While immediately after 9/11 I was pissed and all in favor of invading Afghanistan for sole the purpose of finding and capturing or otherwise killing Bin Laden and his henchmen, I came to realize, years even before Obama’s presidency, (yes, under GWB and I hold him in part accountable for this mess –road to Hell and Good Intentions and all that), that the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the WOT, the Patriot Act, FISA courts, the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA (yea, the near strip searching of 90 year olds, 3 year olds, elderly nuns, the disabled, etc.) all of it, has done nothing, and I would go to say absolutely nothing to make us safer but has done everything to erode or more precisely further erode the rights of American Citizens - all under the guise of “security” or what I and others refer to as “security theater”.
I understand the need for covert operations in hostile foreign countries or the need for limited boots on the ground in certain situations, i.e. CIA operatives, small tactical forces, surgical strikes, satellite observation of military targets or even the interception of communications to and from hostile countries among and between those who actually pose risk and the need to keep that under a security clearance and “need to know” basis, but what we have here is card blanche by an increasingly corrupt and despotic government to eaves drop on anyone and everyone at anytime for any reason.
While in response to the NSA leaks the government has made claims that some 50 terrorist attacks were thwarted via PRISM and such other data mining operations, I’ve seen absolutely no evidence that substantiate such claims and don’t expect to as the government will say they can’t tell us because it would give away our “secrets”. IMO the only real “secret” that was exposed by Snowden was that our own government is spying on everyone, with a mere rubber stamp or at the discretion of some low level and not too well screened analyst or by the DOJ (Eric Holder presently). What is to stop the DOJ and the WhiteHut from putting their own folks within the NSA or one of their contractors? I mean seriously, if Snowden got a SC, who else did and how and why? Do you really feel “safer” now?
First of all while most of these Jihadist or Jihadist wannabe’s like the Boston Bombers are quite simply not all that bright. But I’m also fairly certain that even they, if not exactly brain trusts already know that their cell phone calls, emails and internet activity can be tracked in real time. The very few terrorists who do manage to pull something off on our soil, it is not due to their brilliant strategy or highly sophisticated methods (the 9/11 plot was brilliant if only in its stupidly brilliant simplicity and their shear stupid luck they had in pulling it off), it’s most often dumb stupid luck or our own ineptness to acknowledge from where the real dangers emanate – our unsecured boarders and political correctness and refusal to deal with the threat of Islam. Most of these Jihadist wannabe’s are more likely to blow themselves up than they are to harm any of us.
It should be noted that I as the daughter of an immigrant am not anti-immigration but why in the name of common sense would we allow Visas or student Visas to people from countries with well known terrorist ties into this country at all or at the very least without serious vetting, anal probe vetting and close observation. Yea, I know “profiling” is wrong unless you are a native born American who is Christian and or a Tea Party member. s/
Secondly, the massive collection of, if even only metadata and not the content of all communications which I am not convinced is not happening, is completely useless unless we already know who to pick out for listening and that sort of thing is only found by covert operatives (selective covert boots on the ground), infiltration of true terrorist organizations like CAIR and not domestic political opponents via harassment via the IRS, aka the Tea Party Orgs and other such similarly minded conservative political or religiously based groups, and the cooperation of other countries who share a similar self interest in rooting out terrorists. But as with the Boston Bombers, we knew all about the Brothers Tsarnaev long in advance thanks to the Russians whose warning we chose to ignore. We could have most likely prevented the Boston Marathon Bombing just as we could have most likely prevented 9/11 if we had ever been serious about National Security. Hint - neither the 9/11 terrorists nor the Brothers Tsarnaev should have ever been let into this country in the first place and in both cases, we had the warnings and many people raising the red flags, all which were ignored until it was too late.
Next when I consider that twice as many American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as were killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and that we helped the regime in Egypt to fall only to be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood; just as we (Carter) helped cause the fall of the Shaw of Iran to be replaced by the Imans and the Nazi sympathizer Ahmadinejad and the enemies against our only true ally in the region, Israel; that we ousted Saddam Hussein, who I have come to believe, while certainly not a very nice guy and in fact a bloody tyrant within his own boarders, was much less a danger to US interests that what we have now in Iraq. And I now see that we are negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan and are about to arm the Syrian “rebels”. We need also to remind ourselves that we funded and funneled arms to the Mujahedeen and to Bin Laden via Pakistan during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Looking back and realizing that hindsight is always 20-20, we should have sided with the Soviets to stamp out the rise and further influence of radical Islamism in that region as that was more in our mutual self interests instead of us throwing in behind China and Saudi Arabia. We helped create and further train the monster that was Bin Laden and is Al Qaeda.
The prolonged Soviet war in Afghanistan may have helped propel the fall of the Soviet regime but then I have to now ask, to what end? Sure I was happy to see the Soviet Block fall, but first of all, did Communism ever really go away? And are we really safer now with a fractured Soviet Block? Sure the Soviets were our “enemy” but then we knew who they were and in some ways it was a “gentlemen’s” chess game. Now we have former Soviet Block countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Chechnya under the control of Islamists…the USSR kept an iron boot on and limited the ethnic and Islamic factions and granted in some not so “pretty” ways but with the fall of the Soviet block, are we really better off with these factions not being contained and restrained even by the Communists?
Lastly we need to understand that a highly motivated person or persons, be them foreign or domestic, a terror cell or a lone nut job, with or without a lot of brains or sophistication and with some good luck and good timing, can pull off a terrorist attack or a murderous rampage. While a terrible event for those involved and I sincerely feel for the victims who lost limbs and whose lives are forever changed, the Boston Marathon Bombing killed a total of 3 people – count them - 3.
So was this really worth locking down an entire city for several days and allowing local and federal LEO’s to forcibly enter homes without warrants all in the name of “security” while hunting down some idiot teenager with a gun and possibly a pressure cooker? FWIW, I lived most of my life in Baltimore City – three people dead? Were I came from we called that a relatively peaceful Saturday Night.
And as I noted previously, this didn’t need to happen in the first place if we truly wanted to protect our National Security, but does this the type of event justify the limitless snooping by the NSA into all our communications? No. The Colorado Batman Movie nut job and the Sandy Hook Elementary School killer used guns to murder many more people than the Tsarnaev brothers, but does that justify further eroding of our 2nd Amendment Rights. Oh Hell No!
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Very well said, both of you. Thanks.