Originally Posted by boondoggie
His argument is that we've been looking like crazy and haven't found any, therefore they must not be there. Unfortunately, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If the cells are just "sitting tight", then it would be extremely difficult to find them, no matter how intrusive the search.
And absence of evidence is certainly not evidence of presence.
No one I know thinks we should do nothing. However the scope and intensity of so-called security activities long ago passed the benchmark of what is reasonable, IMO.
Though it may be a tired old line, the terrorists have succeeded in sowing terror and in enticing us into spending huge amounts of money and substantially changing our lives.
In other places in the world - perhaps because they have not be so lucky as we in the US have been to have escaped some terroristic activity for so long - it is assumed that "bad" things will happen no matter how assidous the attempts to prevent them. The assumption seems to be that bad guys are not stupid even if crazy and evil. Our security is very reactive and is designed to prevent primarily the kinds of attacks that have already occured. The number and variety of ways that any society is vulnerable to conscienceless people makes it impossible to be completely safe. When we give up rights to privacy, rights to personal dignity in order to prevent such silly things as shoe bombs and explosive devices make of gels and liquids in the way we are currently doing, we have caved into our fear and, as your post so well illustrates, our need to CYA.
More attacks will come, I think. I don't think we can stop them. Our security operations need to be somehow commensurate with reasonable practices that are true preventatives rather than CYA based reactions. We need also to avoid much better than we now are doing activity akin to running around in circles squawking like chickens who are afraid that the sky is falling.