Posted on 02/07/2014 5:14:12 PM PST by Olog-hai
Your arguments are all rhetorical in nature and vapid.
We have tortured, we have murdered, we have detained people without probable cause, we are collecting everything electronic, we are searching cars, homes and people without probable cause, we have restricted peoples movement, we have secret courts, we have kidnapped, we have lied about all of this, senior government officials have perjured themselves (but nothing will happen and no one will even raise the question) and after disclosure we have rationalized it somehow with: national security and for the children while trying to tap into the patriotic spirit in order to get buy in by the public.
Using words like “ridiculous” and claiming that I am being casual and unrealistic is all rhetoric, stick to the facts, we did these things and are doing them still that I can show you with hundreds of credible sources to include government documents released. While you sit here in a conservative forum and talk about rights, minimalist government, the importance of the US Constitution, or morals, what position are you taking?
Totalitarianism comes in different flavors. You have a simplistic view of this.
This conversation is growing tiresome. Thank you, bye.
We play? In contrast to that saintly group of observers. ;-)
> ...we have become exactly that which we claimed was evil and wrong...
"Exactly"? Rhetorical excess again. No country is entirely good or evil. It's always a matter of degree. To call the United States and DDR flavors of totalitarianism, though, weakens the word totalitarianism. Matters of degree can be of crucial importance, enough for people to risk machine-gun fire to move from one country to another. We were better than the DDR -- or, if you prefer negative terms, not so bad -- and are now better than Radical Islam. And it's very important that our side not be weakened in that struggle. (Who dares to go among radical Islamists and urge restraint?)
Saying that they are rhetorical and vapid and proving it are two different things. If you believe what you said above does so, then fine. I'm willing to let things stand as they are.
The information is readily available via, first person accounts of whistle-blowers or the victims, disclosures by foreign governments, actual investigative journalism by foreign media (seldom the US MSM), and even is backed up by official US government documents that have been either disclosed by the government reluctantly (ACLU or others pulled it), or various leaks. For example:
http://cryptome.org/2013/11/snowden-tally.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files
(Kidnappings in Italy) http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/cia-entfuehrung-usa-draengten-italien-zur-justiz-beeinflussung-a-735050.html
(Kidnappings in Germany) http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/cia-entfuehrung-masri-verklagt-mazedonien-a-743543.html Since you likely can’t read German: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri - Yes, that is us that had someone kidnapped on sovereign foreign ground, taken to a black site where he was beaten, sodomized, stripped naked... and when we figured out he wasn’t a bad guy, we dumped his rear in the Balkans somewhere.
But no worries, when we do it, it’s for “national security” and “for the children,” so it can’t be wrong. We have to make exceptions, you know.
So you think the Brave new World comparison is an extreme over exaggeration? So while we suck in every electron, our own government is caught developing viruses (that allow them access to systems by breaking things and without probable cause), we talk about homosexual rights in Russia, and send a homosexual ambassador to Romania (another Eastern Orthodox nation) to lecture them about human rights and freedom.
Look, I got it, it’s the good Red White and Blue doing these things, so it can’t be wrong, that’s what patriotism, values, moral courage, logical consistency, fairness, transparency is all about, standing loyally to the side of a symbol like a flag that is waved in front of your face regardless of what they do. That is why this conversation is tiresome. Debating with you is like debating with a Jihadist, they also can accommodate any behaviors with their belief system as long as it achieves their end.
Let me tell you again, and this is no over exaggeration, if you were to ask people in Europe (except the UK), S. Korea, Japan, India, “who is the pariah, Russia or the US,” you would be shocked at the answer.
Bottom line-
The Patriot Act (newspeak) set the framework for much that ensued and it was under Bush where we began extraterritorial renditions (newspeak for kidnappings), enhanced interrogations (newspeak for torture) where we began blanket collection of all electronic data without warrant or probable cause...
This will be his legacy.
Despite Iraq and Afghanistan, even the budget, debt and the crashing of the economy, he would have had a favorable history written about him eventually. The economy will recover, the debt and budgets change, but the “police state” which has become a reality will live on. It’s his complete departure from the rule of law, basic Constitutional tenets, a permissive environment that allowed torture, kidnappings, etc to happen which will be what he will eventually be remembered by.
The fact that the Jews give him an award because he backed them and went to war in Iraq (we ended up doing the dirty work for them and killed thousands of Jihadists) is no surprise. But it also won’t change his eventual place in the history books as the greatest threat to liberty, and ironically this was a Conservative President.
