Imagine we were attacked again. It’s easy if you try.
After everyone spent a whole heaping pile of time shitting down each other’s throats for the sole purpose of recrimination - three months, eight months worth? - we would still remain a country living in fear.
I wish it were not so, but imagine if you can.
In fact it’s too damn easy to think that Americans would throw their liberties away for the supposed salve of safety. Like a storm cloud, this fear would manifest - even then facing the reality of having been attacked again with new safeguards in place.
We need MORE safeguards would be the assertion. It wouldn’t be presented as anything that could be argued. And so the ill wind would have arrived.
It is just as easy to suppose that the current administration - for truly it makes no sense to hypothetically speak of another in what is already a hypothetical - would push VERY hard to encourage Americans to give up more of their liberties under the guise of security.
And there it is. You can see the problem in all its naked immodesty. The government encouraging others to bend their collective will for an empty promise. Safety that absolutely cannot be guaranteed no matter what.
However, everyone, sans lobotomy, has a tolerance limit of inconvenience; a push back point beyond which much unpleasantness will be unleashed.
I’ve always been one to say - if the majority demands it, they win. Politicians SHOULD do what the majority wants. But the braver ones seek to change desires before they become all consuming. If I am pushing a minority view it is my job to convince others of my position. If I did it through violent fear mongering I would, however, feel cheapened. I wouldn’t be brave or honorable or noble. I would be manipulative. It wouldn’t be an argument - it would be a faith-based, fear-of-a-blackened-planet push to scare.
America is still the most free country on earth and its people - individually and characteristically - still the most generous (because they can, where some others cannot, still ... ). But - and you knew there was one big fat but - the erosion of the edges of liberty is starting. Right now the only force stopping greater erosion is the potential push back from the American people.
And another attack, I imagine, would break the American will, because Americans - from the land of the large debt and the late fee - think short term. We would be told - as we are now - that if we only allow greater monitoring of our daily lives - we would be safer. And it would be our patriotic duty to comply, because, after all, if you’ve nothing to hide, what’s the problem?
"A little inconvenience goes a long way" is, I imagine, how the attempted reasoning would go. It would make us safer.
And these simple, locked and loaded assertions would convince many. Imagine if you heard them repeated over and over. I believe it’s the same discussion to say, “What’s wrong with a gun-purchasing waiting period or a limit of 10 gun purchases a year?"
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - gonzo marx
well said and timely, Temple...
thanks for the read
Excelsior!
2 - neocondi
Did you write "Constitution terrorists"?
Shall we call that:
A) "phrasing terrorism";
B) "a grammatical holocaust;" or
C) "political blog raping"?
3 - Aaman
Was some of this inspired by John Lennon?
4 - gonzo marx
Imagine that!
Excelsior!
5 - Bennett
This is great Temple. We need more of this and less of the "Data mining is good for you" kind of thinking.
If thinking it really is.
Here... sheepy sheepy sheep!
6 - Matthew T. Sussman
All right then, then it's time to find a solution that 51 percent of the nation can get behind: Curb terrorism without "stomping on the Constitution."
And .... green flag racing.
I'll get the ball rolling by starting off small:
1. Free sandwiches for everyone.
7 - Aaman
2. Sex on demand
8 - swingingpuss
3. Legalize pot
9 - Matthew T. Sussman
4. If you blow up a building, you have to put it back together.
10 - Dave Nalle
I imagine we could stand a little terrorism. Thought about in purely mathematical terms even the worst terrorist attacks do a tiny fraction of the human and material damage of natural disasters and other sources of violent death - like driving cars - during the course of a year.
Ireland, England, Israel, India and now Iraq have all learned to live and have functional societies with a certain level of terrorism as an ongoing threat. We could certainly do the same.
I sometimes think that the answer is to scrap the whole defensive approach to terrorism and start over again. We just about invented terrorism during the Revolutionary War. We need to go back to that mentality and to the era of the filibusters and give up on responding to terror with traditional military action and instead respond to terrorism with terrorism. Lift the ban on assassination, switch the military to homeland defense, beef up the CIA and their auxiliaries and just start eliminating terrorist threats by whatever means are appropriate.
