Discussion If the events of 9/11 happened today, what would the response be??

[JEDIYoda]

Thank you for proving my point

that was an ignorant statement....

 

[DesiPower]

Ahh yes, tarrifs, the wonderful trade practice that is more akin to shooting yourself in the foot. After all, they don't punish the exporter, they punish the consumer. So any tariff is ultimately paid by us.

China bought lots of US soybeans. You know what happened when Trump started the trade war?
China bought soybeans from somewhere else and the federal government had to provide tens of billions in aid to soybean farmers.

How about steel? Tariffs on Chinese steel raised prices for construction, which ultimately reduced the number of construction jobs.

In fact, the entire trade war cost the US roughly 1.7T in capital gains and we lost about 300B in trade, on top of all the jobs lost.

Trump's policies have been massive failures across the board.

As I said, we are at war, CCP has been attacking and stealing from us for years, which was costing us billions anyways, if we retaliated early then it would have cause less pain, but we started now, it's going to be painful, we will lose money, jobs, but it will be worth it. Even radical leftists agree that ecenomy pre-covid was not doing bad, Trump did a good job there.
All major countries wanted to avoid the war, played appeasers to avoid conflict with CCP, too afraid to anger CCP, just like they did in the years leading up to WW2, not a smart strategy. Evil does not just go away, in the end it will try to obliterate you if you don't stop it in time.

 

[Fenixgoon]

As I said, we are at war, CCP has been attacking and stealing from us for years, which was costing us billions anyways, if we retaliated early then it would have cause less pain, but we started now, it's going to be painful, we will lose money, jobs, but it will be worth it. Even radical leftists agree that ecenomy pre-covid was not doing bad, Trump did a good job there.
All major countries wanted to avoid the war, played appeasers to avoid conflict with CCP, too afraid to anger CCP, just like they did in the years leading up to WW2, not a smart strategy. Evil does not just go away, in the end it will try to obliterate you if you don't stop it in time.

In what way is the current strategy a "winning" one in any sense of the word? Lost jobs, lost exports, lost stock valuation...what do we have to show for it? What did we gain? Otherwise, we just shot ourselves in the foot for no reason at all.

And Trump has Obama to thank for the economy he inherited.

 

[Vic]

Stupid question. Trump has made American military and other agencies strong enough to deter any such attack, moreover he has also weakened the terrorists and allied with some of them, no one is in the position to launch such attacks. And those who say that he would nuke someone, you are right, and that's why no one will dare do it as long as he is in command. People attack other people only when they know that they can win or get away with it (I am taking about the funders not the terrorists themselves).

So what you're saying is that bin Laden attacked the WTC because GW was weak?

 

[Vic]

As I said, we are at war, CCP has been attacking and stealing from us for years, which was costing us billions anyways, if we retaliated early then it would have cause less pain, but we started now, it's going to be painful, we will lose money, jobs, but it will be worth it. Even radical leftists agree that ecenomy pre-covid was not doing bad, Trump did a good job there.
All major countries wanted to avoid the war, played appeasers to avoid conflict with CCP, too afraid to anger CCP, just like they did in the years leading up to WW2, not a smart strategy. Evil does not just go away, in the end it will try to obliterate you if you don't stop it in time.

Ah, when you know jackshit about economics but can appeal to phony moral absolutism. Trade with China has made America trillions upon trillions of dollars and cemented America's place as the most powerful nation on earth. Unwinding that won't just cost us money and jobs, it will slash our GDP by at least 30%, throw millions of Americans into poverty, and allow China to take our place as the world superpower. Which BTW won't be worth it just to satisfy your extremist right-wing nativism.

 

[ivwshane]

Feels trump facts every time, all the time for a righty.

 

[ElFenix]

here on ATP&N we'd have 5 threads about it, all of them in use, and at least one of the reposts would be by the OP of an existing thread.

 

[SMOGZINN]

As I said, we are at war, CCP has been attacking and stealing from us for years, which was costing us billions anyways, if we retaliated early then it would have cause less pain, but we started now, it's going to be painful, we will lose money, jobs, but it will be worth it. Even radical leftists agree that ecenomy pre-covid was not doing bad, Trump did a good job there.
All major countries wanted to avoid the war, played appeasers to avoid conflict with CCP, too afraid to anger CCP, just like they did in the years leading up to WW2, not a smart strategy. Evil does not just go away, in the end it will try to obliterate you if you don't stop it in time.

The thing about Trump's plan is that it never had any chance of working, but apparently Trump just does not understand how tariffs can work. For a tariffs to work they have to encourage buyers to shop local instead of buying from the tariffed country. In Trump's case the tariffs were never high enough to make American products competitive, and he put tariffs on the raw materials that local companies would need to produce local goods without opening up a new avenue for those companies to get the raw materials they needed. At that point it became nothing more than a tax on American buyers.

 

[Stokely]

On one hand...the public would have the same blind rage and bloodlust for revenge, so an enterprising politician could channel that into attacking a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 to further their geopolitical aims.

We'd have fucking morons beating up Sikh Indians for wearing turbans again, and jingoistic "patriotism" like Freedom Fries.

Cheney, wolfowitz and the reset of them certainly did just that. You can go years back and see exactly what some of them wanted to do if you read the docs put out by Project for a New American Century, a think tank formed by some of the same people that ran GWB's foreign policy. They even mentioned there was a need for a big event like 9/11. Not saying they made it happen, but they certainly pushed their plans forward. They wanted to establish (by force) a bastion of democracy in the middle east, and *tag* you were it Iraq. Bonus points for getting rid of the bad guy that pestered GWB's daddy.

The difference today is there is no plotting smart guy like Cheney. Trump would do god knows what in response. Would it be worse that killing up to a million people, maiming and mentally harming our own service people, forming--in part--Isis, and destabilizing a region for decades? Maybe. I hate and revile Cheney and all those fuckers, and think GWB should be in prison (at best)--but they were not dumb enough to push the big red button. Trump I think would want to, and I'm not sure there's anyone in this administration that could or would stop him.