Word: threatenings
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...happened to Americans. In fact, something of immense significance happened that day, not just to America but to the entire world. For five centuries it has taken a state to destroy another state. Only a state could raise the revenues, muster the armies and organize the logistics required to threaten the survival of another state. Soon this will no longer be true, owing to advances in computer technology, communications and weapons of mass destruction. We are entering a period in which a small number of people, operating without overt state sponsorship but using the enormous power of modern computers, biogenetic...
...contrast with radical Islamic terrorism could hardly be more pronounced. Al-Qaeda controls not a single state. Leaders of every nation in the Muslim world loathe al-Qaeda's tenets, for the very good reason that they threaten those leaders' power. Though there is certainly a network of al-Qaeda sympathizers in the West, radical Islam has been unable to proselytize outside a very limited core of religious fanatics. Compared with the military power of Soviet communism, Islamic terrorists are a raggle-taggle army on the run. To revise our national priorities fundamentally in response to the terrorists pays them...
During the cold war, the U.S. also threatened first use of nuclear weapons. The Soviets fielded a huge conventional army that could have overrun Western Europe. The U.S. response was not to match the Soviets with countless tank divisions but to threaten nuclear retaliation against a conventional attack...
...attacks filed suit last week seeking $1 trillion from, among others, three Saudi princes who allegedly gave money to groups supporting the terrorists. But the Pentagon briefer's solution to the Saudi problem was provocative in the extreme: Washington should declare the Saudis the enemy, he said, and threaten to take over the oil wells if the kingdom doesn't do more to combat Islamic terrorism. "I thought the briefing was ridiculous," a board member said, "a waste of time, and the quicker he left the better." When the briefing leaked to the press, it sent diplomatic tremors ricocheting...
Almost daily, sniper bullets and small bands of fighters threaten American soldiers hunting al-Qaeda and Taliban members left behind in Afghanistan. But a more benign task entrusted to U.S. special forces stationed in Kabul--training the fledgling Afghan national army--is also proving dangerous. Funds for the endeavor are scarce, and weapons and ammunition are "not the quality you'd want at Fort Benning," says Lieut. Colonel Kevin McDonnell, who is responsible for the training. The Green Berets have resorted to tossing rocks to teach grenade handling and scrounging al-Qaeda and Taliban leftovers. Sometimes the troops launch risky...