On Sat, 15 Sep 2001, Sandy Sandfort wrote:

Meyer Wolfsheim wrote:

...

My point is that such an attack could occur with nothing more than economic factors as motivation.

Of course, but I don't see how that advances any discussion of what ACTUALLY happened on the 11th.

It does not. It does, however, point out the futility in the imposition of arbitrary terrorism-prevention measures. There is an upper bound on risk for any terrorist: that of his life. I fail to see any truly effective measures that can be taken to prevent determined attackers from committing acts of terrorism. The only course of action, I believe, is to eliminate their desire to commit these attacks. Harry Browne's essay[1] points out things we could have done to remove the (suspected) motivation for this (and other possible) political terroristic attacks. Tim May has made similar points. The game changes drastically when the motive changes to an economic one.

I don't think there is any reason to engage in a theoretical discussion when we have such a concrete event to examine. I'll certainly concede your point that evil can be done for pecuniary profit as well as ideology. So may we dispense with this irrelevant thread now?

My apologies for distracting you. I'll wait until after this is no longer hypothetical to discuss these issues. -MW- [1] http://www.antiwar.com/orig/browne2.html