No one came even close to "wiping out" either our economic system, military system, or political system.

Please keep in mind that we were under nuclear threat for decades. Our government was designed to survive an atomic attack. Whether this is good news or bad news probably depends on your political point of view (the IRS has records stored in blastproof bunkers.)

We actually have a remarkable amount of economic and productive activity that takes place other than at the WTC.

You want to beat him?



Use weaponry that takes away his power-base.

Want to know what such weaponry might be?

Ask Mary Anne.



Don't know exactly what you are driving at, but the standard liberal solution is if we just kiss the rear ends of our enemies long enough and hard enough, they'll become our friends.

Fact: the reason that the world is full of third-world nations that can't feed their people or give them what they need is because they are governed by totalitarian collectivist systems, cultures or individual thugs that make it impossible to create a viable, productive society. It is not because Evil Amerika has "done" something to them or failed to shower them with enough foreign aid, although naturally this is the reason that the leaders of these nations would prefer to sell their citizens.

Most Arab leaders living in their palaces would be sitting in tents cooking over burning camel crap if the West had not come in and created a viable oil industry before handing it over to them on a silver platter.

Fact: I know of no occasion--none--in all of human history where a nation or entity dedicated to the destruction of another was "negotiated" out of this position while they still possessed any military or offensive capacity at all.

Successful peace arrangements are made when one combatant has been totally and utterly defeated beyond hope.

That doesn't make the kum-ba-yah "give peace a chance" crowd happy, but it's true.

Defeating an enemy as decentralized as the Islamic terrorist network is admittedly not going to be easy. But a multi-trillion dollar economy with the most powerful technology and the most brilliant minds on Earth have set to the task, we are changing our techniques and methods, and we only have to get lucky once. OBL and his kind have to be lucky all the time.