> ...the US became a place no different than the “evil empire” it once referred too in the East.
I entered this discussion because of that preposterous statement. “No different”! No different — except for many thousands of things that are better.
Now you’re trying to prove it with leftist links about atrocities — ACLU, wikileaks.org, cryptome.org, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel. Are you sure you came to the right site? :-) The only source that’s not obviously leftist is Wikipedia, and particular articles there can be extremely biased too, depending on who’s controlling the editing.
Though I would question some figures and allegations, I don’t doubt that atrocities have occurred (and, in turn, excessive leniency has caused some prisoners to be released who were re-captured later among the terrorists). But where is your indignation over the atrocities being committed by the other side, a much worse side?
Our enemies are killing us anywhere in the world, and I favor killing them anywhere in the world. I rejoice that Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, and that a request for extradition wasn’t issued (which would probably have led to his being tipped off and escaping).
> Let me tell you again, and this is no over exaggeration, if you were to ask people in Europe (except the UK), S. Korea, Japan, India, “who is the pariah, Russia or the US,” you would be shocked at the answer.
You must not be paying attention. I said previously that I’ve been familiar with hostility toward the United States for a long time. I don’t assume it’s justified. There are many persons who concentrate on the bad about this country and ignore the good (while ignoring or downplaying the bad about our enemies, defending them every chance they get). Besides, it’s partly because of the United States that Russia isn’t as bad as before. The United States — Reagan in particular — kept the pressure on the USSR, which didn’t have a strong enough economy to keep up with the United States, and that helped bring about its economic collapse, and the breakup of the USSR.
> Since you likely can’t read German...
Again you’re not even comprehending what I’ve already said — “Several decades ago I acquired a reading knowledge of German by reading many novels and autobiographies, mostly 20th-century ones...” I’ve taught four languages (not including German, though I can read it with ease) and am very familiar with the opinions of foreigners. Don’t stereotype me as a benighted American, as many foreigners do.
> ...we ended up doing the dirty work for them [Jews] and killed thousands of Jihadists...
So killing Jihadists is dirty work fit only for Jews. Hmm.
[I’m not Jewish, but if I’d had the chance to kill the 9-11 attackers before the attack, I’d have killed every one of them.]
Anything you don’t like is a bad source, even official government reports or records, etc. Got it. Your sources (None) are fantastic, and you don’t even need a coherent argument for your position for that matter.
Did you know that the Brave New World sent their 7th homosexual ambassador overseas? Yes, Spain (Catholic) will now also get lectured to about freedom and human rights by a homo, of course James Costos found himself trying to answer why the US government collected over 60,000,000 Spanish phone conversations last year, without any probable cause, no warrant, no anything for that matter, not even a please or thank you for the Spanish government, or for the Spanish phone service providers: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/world/europe/spain-calls-in-us-ambassador-in-spying-scandal.html?_r=1&;
In the end your feelings regards national security won’t help your cause or others that justify the the means with the end. It’s a simple question of demographics, and as certain populations grow, so will the security threat, especially since the US no longer pursues assimilation and allows for mutually exclusive value systems to exist within her borders. Allowing a Trojan horse in (Islam & Chinese) and then creating a police state to deal with it, isn’t an answer although in the short term it has created thousands of jobs for bureaucrats and lined the pockets of large firms providing these technical solutions. There are parts of the IC that have grown by 300% or more since 9-11.
Did it prevent Nidal Hasan, the Boston Marathon, the Army recruiting station shootings or bombings? Nope, and it for sure won’t prevent the next OBL (an educated person) who will slip under the radar since they know what we do and how, they take active measure to go undetected, even before the leaks. Despite us violating every American’s basic rights and putting in place systems that are a danger to the republic itself, despite costing the economy tens of billions per year, the TSA alone is a 8.5 billion per year waste and you pay every time you buy an airline ticket, whether you know this or not. Other than catching some 19 year old idiot that is talking crap and may or may not actually do anything, we have actually accomplished little in terms of our security since 9-11, and expert testimony of America’s top IC folks will confirm this if one reads between the lines.
The solutions America pursues are the politically easy solutions, the politically expedient ones that “show immediate action” with little bad publicity (i.e. NOT changing immigration laws, real border security, returning to an assimilation approach in education, or actually killing these bad actors overseas instead of playing catch and release with them). The solutions are the ones that grow government and are highly profitable for large corporations (X-ray machines, intercept platforms, sniffers, tracking systems, drones, whatever) providing these technical solutions, but they are not actually providing security despite generating huge metrics that are impressive to those getting briefed. This is a weakness of the US in general, we are people that think there is a technical solution to every problem, we throw money at problems as if that’s a fix, multiculturalism and diversity are now preached as a strength, even systemic issues we try to fix with a Star Trek solution, and we are always myopic because the political process in the US forces everything into a three year window.
