Over-reaction and Over-correction

[chris_gerrib]

Sometimes over-reaction and over-correction can be worse than not reacting at all. For example, during the Civil War, General George McClellan was so famously cautious as to prompt President Lincoln to ask if he could borrow McClellan's army "since he wasn't using it."

At times I think we're approaching McClellan-ish levels of caution with terrorism. Please don't get me wrong - there are terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists who are out to kill as many Americans as possible, and they aren't terribly picky as to which Americans. On the other hand, when I hear of "Jihad Jane", (actually Colleen LaRose), the 4 foot 11 inch suburban housewife / woman who talked to her cats, I suspect that she's only marginally more dangerous then The Three Stooges. Which is why, like Jim Henley, I think we need to treat her like a plain ole-fashioned criminal / kook.

Towards the end of McClellan's tour, during the Maryland campaign, he had a chance to crush Lee at Antietam. But he was so scared of Lee that he kept two Army Corps - a force nearly equal to Lee's - in reserve the entire battle. I'm concerned that, if Al Qaida ever gets smart and changes from the current strategy of "big attacks"* to a series of little attacks, we'll scare ourselves silly and over-react. Putting your enemy in proper perspective is important.


* Considering both the last to "big attacks" (Hasan and the Underpants Bomber) resulted in fewer casualties combined than one US drone strike, they are "big attacks" only in the minds of some.

Comments

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

In general, no. Suppression of non-human behavior such as wanton murder is how the species distinguishes itself from mere animals.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Ah ... so Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, Red China, North Korea, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and modern Iran are composed of "non-humans?"

That's a very large part of the species you've just decided are no longer human. And the implication of them no longer being human is that we can slaughter them like animals if we feel like it.

Heck, I'm being called "nonhuman" simply for arguing that backing, or permitting the backing, of terrorists against State B by State A is an act of war on the part of State A. You don't see where this casual ascription of nonhumanity on the basis of dissent could lead to trouble, down the line?

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

They certainly did in-human things, things which should have been suppressed.

There is a huge spectrum of conduct from "suppress in-human activities" to "kill them all."

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Why do you persist in conflating a state with the population in it?

And, for that matter, the method of getting something, terrorism may be wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the goal they seek or the reasons that drive people to do it are.

The IRA and offshoots were a bunch of criminal murdering scum. That didn't make the treatment of the Northern Irish catholic population by the British right, just because they were wrong.