Armitage: Terrorists without WMD are no Threat

Richard Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State credited with outing Valerie Plame, said in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Late Edition that terrorists without WMD don't pose a threat to the United States. 

Armitage didn't offer an explanation for al-Qaeda on 9/11, which killed thousands of Americans without WMD.

(transcript)

ARMITAGE: The fact that we make a war on terror, which I think is a bit of a misnomer -- perhaps it should be a war on extremism, certainly Islamic extremism right now -- is keeping us from focusing on other issues, both domestic and international.
Look, these terrorists want to hurt us. They are a real and growing threat. But absent the availability of WMD to them, they don't pose an existential threat to us. This is not like fascism during the Second World War, or communism.

The threat they pose to us is whether we, in response to their activities, will actually do harm to ourselves by changing our way of life, by suspending writs of habeas corpus, and by engaging in such activities as torture.

Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini nor Joseph Stalin possessed WMD.....

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Comments

[Student of History]

Hitler proposed National Socialism as a defense against Communism. Are you suggesting that because communism was a threat National Socialism is justified as a response (in reference to your statements at the end of the video).

Otherwise you are not engaging the speaker. If this is what you are saying, then you are not engaging creditability.

Either way you are not taking the argument seriously. Look at what affect the policies of the government have on what it means to be American. The landscape has changed and some argue that this change is a victory for the people who you say you oppose.

I may not be disagreeing with you here. I don't want to paint you as a straw man. The real question for the American people is what kind of nation are we trying to defend here. If it is one that has to fundamentally change in order to defend it (i.e. become a fascist state) then it is not worth following the policies you advocate to defend it. If we loose against the terrorists then we stand only a probability of being attacked. If we loose against our own internal fascists then we have a certainty that we have failed to be the nation we once were.

I take a probabilistic harm over a certain harm any day of the week.

[steph]

First, explain who decides whether writs of habeas corpus apply in those situations. Perhaps a good place to start is to stop conferring our civil rights upon any tom, dick, harry, or terrorist who stands inside our boundaries. Nor do I believe those rights should extend beyond our borders, as in people accepting calls from countries that harbor terrorists when there is every possibility they mean to do this nation harm.

Is that what you mean by change and socialism? If so, then why don't we just open up the borders, shutter our doors and windows, and let entire armies in and pretend not to hear them since they have the right to privacy the moment they set foot on U.S. soil? Same difference if they have every right to do whatever they please, against this nation from within this nation, in perfect privacy and we have none to stop them beforehand.

[CalPatriot]

"Hitler proposed National Socialism as a defense against Communism."

Also, but more importantly, against the west: Britain, France, USA, He only saw Russia as a way for irredentism. He saw the west as a threat for German survival ( in the Marxism sense) -- not Russia. German citizens were being starved in part by Britain and France on purpose. Furthermore, The Versailles Treaty sought to divide up the earth between the liberal democracies of the world, as mentioned above as the west, and leave-out the Germans, Italians and Russians to rot in hell. The Treaty of London , April 1915, was the first attempt by the liberal democracies to carve up the world for themselves. The reason that Britain reneged on Italy’s contribution in the Great War is said to be one of the reasons for the rise of Italian Fascism. Much prime source evidence suggest this.

POST: ARMITAGE

His concern is changing terminology. After he proposes the change, he uses the old terminology. No wonder he turned out to side politically with Slick – Willie.

"ARMITAGE: The fact that we make a war on terror, which I think is a bit of a misnomer -- perhaps it should be a war on * extremism*, certainly Islamic extremism right now -- is keeping us from focusing on other issues, both domestic and international.
Look, these *terrorists* want to hurt us."

What a duffus.