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Originally posted by Witness:
Terrorism is a threat to National Security.

I don't think any terrorist group will ever destroy the United States, that's a job either for the Americans themselves or some theoretical emerging superpower at some point in the future.

But I don't think that any campaign of bombings, assassinations or anthrax letters will end the United States. Although fear of them certainly might.

In the last seven years we've watched the United States abandon long held values for the illusion of safety. Suddenly it's alright if the government listens in on your phone calls, goes through your mail or takes you into custody indefinitely without having enough evidence to actually charge you. The fact that these actions are, or very recently were, in breach of the law are apparently irrelevant.

It's been frightening to watch the United States cast off its disguise and start performing the actions I've read about for years in the open instead of trying to keep them in the shadows. Ten years ago if someone had told me about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the renditions and secret U.S. prisons I would have told them to put down the crack pipe. Now they're taken for granted.

The United States has done the unthinkable. It invaded a sovereign nation against the will of most of the world, and played games of misdirection with evidence or outright fabricated it to justify it's conduct. 1,000,000 dead and 4,000,000 in exile from a starting population smaller than Australia.

Osama bin Laden has owned us for over half a decade, and we're only just beginning to realize it.

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Originally posted by UberDog:

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Originally posted by theminx:
I lurve DFW.

His analogy to the car is apt; however, the America of his idea is also the America that requires endless disclosure statements and graphic warnings not to run your hairdryer in the bathtub, and cautions that the filling in a Hot Apple Pie is hot.

I own A Broom of the System. Should I read that first or buy Infinite Jest and read that first?

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What I believe you have said here is that a country's reaction to terrorism can be a threat to national security while the acts themselves are not.

Is that correct?

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Originally posted by UberDog:
What I believe you have said here is that a country's reaction to terrorism can be a threat to national security while the acts themselves are not.

Is that correct?

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Particularly since the reactions thus far have been pretty much what was intended.

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Originally posted by Witness:

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Originally posted by UberDog:
What I believe you have said here is that a country's reaction to terrorism can be a threat to national security while the acts themselves are not.

Is that correct?

Precisely, but I find it impossible to separate the reaction from terrorism from the acts themselves. Particularly since the reactions thus far have been pretty much what was intended.

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Originally posted by RUR:
Whose "terror"?

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Originally posted by UberDog:

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Originally posted by Witness:

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Originally posted by UberDog:
What I believe you have said here is that a country's reaction to terrorism can be a threat to national security while the acts themselves are not.

Is that correct?

Precisely, but I find it impossible to separate the reaction from terrorism from the acts themselves. Particularly since the reactions thus far have been pretty much what was intended.

UK War on Terror is Over:

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,159067,00.html

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Originally posted by Clark Nova:

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The Future of the American Idea
November 2007
Atlantic Monthly
by David Foster Wallace
Just Asking

Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea* one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”?* In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?

In the absence of such a conversation, can we trust our elected leaders to value and protect the American idea as they act to secure the homeland? What are the effects on the American idea of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Patriot Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance, Executive Order 13233, corporate contractors performing military functions, the Military Commissions Act, NSPD 51, etc., etc.? Assume for a moment that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and property safer—are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate on whether they’re worth it? Was there no such debate because we’re not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we actually become so selfish and scared that we don’t even want to consider whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?

FOOTNOTES:
1. Given the strict Gramm-Rudmanewque space limit here, let’s just please all agree that we generally know what this term connotes—an open society, consent of the governed, enumerated powers, Federalist 10, pluralism, due process, transparency … the whole democratic roil.

2. (This phrase is Lincoln’s, more or less)

David Foster Wallace is the author of several books, including Infinite Jest (1996), A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997), and Consider the Lobster (2005).

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Around the North part of the country it is a proverb that says: "when the ox seems dumb, its horn strike is painful" ("quando o touro é sonso, a chifrada é dolorida").

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I guess that the best tactic to fight terrorism is derived from that of Golda Meir after Munich 1972. Just don't do that much noise and send the secret service to kill the heads of the terrorist groups. After all, it is part of the doctrine CIA transfered to the military governments of LA in the 60ies and 70ies: when the head is cut, the body falls.

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Portuguese is the superior language; too bad we're stuck with English.

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But the fact is that silently getting rid of terrorist leadership is much better than bombing and invading Iraq...

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(BTW, what the hell Iraq had to do with 9/11???).

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Originally posted by Boogerhead:
Didn't prosecuting terrorism as a criminal act sort of create conditions conductive to 9/11? The Feebie's and Spooks were tripping all over each other, hiding things in order to get credit for the "bust" while the other department did the same?

I don't think we're cooperative enough to make it work. Maybe in this post 9/11 world we can learn, but we have to rewrite reality after the Monkey leaves office. This will take the better part of a century.