Ten years from now you will have as great a threat as today, or even greater (most likely the later) and this despite our government essentially bypassing the US Constitution. Trampling on the US Constitution is hardly a solution to this security conundrum and Franklin had it 100% right: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
> “7th homosexual ambassador”
I’m defending Bush’s security measures, not the social policies of Obama (who disliked Bush as much as you do). It’s Bush you blamed when you claimed “the US became a place no different than the ‘evil empire’ it once referred too in the East” and said “Thanks President Bush.” Like the Democrats you’re still blaming things on Bush.
> Anything you don’t like is a bad source, even official government [Evil Empire :-)] reports or records...
Since when are the links I criticized officially part of the government? I said, “Now you’re trying to prove it [that “the US became a place no different from the ‘Evil Empire’”] with leftist links about atrocities — ACLU, wikileaks.org, cryptome.org, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel.”
> “US government collected over 60,000,000 Spanish phone conversations last year”
But being Americans, they wouldn’t know enough Spanish to understand them, right? ;-) Spying on foreigners isn’t unconstitutional, and never has been, but do you really think that American security personnel are listening to 60 million Spanish phone conversations (with all the rest of the world to listen to as well)? I don’t even need to investigate that story to know that’s not happening. They’re not looking for gossip material about John Doe (or in this case
Fulano de Tal). Having gathered the data, though, they can filter out calls from suspected (or already confirmed) Islamist extremists, and then trace their contacts both here and abroad. I support that. That kind of information has prevented specific terrorist attacks, and saved lives.
> Other than catching some 19 year old idiot that is talking crap and may or may not actually do anything, we have actually accomplished little in terms of our security since 9-11...
Haven’t you noticed that there has been no repetition of 9-11-scale attacks? I don’t call that little. In the aftermath of 9-11 I expected that level of attacks or even worse. Many plots have been foiled, as we know just from the information released publicly when defendants were brought to trial (and I hope they’re keeping as much about security measures secret as possible).
No security measures, though, no matter how strict, can provide complete protection for three hundred million Americans out in the public, with no bodyguards, and relatively vulnerable. (A single individual can pick up a stick and kill five or ten persons, if they’re walking alone, before he’s likely to be caught.) The best that can be hoped for is to reduce the chances of catastrophic attack — by that I mean attacks that kill thousands or hundreds of thousands — and, if we’re lucky, have a slight effect on preventing lesser attacks.
> Did it prevent Nidal Hasan, the Boston Marathon...
Both are examples of how our security measures are too lax rather than too strict. In both instances there was plenty of information that indicated a threat.
> ...real border security, returning to an assimilation approach in education, or actually killing these bad actors overseas instead of playing catch and release with them...
I agree with you on that.
> ...we are people that think there is a technical solution to every problem...
Well, hope that there is, anyway. Improvements in technology are among the few things that buoy my spirits. When I go to buy a new computer, I’m pleased to see that the quality and performance keeps going up while the price goes down. (I started with a Radio Shack computer that had 4k of memory, and that used an ordinary cassette tape for storage. I paid $1600 for my “really good” pc, and thought I had a lot of storage space — with a 40mb disk drive. :-) Now many single files are bigger than that.)
I agree with you, though, that there’s a limit to how long machines getting better can compensate for people getting worse. Hence my earlier comment, “I think the major risk to the country, though, comes from changes in our society itself (not from a particular law or regulation, however strengthened by improved technology). The people still have the power to push back the encroachments of government, but will they?”
> Franklin had it 100% right: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
We’re wasting time going over the same ground. I was the one who brought up that quotation previously, and said it “...doesn’t apply to temporarily giving up some liberty to protect the country, which history shows has happened often.” I cited many historical examples starting with the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 1700s, and continuing with Lincoln (Civil War), Wilson (WWI), and Roosevelt (WWII). The people themselves determine how long such measures last.
I favor post-9-11 measures directed against Islamist terrorists. Any power can be abused, though. If Obama tries to include ordinary political opposition under the label “domestic terrorism” — e.g., the Tea Party, and the political right in general -— he’ll find that half the country opposes him.