We keep America what it should be, preserve the constitution, and take the war to the terrorists outside our borders by the same methods they use. Something very appealing about that.
Dave
11 - neocondi
How come we are not hearing about how the President violated the Constitution rights of Muslim Americans by checking certain Muslim centers for nuclear radiation. Did I hallucinate that or was it in the news?
Do you object to that too, Temple? Or is it just the phone call monitoring?
12 - Aaman
You can't do that though, as soon as you do that, you become them, methinks, and what makes you think America will remain 'what it should be'?
Power corrupts, etc. and more relevantly, qui custodet ipso custodes
13 - Dave Nalle
Aaman, the first and largest signature on the Declaration of Independence is the signature of the leader of a terrorist cell. We're a nation built on fighting with the resources available to us. Maybe we need to find some of those forgotten tools and put them back to use. Take the army of Timothy McVeigh's we have out there waiting to do something and put them to work for us. They may hate the US Government, but they hate outside terrorists even more.
Dave
14 - Victor Lana
I don't know what I fear more: the next (inevitable?) attack here in the USA or the reaction afterwards.
15 - Aaman
Aren't you fighting with your available resources now? Doesn't the US use mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you want to enlist serial killers?
Do you really believe the solution lies merely in war?
16 - neocondi
I like that new military paradigm. Covert agents should be going into mosques (or bugging them) worldwide to see who is preaching hate and terrorism. Freedom of religion stops where my nose starts. We must pressure their governments to shut them down. Extreme cases may need to wind up on mild cartons.
These people are breeding terrorists, more than we can handle. That is not religion, that is sponsoring terrorism.
17 - Aaman
So naive, and so ignorant. I wish you had grown up with Muslim friends, at the very least.
Congratulations Temple, whether you like it or not, people have read whatever they chose into your post, based on their own biases and perceptions. C'est la vie
18 - RealityCon
Incidentally, neocondi, why does the US support the government of Pakistan, which has nurtured 'these people' for a long time. The new IIF is very much based in South Waziristan, and with the Lasker-e-Toiba in Muridke. Why aren't they shut down?
19 - Temple Stark
#17 It is as it is.
Indeed. As Sussman alludes (crustless sandwiches is my choice or Blunderford's buy something from Victoria Secret online (it has to be online because I've bought in the store and I didn't get the catalogue)), I'm trying to find the level of inconvenience we have in this country. Because I need to know who, shall we say to be polite, have cowardly tendencies.
Who needs to be calmed when the shit hits the fan.
Dave is going directly against what he usually comments about elsewhere. Yawn. SO what else is new. It's a bald attempt to try and have it both ways; trying to pander. Yawn. So what else is new?
20 - Bennett
TS - That's funny!
Seriously!
"Because I need to know who, shall we say to be polite, have cowardly tendencies."
As one example.
21 - neocondi
Oops, just lost my nice detailed response. No matter, anyone with half a brain can figure things out. Anyone who thinks that Islam is not the major problem (poor East Indian Hindus are not beheading Christian schoolgirls) has their head really far up their colon.
We know, not every single Muslim is a terrorist. Really? Duh, I though there were a billion terrorists! But most ARE either terrorist sympathizers or apologists to one degree or another. The polls tell the story, they like Bin Laden. Why else would you like Bin Laden, his sense of humor?
As for having Muslim friends, hard core Muslims are not allowed to be friends with Infidels, remember?
22 - Dave Nalle
Actually, I'm mostly trying to provoke rather than pander.
Dave
23 - SonnyD
Gosh, Temple, what an original idea. Wonder why nobody thought to ask that yet.
Think of it this way, the US was like a young and tender girl. So sweet and beautiful. We wanted to think that the whole world loved us. No one would really want to hurt us, would they?
Well, the country is not a virgin, any more. You know what they say, it never hurts so much after the first time.
