly, but more importantly the fear that the terrorists are after–that they start wondering just what that whole Christianity thing is really about. This imagination probably ignores certain traits–perhaps contempt for someone who won’t fight, and indeed the “I’ve gotten away with X, so now I’ll try Y” mentality–but I can’t help shake the desire to express the depth of contempt I feel for the terrorists, and I can’t think of any better way than to treat even destruction of the World Trade Center as nothing more than a temper-tantrum by some backwater crybabies. (But then I’m also caught in the dilemma of insulting all the victims of the 9/11 attack by being too blase, right?)

Eric, I would say that allowing Bin Laden any more than a peripheral role in our current economic crisis is giving him too much credit. Our economy continually undergoes periods of recession due to various bubbles popping or some other factor. Right now, I could predict, Al Gore-like, that manmade efforts will decrease global warming and save the world, and then when the globe enters its natural cooling phase (which should happen in the next 10 or so years), I can take credit for bringing about the change. I might as well predict the sun will come up tomorrow because I prayed a bunch of mumbo jumbo, and then take credit when the sun indeed rises.

Bin Laden can at best interrupt certain areas of supply and demand. He can influence how much foreign oil is available to us, for example. But he really doesn’t have the power to strike at the fundamental working of the economy. Only our government really has that power (and isn’t that frightening?).

Donald’s right. I recommend The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage) as a good history of what transpired prior to 9/11.

I think our involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq have had almost nothing to do with our financial woes. Three factors I think are the chief culprits are: 1. The end of the longest housing bubble price increase in our history; 2. The use of packaged debt as a leveraged commodity to support very complex financial transactions between financial institutions across the globe; and 3. The oil price spike of the spring and summer that helped send the world economy into a tail spin.

The jihadist’s would have assumed, rightly, that we were unwilling to defend ourselves even when 3,000 of our fellow citizens were murdered, and would have ramped up the attacks. Unanswered aggression leads to further aggression is a law as old as history.