What are we giving up to gain our freedom and is it worth it in the long run? The intelligence apparatus our nation has constructed only has value as long as we have fear, they are thereby induced to continually keep us in a state of fear whether real or fabricated. My biggest fear is that many of these recent "terrorist incidents", not 9/11, were in fact created by our own agencies...yes a bit of a tin foil hat scenario to be sure but one that is not all together unreasonable given the current revelations.
I don't think they consciously did it. But I do think our policies and heavy-handedness have created more terrorists than we've defeated.
http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2007/may/11/paid-fbi-info...
http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/absisfin.pd...
http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/since.html
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/05193620404/fbi-co...
It's that simple.
I believe that's the main reason (if not the only reason) why it is being kept alive (today by using the cheap manipulation technique of fear).
Which incidents do you specifically think were fabricated?
Not to mention clearly stating we bugged this guys call was stupid from an intelegence standpoint.
Snide remark aside, I'll admit that my comment is not very insightful, because it is pretty much common knowledge. That does not make it any less true though.
The aim of a terrorist is to instill terror in the population. I don't delude myself I thinking you can carry on as if nothing happened, but the measures that are taken should be an appropriate response to the threat, not born out of fear or an effort to soothe the population. If you don't let an irrational fear take hold of you, then all the terrorist efforts have been in vain.
That is also more or less the point of the article, I just laid it out more tersely.
After listing historical terrorist events and responses, Mr. Koppel tries to lump in our invasion of Iraq as an over-sized reaction to terrorism from 9/11 which happened eighteen months earlier.
The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, it was about oil, as we all know now, after the propaganda has died down and people have generally gone back to sleep.
The loss of privacy and rights since then, and currently, is our govt misbehaving, and also has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.
The government's motive is oil, money, growth in scope, etc.
The government's justification is terrorism. So this conversation is absolutely related to terrorism.
Awareness of that difference is important. Articles like this are key to promoting awareness.
Yes, among the people at the top who planned it, it was not a reaction to terrorism. But the public support for it absolutely was.
Our democracy is far from perfect, and much of government is corrupt, but the government is still by and large a reflection of the people. The people's massive overreaction to terrorism allows, even requires, the government to do bad stuff like invade Iraq, wiretap every American phone call, and more.
We need to convince the people to stop overreacting to terrorism so that the government loses that excuse to misbehave.
Why not? It happened before, how could it not happen again? Actually, seen from outside of U.S., the Iraq events that followed the reinstatement of the Bush family appear very naturally, those were like... family policy!
When you help build the prison, don't be surprised when you find yourself in it.
