Laura Bush and others killed on 9/11

If you need to go back as far as the Indian Wars to find an adaquate number of examples of the U.S. acting vengefully I'm not sure which one of our arguments that strengthens. Also, that was done out of avarice for their land, not vengeance, which doesn't make it better but is actually a rather important distinction in this discussion.

Oh, but there was both. "Remember the River Raisin", the long history of scalping, there were plenty of atrocities committed for revenge, not simply to get people out of the way. And as the River Raisin refrain shows, we saw Native American crimes against us and wanted retribution for them.

Yeah, and how far have Trump and objectivism actually gotten? Obamacare is still the law of the land and it's looking probable it will stay that way, every racist thing Trump has tried to do has gotten blocked by the courts and is opposed by majorities of public opinion, and on it goes.

If all you care about is legislation and court rulings and high-minded concerns like that, then I don't think you're taking this inquiry seriously. What's your case here? Trumpism isn't an expression of American vengefulness because judges think some of his plans are unconstitutional? Or because Obamacare repeal, something his Party demonstrably cares about way more than he does, wound up a contradictory mess? That's proof that America is fundamentally magnanimous? You're not looking at this carefully, because if you did, then you might actually focus on the rallies, the bloody-mindedness of Trump's remarks, and how, although his polls have repeatedly suffered from this, that, or the other offense, they always return to an equilibrium, as we get used to his rhetoric and decide it's not so bad. More to the point, we'll go to bat to defend innocent Muslims and Hispanics, but terrorists? They're beneath our contempt, and the difference between liberals and conservatives here isn't even so much one of empathy, but more that liberals are more willing to distinguish innocents from "bad guys". But for bad guys, Obama's presidency proved that the left is perfectly happy to drone you and your family along with you.

The War on Drugs and the penal system can get pretty screwed up, but it's important to understand that one of the things that drove those policies is that American society is really violent (even if you take away all of our gun crime, the American murder rate is still twice as high or higher as the ENTIRE murder rate of most other first world countries) and that drugs made it a lot worse. I don't defend the racism that also drove it and the effects it's had, but that's at least something of a fig leaf.

Yes, American society is violent. The question is why we tolerate this kind of violence when other societies push for more responsive law enforcement and actual gun control. Plenty of reasons, but one that can't be ignored is that for many of us, we see the violence primarily concentrated in minority communities, and we rationalize it away as a consequence of those communities' lawlessness. We think that for them, it's deserved. That's what I really mean by vengefulness. It's not even about the violence, so much as the ways we justify it to ourselves. The poor, minorities, criminals, foreign enemies, they don't deserve our pity, and so we give them none.

To compare this stuff to American foreign policy and claim it supports the notion that the U.S. could go literally insane if Flight 93 wasn't delayed is a pretty weak case IMHO.

Again, this is indicative of you not reading my posts carefully, since that wasn't the case I was making. My point was that the American public would have tolerated greater abuses than were committed IOTL, and the real bottleneck is the willingness of the Bush Administration to commit more war crimes. But as for the high-minded foreign policy you bring up, and your accusation that I didn't have enough examples, well, did I forget to mention that not only did we come up with the Morgenthau Plan, but we implemented a watered-down version of it, over British objections? Morgenthau himself certainly had his reasons for wanting to punish the Nazis, but you have to wonder, why were FDR and Truman so willing to go along with it, more so than the British or the Soviets, who had much more personal reasons to want revenge against the Germans? Again, I'd say it's indicative of the judgmental American mentality. We only abandoned it when it became clear that West Germany would welcome in the Soviets if we continued, but 1945 to 1947 were dark times for Germany. We still owe a lot to the cultural influence of the Puritans, and I'd consider this attitude another of their cultural artifacts.
 

Pretty much. Even in the Sum of All Fears it's worth noting that it took a really good framing job that went way beyond the actual nuclear attack (particularly a false-flag attack on the U.S. garrison in Berlin that started up a battle between the two sides) before things started to get into really dangerous territory.
 

