George Rebane
Right after 9/11 when we declared war on something mislabeled terrorism, I pondered about that new war and how it would be fought, and more importantly how could/would it be won. Being of the analytical bent, I came up with an effective metric and communicated it to the editors of the Wall Street Journal (more here). The metric was based on the established notion that when your enemy resorts to terror, his objective is to cause you to defeat yourself through the self-infliction of internal defenses (regulations, liberties removed, checkpoints, searches, etc) that would grind down your abilities to communicate, travel, conduct commerce, and, in general, carry on a normal productive life style. Over the last twelve years we have all come to know the drill on how our lives have changed as the ragheads count victory after victory.
My metric was essentially a thermometer that would go up with the number of all the restrictions, laws, prohibitions, … that the state would pass in the name of assuring our security against these then unidentified terrorists. (Since then the DHS has identified American veterans and tea partiers as the most likely terrorists, and anyone yelling ‘Allahu Akbar!’ before killing/maiming dozens of Americans is just committing “workplace violence”.)
Anyway, the metric would similarly record the deleted number of such anti-terror prohibitions, laws, agencies, etc. These would be easy enough to keep track of since our benevolent and protective government has announced each of these so-called measures before chucking another bucket of sand into the gears of our modus vivendi.
The response from the WSJ to my proposal was crickets. Apparently it would have been too traumatic to display a graph of the ramp up after 9/11, and now it would simply be too revealing of the bloated police state that has been put in place to give us peace of mind. But even more devastating would be the constant reminder to us that our government is continuing to arm its in-country agencies with draconian weaponry, and to monitor its citizens at levels unimagined just a short while ago (while breast-beating the lie that Al Qaeda is “decimated” and “on the run”).
But most Americans instinctively know that these armaments and tallies of our every move are way beyond what is a reasonable response against any terrorists, even if they attacked in company strength within our borders. In short, the implementation and public display of my metric would be a constant and stark reminder that not only are we even close to winning any ‘war on terrorism’, but that something much more sinister is being put in place while we go on with our daily lives and worry about the economy.
Such a response to terrorism is finally being picked up by some senior national correspondents. In the 7aug13 WSJ Ted Koppel of NBC News and NPR provides some historical perspective on terrorism and writes in ‘America’s Chronic Overreaction to Terrorism’ –
At home, the U.S. has constructed an antiterrorism enterprise so immense, so costly and so inexorably interwoven with the defense establishment, police and intelligence agencies, communications systems, and with social media, travel networks and their attendant security apparatus, that the idea of downsizing, let alone disbanding such a construct, is an exercise in futility.
Koppel is no rightwing conservative, far from it, yet he too sees that we have constructed more barriers and controls than are necessary to preserve our pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. He concludes –
But there is no way to completely eliminate terrorism. … The challenge that confronts us is how we will live with that threat. We have created an economy of fear, an industry of fear, a national psychology of fear. Al Qaeda could never have achieved that on its own. We have inflicted it on ourselves.
Over the coming years many more Americans will die in car crashes, of gunshot wounds inflicted by family members and by falling off ladders than from any attack by al Qaeda.
There is always the nightmare of terrorists acquiring and using a weapon of mass destruction. But nothing would give our terrorist enemies greater satisfaction than that we focus obsessively on that remote possibility, and restrict our lives and liberties accordingly.
[update] The President’s propaganda on his accomplishments to have Al Qaeda “on the run” is now beyond laughable to all but the most dedicated oblivians in the country. If anything, under Obama Al Qaeda has grown in both power and scope as the administration’s current shut down of US embassies demonstrates. A revealing article in the 8aug13 WSJ, ‘How Al Qaeda Made Its Comeback’, from an FBI insider Mr Ali Soufan, FBI supervisory special agent, who interrogated ragheads at Guantanamo spells out how we have misapprehended the most successful Islamic terror organization in the world.
[11aug13 update] Here’s something relevant about our impending police state. It seems that police will soon have available the ability to turn off our smartphone recording functions (audio, video, stills) where and when they consider it necessary. My longtime pal and fellow blogger Professor Larry Press reports (here) on Apple’s latest patent that covers this new ‘kill switch’ functionality.
[12aug13 update] Yesterday Sen John McCain (R-AZ) was criticizing Obama’s anti-terror foreign policy in the mid-east when he again brought up the prudent advice that we have to balance our security policies against the need to preserve our freedoms. These sober shibboleths regarding national security are now coming from all sides and shades of politicians. The truth of the matter is that we have already forsaken the liberty side of that long-gone balance and there is no going back. Such statements serve to salve those who have not been keeping track of our progress toward a complete autocracy.
Our minds are kept off the topic of maintaining our freedoms by the new culture of ever more intense entertainments and widely available diversions based on accelerating technology. No one notices that these circuses are to be ‘enjoyed’ in ever narrower confines, corridors of movement, and reduced access to our surroundings. Throw in the bread component (a la SNAP) and no one will think to look behind the curtain. The corralling of compliant populations and constraints on commerce continue in the developed nations with every new set of regulations and global goals (e.g. A21) sold under the expanding banner of protecting the environment and ‘saving the earth’.
This combined with militarizing of the police, constructive repeal of the 2nd Amendment, and growing assaults on posse comitatus – under the complaint that we need the military to protect us from domestic terrorists – brings to mind the cocooned lifestyle that was humanity’s destiny in the movie Matrix. The ‘war on terror’ is truly a crisis that has not been wasted by our central planners.
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