With the cover of the mainstream media he can get away with isolated abuses, but attempts to crush the political opposition to the degree that it happened in the DDR and the rest of the “Evil Empire” would lead to a civil war (against many millions of armed Americans) — if it ever got that far, and I don’t think it would. Long before that point millions of persons — currently apathetic persons — would take to the streets in civil opposition, and bring the country to a standstill. Such a dictatorship would be impossible at the current time.
I agree that there are no guarantees for the future, though. Rather than being imposed from the top, a dictatorship could gradually come about through the people acquiescing in continued infringements of their rights — giving up freedom in return for dependency on the government. I support surveillance directed at foreign terrorist groups and their allies in this country, but oppose attempts to crush legitimate domestic opposition. The country can be no stronger than its people. It will be up to the people whether those laws — or any laws — are misapplied.
Some misapplication is to be expected, of course, because laws must be enforced by human beings, and all human beings are imperfect. Differences of degree matter, though — are crucial in determining the quality of life of a country’s people. That’s the main point I’ve been making since the very beginning.
You’re not addressing the problem, only the consequences/effects of
it. The problem is a shift in demographics which hasn’t been addressed,
and in fact is today even a bigger concern than at 9-11 and it will be this
demographic that will cause conflict, no matter how much security you have,
see Israel as an example. The US went 225 years without a 9-11 style
attack and with no big brother. Today we have big brother and we are still
seeing attacks, which we attempt to politically down play. Let’s continue
this discussion when the next 9-11 style event happens, because it’s a mere
matter of time.
You lay enormous trust in government by giving them powers that by design
were abridged by our Founding Fathers and explicitly addressed in the
Constitution (warrantless searches, due process, implied privacy). There
have been already examples of misuse of these powers and it is easy to find
a plethora of other examples in history and present in our own very country
where when government has the power, they will use it, i.e. IRS. You need
to essentially argue that man is inherently well intentioned, or that we
Americans are somehow special or different, which we are not, and our
founding fathers knew this too. Greed, wrath, envy, lust, sloth, gluttony
and pride (human nature) are universal and centralized systems of absolute
power corrupt, i.e. Soviet Union.
You are rationalizing the means through the end with the surveillance state
et al, and you can’t really say we are any more secure today than at 9-11
(as a result of the massive security apparatus we built in the US) not the
actions of our armed forces which have made a difference and possibly
bought us some time. You have to be logically inconsistent, break existing laws, violate basic Constitutional tenets, depart from classic American principals of
governance, cheat, lie, steal, double cross our allies,
suppress our own citizens first amendment rights, senior government
officials commit perjury in the process, we have become one of the less transparent, incur an enormous economic cost which goes
into the 30 - 50 billion per year (TSA alone is 8.5 billion) and it’s all
OK for what amounts to a “feeling” of security.
After they do a bus bomb, do we expand the TSA to monitor buses (Israel,
London etc)? What about a train bomb (Madrid)? Train stations, theaters,
schools (Russia)? You cannot read peoples minds, you cannot cover every
possible venue, you cannot ban every tool or substance that can potentially
be used in an evil way, the bad guys study you too and how to over come
your security measures; and in the end you simply have to remove the bad
guys from the equation by controlling who you let in, forcing those that
are here to assimilate, or killing the bad guys overseas. Robbing ever
American citizen of their rights is the easy solution and one that huge
government bureaucracies endorse as well as major government vendors that
benefit from the massive government spending, but these are not really
solutions. The American conservative is today not unlike his Euro
counterpart, he is still an advocate of big government and a small
powerless individual, only the beneficiaries are different between Democrat
and Republican. One will spend, tax and step on a Constitution for
security, while the other will do it for welfare. Neither is concerned
with the Constitution or a minimalist government, not really.
If you have people inside your own borders that have a propensity to
violence, embrace a philosophy which is fundamentally opposed to the
liberal western society, democracy, and the prevailing values which are
Judea-Christian and reflected in a Constitution, don’t be surprised when
things go boom. Your argument will prevail because that’s the low fruit
which politicians will grab, it will make some a lot of money, the
government establishment sees this as a way to expand, and it doesn’t go
against the feel good diversity/multiculturalism (there is no such thing as
the multicultural society) of the last years, but like the war on drugs, it
will create a huge cost and bring no results long term. What you will see
is 30 - 50 billion per year spent, gross violations of the US Constitution,
and the slow trickle of terror attacks until the next big one happens, at
which point we all will need to act as if we’re surprised.
