Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Campaign 2020 First Bernie Sanders Thread 2020

McConnell, Barr, Miller, and Trump are the 4 idiots of the apocalypse. It would happen exactly as you say.

By Whom?

Does it really matter?
That is why I specifically took pains to say "nation OR group".
An attack set the German Enabling Act in motion, and historically no one actually knows who did the deed. Hitler said "the commies".

So, to be clear, you have no idea whatsoever if there is indeed a current enemy out there with the capability and intent to launch such an attack on the United States that would take out a city without our ability to anticipate it.

I said, does it really matter who?
By the way, we seem to have a serious problem anticipating danger in this day and age.

Yes. Claiming that something is a plausible threat to our liberty requires being able to demonstrate that it is, well, plausible.

If Biden wins and I come in here and explain that, as soon as the Space Aliens arrive, Biden will deal with them to sell all our children into slavery, you would be rather well within the bounds of reason to ask simple enough questions such as "what information do you have suggesting that aliens are inbound" and "what information do you have suggesting that Biden will sell our children to them".

If I were to insist that I didn't have to provide any reason or evidence, but that we needed to take this Biden-child-slavery-threat seriously Because Hitler, you would also be well within the bounds of reason to call me out on that kind of foolishness.

I for one am going to take the Biden child slavery threat seriously, because Hitler!
I don't trust the man.

But, the fact that we don't actually have any enemies who are likely to attack us at our weakest moment says a lot for reducing the military budget.

Were the attacks on September 11th plausible? Some thought so, some ignored that. Some thought a pandemic was a possibility, some ignored that.

Some thought the Reichstag Fire was possible, some ignored that, perhaps deliberately.

A hypothetical attack is possible. We game those possibilities, I believe The Pentagon is adept at it, more so than I am.

It is cute that you insist I have a specific nation or group in mind.
I am citing conditions that make the possibility more likely.
We have some of those right now.

Oil just crashed into negative numbers, that means that the gas station masquerading as a country now has a Ruble worth less than the paper it's printed on. That means Putin is quite possibly a caged animal.

Does it mean I am predicting Dr. Strangelove? No, but it is possible that Russia may commit an act by proxy. The possibility just became more likely.

By the way, since "take out a city" is a variable, we need to define our terms. Recently two felled skyscrapers "took out a city" so to speak despite the fact that most of the population survived, and so did most of the buildings. Just two really big ones went down.
It was actually enough to take out a country, ours.

We are still maintaining a military presence in several locations because of that, but what we've "won" is open to debate.

Given we are under Trump Law, I think it's safe to say we are even more vulnerable to an attack of some kind than we were in 2001.
As it is, we're under attack right now.
A pandemic, one that just might be bad enough to trigger a war, maybe even a world war.
Team Trump would waste no time figuring out how to leverage something like that.
And that's what I'm getting at.

CUE: It Can't Happen Here"

Or maybe it might not trigger a war.
Maybe, through grand mal greed and incompetence, it might trigger something else, a kind of JACKPOT.

I wonder how Team Trump might choose to leverage something like that.

It did not take out a country. It took out large portions of a city, and caused us to self-revoke air travel for a few days.


Yup. We were attacked and responded to war with war.


Well, I can only surmise you are not terribly familiar with either the current status of either ISIS or AQ EXOPS capability, and not terribly familiar with the current defense posture of the United States. One of the reasons we are still in those countries you mention is because it gives us an excellent vantage point to identify and disrupt those attacks well before they occur.


....with whom? China? China and Russia? The EU? COBRA?


Then you should pay better attention to what the Trump administration actually does, and take a more realistic measure of the current status of threats from abroad.

1. The Trump administration would absolutely waste time in such a scenario - if you like, use this pandemic as your test case. The Trump administration wasted precious weeks coming to grips with the fact that there was a threat, before mealy-mouthing their way to a partial fitful solution, and has since then largely left actually handling the crises up to the governors, despite occasional idiotic declarations of Total Authority... that are then backed up by precisely zero actions.

2. There is no current enemy group with both the capability and intent to launch an invasion - temporary or otherwise - or sustained attack of the type you describe. A nation-state such as China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran knows that we will respond to a mass attack with nuclear weaponry, wiping out their people and possibly leading to an exchange that ends the human race (neither of which they want), and terror groups are generally suppressed in their ability to launch large and complex plots of that kind* due to the very overseas U.S. military presence you mention.

*one wild-card would be if Iran decided to support an organized group, using them as a proxy actor. Hopefully a combination of economic and domestic political chaos combined with the recent strike against Soleimani has shifted their calculus against a willingness to accept that kind of risk.



No. You simply have no idea how it would, which hasn't stopped you from panicking yourself that it will. This is the equivalent of the 1990's Militia types terrifying themselves that "UN Troops Were Gonna Occupy The United States Because Clinton Wants To Be A Dictator".


This is literally discussion of a science fiction scenario. It's like insisting that President Biden will turn us into a fascist military-ruled society in response to the Bug Menace that destroyed Buenos Aires.