The first shock has worn off and we all know it's going to happen again. We just have to keep refining our methods, looking for the best defense methods, staying on the attack wherever we can. It's going to take years.
24 - Ruvy in Jerualem
Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps we ought to take this issue seriously? It was no fun watching the Twin Towers fall in New York, or waking up in the morning to dicover that the Murrah Federal building had been bombed.
Temple Stark is right on the instincts, but Dave Nalle's idea of taking the war to the enemy and remembering your own roots as guerilla fighters against the Brits is also right. They are two sides of the same coin of survival for your country.
Amongst the perceived enemy, you have friends - divide the enemy, and you can conquer.
But the problem has been that you Americans have not identified the enemy.
The immediate enemy - the hammer being used to hurt and threaten you - is the Wahhabi cult of Arabia, and the monarchy it has spawned, Saudi Arabia. They have taken Islam from a religion that can swing between conquest and self stuggle, and turned it into a fire-breathing monster of conquest, rape and ruination.
In other words, the enemy is not 'Islamo-fascists' or 'radical Islam.' These are mere empty phrases to deceive and mislead.
The enemy has an address - Riyadh. Turn Riyadh into a nuclear pit, and you have broken his back. You will have broken the network of funding going world-wide to madrassas to spread hatred of Christians, Hindus and Jews. You will have instilled tue fear in CAIR - that puppet group that deep in its lierature admits that it seeks to establish Islam OVER all of you in America. You will have broken the military power that advocates world conquest by Islam. You will have cut the head off of the snake.
The fact that Riyadh will be a nuclear pit will not be lost on the mad mullahs of Teheran. It will be a sudden and sharp reminder to all of what imperial power means, and just how brutally it can be applied.
The rest of the planet, which waits for America to stumble so as to kick it off the top of the hill of power, will sit up and pay attention.
The Russians will take note. They still have a large network of their own nukes and imperial ambitions of their own.
The North Koreans, who would happily outfit the missiles they have sold to the Arabs with nuclear warheads - for a hefty sum - would sit up and pay attention.
The Chinese, who have more than once openly threatened your nation with nuclear attack, will recognize that they are not dealing with a sweet virgin in the forest..
If you are indeed an empire, you had better act like one. Having cracked the whip and slit a head, you can afford to allow the Sunnis to stir in their own juice, pull out most of your soldiers in Iraq, and cultivate the true allies you have amongst the Moslems - the Sufi scholars. In many respects, they are the Moslem versions of Mahatma Gandhi.
They must be funded adequately to take over the madrassas world-wide in place of the Wahhabi puppets now there, so that they can teach a religion of self conquest - the other meaning of jihad.
Islam got where it is because of education. It can be turned from its present path through education.
But nota bene. The Wahhabis are the immediate enemy, the hammers in the hands of the true enemy. For the true enemy, you must look at the oil and banking establishment in the United States, and elsewhere, the Vatican and other places.
And please do not take me at MY word. Look up the works of Sheikh Abdulhadi Palazzi, Joel Bainerman and Barry Chamish. Google up any of them, and you will discover a wealth of information.
25 - Shark
Ruvy: "...The immediate enemy ... is the Wahhabi cult of Arabia, and the monarchy...Saudi Arabia. They have taken Islam... and turned it into a fire-breathing monster of conquest, rape and ruination."
Oh yeah. The guys ya see holding hands with George W. Bush! IRONIC, that.
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Also interesting:
After 9/11 -- most American's said "We'll never be the same."
"Will we ever laugh again?"
etc. etc.
And one hour into a thread regarding the government response to the deaths of 3,000 Americans, the specter of another attack, and the ongoing erosion of civil liberties -- Sussman and company feel perky, playful, and chirpy enough to make jokes.
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re:
"1. Free sandwiches
...
4. If you blow up a building, you have to put it back together."
5. *If you want to distract from a thread while drawing attention to yourself -- at least be interesting or entertaining.
* you taught me that. heh.