First, I am NOT a terrorist and I HATE terrorists. I think they should be shot at dawn, or at noon, whichever comes first. I would pull the trigger myself on anyone who knowingly harms innocents.
That said, the sad fact appears to be that the bastards have already won their war against America and the rest of the West.
Bush and the republican congress gave them the victory and we meekly and sickeningly acquiesced. NSA domestic spying and datamining, SWIFT, Patrot Act, Gitmo, airport searches... The list goes on and on, and those who protest are openly reviled as "soft on terror" and unpatriotic. (See Cheney's comments on Ned Lamont's win over Lieberman.)
Edit: I just want to add that the idea here is not to be politically popular. As Russ Feingold said in chastising the DLC, the idea is to get the right answer. I think that in order to do that and achieve the greatest good for the greatest number, we have to be willing to look at and admit some things that are unpleasant and even downright painful. If Democrats don't get the right answer, what's the point in getting us elected? At least I didn't trot out the old Ben Franklin quote about a nation that sacrifices liberty for security.
Jank2112's Aug 11 diary, in addition to being brilliantly snarky, sets out a lot of figures on what kills people in America these days and how many of us get killed in those ways. I was going to do all the research and put it in a nice little table, but he/she did it for me. Go look at the list in Jank2112's Aug 11 diary. Then come back here.
My point is this: We're a very big, very rich country. We've got lots of people and lots of stuff. We can afford to lose a few people and some of our stuff every now and then.
On the other hand, we have very few precious freedoms and civil liberties guaranteed to us by the Constitution, and we can't afford to lose those or any of them. Those guarantees and our (apparently "former") love for them are what make us (or used to anyway) unique in the history of the human race.
Yet Americans in huge numbers have been sheepishly willing to tolerate the systematic curtailment of our freedoms in the name of "The War On Terror," to the point that very little of our lives remains free and unmonitored.
If what the terrorists wanted to do was force us to change our lives, they have already won. Period. To paraphrase Ed Schultz's opening comments from August 10,
We have invaded 2 countries, spent more than 300 Billion dollars and sacrificed almost 2,600 American soldiers' lives, all in the name of the War on Terror, yet we can't even take a tube of toothpaste on an airliner!!!
Meanwhile, our political discourse has become as polarized, hateful and irrational as anyone I know can remember. We're eating our own young these days, to the point that anyone on either side who is willing to toss his or her hat in the political ring has got to be a glutton for punishment whose sanity should likely be questioned.
Where did we go wrong??
I would be willing to lose a few hundred or a few thousand people and some stuff to terrorist attacks every now and then if it meant the restoration of our freedoms. That is true even if I am personally one of those whose life is ended by a bomb.
At the same time, it is imperative that we continue to rely on great police work to prevent what we can the way the British and Pakistanis did, and we do it according to the ideals of freedom and justice that America used to hold to dear. If we do that, while resolutely refusing to change anything else in our lives, then we have won and the terrorists will lose. Their objective is not to kill us or break our stuff. Their objective is to scare us into giving away what we hold most dear, and little by little they are succeeding and winning, and everything we do short of good honest police work merely adds to their victory.
The other thing we need to rely on is actual diplomacy and respect for other members of the international community. My God, if we had spent the $300 Billion we've dumped into the occupation of Iraq on health care, education and foreign aid, we could be living in a pretty damned nice world!
It's not as though life in modern America is completely safe anyway, is it?
Oh hell. If I review this and change it one more time, it is going to start to become some sort of scholarly effort and consume my day. It was supposed to be a simple thing, and I need to go to work.