The Great One had something to say about the end justifying the means if this means violating moral or Constitutional tenets (start at 4:16 and reflect that off what he says at 5:18):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaN_qjih08
In the Cold War, and under Reagan, we were seen as saber rattlers, cowboys,
but we were still regarded as the “good guys.” Not today. The differences
between us and the Russians are indistinguishable today because both have
the exact same philosophy in how the ends justify the means (what Reagan addresses). Our methods are the same, even our arguments are the same, but we are somehow magically better than they are, at least in the minds of some here. Arguments that one is better than the other are merely based on some material benefit in one over the other, or belief in some sort of superiority in cause demonstrated through nothing other than rhetoric. You don’t have a moral argument, all you can do is use polemics, because you cannot win this debate on the merits of the facts: we have kidnapped, tortured, done mass warrant-less searches, have secret courts, hold/detain people indefinitely, deny people a right to counsel, restrict peoples free movements, intimidate and bully people into silence (law abiding citizens) or threaten them with violations of laws that are secret (NSLs), we have even murdered (handed people over we knew would be killed in places like Jordan or Egypt which did extra special interrogations for us), and then we lie and even commit perjury regards our actions for which no one will be held accountable and if anyone says anything it’s treason at worst, a violation of handling classified materials which will land someone in prison, or without a job at best. How is this different from the Stasi? It isn’t.
If we are attacked tomorrow in a 9-11 style, how many do you think will come to our aid/side as in 2001? Even our allies will turn their back on us today.
> Let’s continue this discussion when the next 9-11 style event happens, because it’s a mere matter of time.
Note that I said “reduce the chances of catastrophic attack” not guarantee our safety. “No security measures...no matter how strict, can provide complete protection...” I don’t think our security measures have been strong enough, though. The Nidal Hasan and Boston Marathon attacks show that. If another attack occurs, it will more likely be a indication of that (as the 9-11 attack itself was).
I won’t write a long response to some of the other points you raise because we keep going over much of the same ground. I’ll stand by what I said previously.
Actually you haven’t addressed anything, literally.
You haven’t addressed the problem, only the symptoms, and you’re willing to address these symptoms with means that threaten the very life of the organism itself, the republic. The actions we have taken to “secure” ourselves from a future attack, are far more dangerous to the republic than any law abridging the second amendment (to include if we outright confiscate all privately owned fire arms), but because this is all in the background and veiled with the American flag (How can you be against the “Patriot Act?”), no one cares. This is a threat to the very concept of what a republic is, and it sets the stage for a turn key totalitarian state. There will be no tree of liberty when the state knows everything.
There was a slow trickle of attacks before 9-11, just like there is a slow trickle of attacks today, and eventually, no matter what you try to do, you will wake up reading about a big crater in a city somewhere again. The real issue is one that involves letting in millions of people who have a culture that is fundamentally at odds with Western liberal society, the democratic process, and the basic Constitutional tenets that we once believed in. The systems we have created will be no more effective than in Israel, where you have even greater security measures than here. Israel is a good predictor of our future, and what you really are seeing today is the same issue that Israel faced some 50 years ago exported to the West as Muslim populations in the West have grown. It is a clash of civilizations, but we just don’t want to acknowledge it as such, so everything has become an act of home grown terrorism or work place violence, where the media leaves out the names of the culprits in their reporting if they sound Arab, even as they scream “Allah Akbar” while shooting the place up.
Buddy, this isn’t to much unlike the Matrix where you’re asked what pill you want to swallow. There have been 34 (thirty four) attacks in the US since 9-11 that can be defined as terrorist in nature and where it was ideology (belief system) that was at work. Not one, or two or even three, thirty four. Check it up. You have mutually exclusive idea’s at work when it comes to crime and punishment, the role of women in society, education, tolerance of religions, taxes, free speech, even diet, dress, arts and entertainment etc. This proselytizing that diversity is our strength and ignoring what is actually happening isn’t going to change the inevitable outcome if we don’t change our trajectory.
There are societies that have existed for a very long time and will still be around after we have self destructed despite our processes, systems, willingness to throw lots of money at problems, creation of new agencies, usurping the Constitution, and love affair with technical solutions to all our security concerns: http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/schweiz-volksabstimmung104.html
> Actually you haven’t addressed anything, literally.
How disappointing — all that writing, and I haven’t addressed anything. :-) Actually I believe I’ve addressed the original topics under dispute well enough that I won’t add anything more.
As for the cultural clashes, I agree with most of what you said. I support some levels of immigration from individuals not antagonistic to the prevailing values of the destination countries, but agree that accepting large numbers of persons who oppose them is unwise and even dangerous. It appears that the Swiss (a slight majority, anyway) are having second thoughts about it themselves.
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