Remembering 9-11

[jordan179]

Ten years ago today, it was the morning after an all-nighter. I was taking out the garbage outside my apartment in Little Egg Harbor, NJ. The skies were clear. Thunder rolled out of a cloudless sky. I looked around, but could see neither a stormcloud nor a supersonic airplane. And the sound was strangely protracted. I shrugged, went back

Comments

[hastka]

Why do you feel America has been trying to convince itself of the threat being unreal? I feel the opposite is the case -- it seems like there's always new justification for why someone's luggage should be searched, phone tapped, etc. Until you can legislate thought, I'm sure enough laws, committees, rules, and money can approximate the experience

[gothelittle]

The problem isn't so much that the threat is unreal as that it is mislabeled, misunderstood, and people are using it to try to gain power for themselves. Note that the Patriot Act, for instance, was a temporary power with a time limit, and Obama chose to extend it under a Democrat Congress

[polaris93]

The answer is, we've been sold out. The question is, by whom? Who among our own people, our neighbors, in our government and elsewhere, have done the selling-out? Ah, for the good old days of the necktie party . . .

[hastka]

The other funny thing with all of this, all of America's intelligence somehow managed to not only miss the Trade Center stuff, which I kind of understand given the communications problems, etc, of the time... but as mentioned earlier on CNN today they also managed to for the mostpart miss many events leading to the dissolution of the USSR, the so-called "Arab Spring" situation, and a few other fairly major political events... which -- if I'm to believe things at face value -- the U.S. played essentially no direct role in, yet in many cases it resolved in a direction favoring democracy.

It does kinda make ya wonder, sometimes.

[polaris93]

According to a dear late friend of mine who was in training for the US State Department not long before he died, and hwo had been in Air Force Intelligence at one point, our intelligence agencies became riddled with Soviet undercover agents by the 1960s, and it only got worse and worse as time went on. Of course, we did the same to their intelligence agencies, and great confusion was had by all. Whose word did you trust about anything? Whose reports were trustworthy, which ones were damned lies? That could only have added to the madness, especially since the Soviets and now the Russians have used the Islamic world as a buffer against the West.

Three-Named Wonders

[ilion7]

That’s because the US “intelligence community” isn’t so much about gathering and making sense of foreign intelligence so as to protect Americans and the interests of the US as it is about providing life sinecures for the ‘Three-Named Wonders’ of the (mostly) East Coast Elite.

[polaris93]

PS: I'm on your side in this. I agree with you. The tone of that comment is a little ambiguous, so just to clarify.

[gothelittle]

Always appreciate someone on my side. :)

[polaris93]

:-)

[polaris93]

Why do you feel America has been trying to convince itself of the threat being unreal?

Which America? We've become divided into the sane and the insane, and also into the government and everybody else (which aren't the same as that first dichotomy, since each of the latter overlaps both of the former). You pick.

Explicit and Implicit Arguments

[jordan179]

Why do you feel America has been trying to convince itself of the threat being unreal?

Because of the repeated argument, explict and implicit, that this isn't a "real" war, or that the Muslim terrrorists aren't the "real" enemy.

For an example of the explicit argument that this isn't a "real" war, note the claims that one cannot declare war or authorize warlike operations against a non-governmental organization. This is untrue, as even a cursory examination of the history of military and naval campaigns against bandits and pirates illustrates.

For an example of the implicit argument that this isn't a "real" war, note the idea, now officially accepted by the US government (though fortunately rarely acted-upon) that we must provide "trials" for captured enemy personnel. In war, one normally holds prisoners until the cessation of hostilities or an agreed-upon exchange of captives

Counter-Insurgency

[jordan179]

Don't get me wrong, I know there are reasons for some of these things, but as the saying goes, you can't kill an idea, and that's exactly the issue at hand.

The saying is false: many ideas have been killed by killing their adherents. Furthermore and more importantly, many ideas have been prevented from realization by acting forcibly against those who would attempt to realize them.

How does one even define "the enemy" any more?

Those States, NGO's and individuals who undertake or tangibly support warlike operations against the United States of America: in practice, this means up to a dozen or so Terrorist States, some larger number of organizations, and a loose group of individual sympathizers. Specifically including but not limited to Iran, North Korea, the Sudan, Syria: and Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Note that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are no longer on this list, because we rather decisively removed their Terrorist regimes.

Let alone while strictly adhering to the laws in place to protect innocent people.The laws are less

[jordan179]

Once something firms up into an actual group, there are specific ways to address that, but ultimately, anyone who wants to cause trouble for someone and doesn't care about their own life or consequences is increasingly able to do something disruptive.

Lone nuts aren't the main problem, because lone nuts rarely agree on goals or strategies. Where lone nuts are acting on the orders or advice of organizations, it is possible to go after those organizations (as we have motivated Yemen to do in the case of the traitor al-Awalaki).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

This only gets worse as we rely more and more on external infrastructure, while at the same time technology empowers individuals (be they "good" or "evil" whatever those things even mean) with more and more information and resources with which to operate.Technology increases both the powers of attack and destruction, and of defense and reconstruction. This is obscured from popular awareness