Dude, that happened two hundred years ago. Claiming that that has significant bearing on the U.S. today is silly. I'm talking recent history, a term I specifically used in my prior posts.

Yes, U.S. law enforcement could use some work, but it doesn't lead into the kind of outrages I'm seeing being speculated about in this thread.

You're not appreciating that there is a difference between what the individual citizens and voters of a country believe, even the majority of them, and the actions of a nation. The U.S. has mechanisms on top of mechanisms to keep widespread prejudices and the actions of one crazy person from turning into national policy.

The plan that you're talking about was pretty mild in the grand scheme of things (reducing German industry to the level of a little over a decade before and preventing it from developing faster than any of its neighbors that it had invaded) and it was rescinded within a year and a half of Germany surrendering when it became clear the consequences would be worse than we thought. Relative to what Germany (and yes, not the Nazis, but *Germany*) had done we behaved extremely mercifully. If that's as judgemental as we were towards a country that started two blatant wars of agression in three decades that killed tens of millions of people in the most barbaric fashions I'd say that's a credit rather than a demerit.

If I got some of what you said tangled up with what Thothian said, sorry.
 
Has anyone considered the possibility that Osama's head might be presented on a pike as an apology by Saudi/Afghans/whomever who are afraid that the US might do any of the batshit options presented to avoid them?
 
Dude, that happened two hundred years ago. Claiming that that has significant bearing on the U.S. today is silly. I'm talking recent history, a term I specifically used in my prior posts.

And I'm talking cultural attitudes, something I've laid out and which is heavily influenced by history. These attitudes in turn influence what the American public would be willing to support, which is why we seem to support wars and wartime abuse more readily than, say, most Europeans.

Yes, U.S. law enforcement could use some work, but it doesn't lead into the kind of outrages I'm seeing being speculated about in this thread.

And I'm hardly obligated to defend all of the speculation in the thread, merely the stuff I've laid out. What does lead to the abuses I'd expect isn't just the law enforcement, but the popular demand for police brutality and continued faith in the police no matter what damning revelations come out about them.

You're not appreciating that there is a difference between what the individual citizens and voters of a country believe, even the majority of them, and the actions of a nation. The U.S. has mechanisms on top of mechanisms to keep widespread prejudices and the actions of one crazy person from turning into national policy.

But I am, my point being that given what I think individual citizens and voters tend to believe, they'd be willing to support more drastic measures than were taken IOTL. I don't see how that's hard to understand. As for checks and balances, they're increasingly being eroded by party loyalty and security concerns, both of which are highly relevant here. There are still limits to what would be allowed, but they're certainly not as ironclad as they used to be, and I think a hypothetical situation that could show us the hard limits in the real world would shock and depress us all with how bad it was.

The plan that you're talking about was pretty mild in the grand scheme of things (reducing German industry to the level of a little over a decade before and preventing it from developing faster than any of its neighbors that it had invaded) and it was rescinded within a year and a half of Germany surrendering when it became clear the consequences would be worse than we thought. Relative to what Germany (and yes, not the Nazis, but *Germany*) had done we behaved extremely mercifully. If that's as judgemental as we were towards a country that started two blatant wars of agression in three decades that killed tens of millions of people in the most barbaric fashions I'd say that's a credit rather than a demerit.

It'd maybe be a credit if our allies, the ones who actually suffered at the hands of the Nazis, hadn't had more restrained ideas that we refused to listen to until we realized the dire consequences of our own plan.
 
I doubt Bush will go insane, but I think he will be less calculating and more vengeful. Bush stood up for the Muslim minority quite well. Here I expect Bush being more silent on that issue, Afghanistan will be far bloodier, USA may also collective punish people related to anti-American terrorists, don't be surprised if members of the bin Laden family disappear, this hurt Al Qaeda, as the Bin Laden family kept sending Osama his part of the money from the family's companies. USA will likely also take a more antagonistic attitude toward the Gulf States, Where they're told to clean their own house or USA will do it for them.
 
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