Quote:
Originally Posted by Skerlnik
I think we are really paying for our disinvestment in human intelligence.
For years, the CIA has been screaming, begging, pleading for more investment in agents, and training, but the government has a hard-on for computers and electronics. Not that computers aren't good, far from it, but our ability to have people on the ground....okay spying.....has atrophied.
OBL should have been no problem, if we hadn't hamstrung our own capabilities. With the Plame revelation, it's only going to get worse, I think. And, when the gadgets fail, our ability to respond creatively will have been so unused that I am skeptical of our capabilities.
Maybe this is more of a philisophical tangent, but we can't even get a simple, outdated, routine shuttle into orbit, now. If you watch a movie like Apollo 13, you'll see people actually doing hands-on creative problem solving. Our reliance on tech has killed all our instincts.
OBL should have had a sniper's bullet in his brain by December 2001. Instead, we've gotten into two stupid, crushingly expensive wars, and look like total fools to the rest of the world.
Am I off base, here?
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Oh we couldve just sent in the special forces to go and take out bin laden, allied with local forces and never even gotten involved with large ground operations. But it wouldnt have changed anything except killed Bin Laden. You have to remember everyone was screaming for blood--even though it was not the reason for the war--but thats what they wanted, revenge. They wanted big explosions on Tv and they wanted to see lots of bad guys blow up. Then...people start dying...what? How is it possible that people are dying in war? Were America! How could our leaders let our men die? Why did they drag us into this? Why didnt we just nuke them or something?
Thats about the understanding of the general public.
The CIA couldve provided better data on Bin Laden and other things like Iraq, but unless we had acted quickly there would have been a revolution on our hands "why is our country doing nothing?".
In reality our response was justified to make a statement: "dont mess with us" but it also ensured that there would be less ground for future terrorist and extremist breeding and plotting. Afghanistan is right in the center of a deadzone of Islamic extremism, and giving its populace the chance to fight that and place a democracy in the center of an ex-tyranny has and will continue to positively affect the region forever.
Your comments about technological dependency are absolutely correct as well. Its a major flaw of advancing civilization that will probably bring us to our knees. In fact, the entire advancement of civilization will probably crumble us under our own weight...