\n| \n For a country at war, America seems to be going about
\n its business pretty much as usual. Despite the best efforts of the government and
\n the MSM to ratchet up a low-grade atmosphere of fear and insecurity,
\n the better to capture eyeballs and cowering hearts, the public seems
\n to be back to its normal diet of Desperate Housewives and desperate politicians.
\n For the most part, besides arriving
\n a bit
\n earlier at the airport, our lives haven’t changed too much. Yet. <\/p>\n Our borders are still porous. Our vital infrastructure, our food
\n chain, our shipping and energy industries are still venerable and largely
\n unprotected. We are still able, and encouraged, to travel, fly, drive,
\n move, invent, explore. In terms of movement and the capacity to
\n develop and support the most bizarre and extreme examples of human individuality
\n ever seen in one place, we still live in the freest
\n society in the history of the planet. <\/p>\n While war rages in Iraq, genocide stalks Africa, and a nuclear shadow
\n falls across Asia, we here in the homeland stand tall, inviolate, the
\n legendary American capacity for regeneration and recovery almost having
\n recovered from 9\/11 without having suffered any subsequent violations
\n or penetrations. Even terrorist threats<\/i> are at their lowest level since before that attack. <\/p>\n There are many tempting explanations for the relative calm and absence
\n of the much-predicted follow-up terrorist attacks on American soil. The
\n terrorists are on the run, too preoccupied with avoiding death or capture
\n to foment mischief. The Bush doctrine of hunting them down and engaging
\n them in their home bases is indeed protecting the heartland from violence.
\n We have killed and captured so many of the key figures in Al Queda that
\n they are unable to mount complicated attacks. The success of the Department
\n of Homeland Security in monitoring targeted individuals and groups and
\n coordinating security agencies within the United States is keeping us safe. <\/p>\n Let us propose an alternative explanation. What if the terrorist Brain
\n Trust (bin Laden and his inner circle) realize that right now striking
\n within the United States would NOT be in their best interests. Right
\n now, they can still operate more or less freely within the protected
\n environment of North America. Given the central role of the US and its
\n technological infrastructure, they need our own country as a base to
\n organize their attacks on it. <\/p>\n They certainly COULD attack us at home if they wanted to. Recent
\n bloody attacks in Spain, Egypt and Sri Lanka show that they can basically
\n strike anywhere, any time. But think what would happen if they made some
\n verify able strikes in the US. Homeland Security Act part II would make
\n the first part look like local anti-littering regulations. Terrorists would
\n lose the ability to move and operate freely in the US. Unfortunately,
\n so would the rest of us. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, by venting their wrath on the minions of the Bush junta
\n in Iraq, where they are indeed killing dozens every day, throwing suicide
\n bombers at us in a seemingly inexhaustible supply of short-order martyrs,
\n they are fueling the fire and slowly eating away at American resolve
\n as we once again see our nation’s youth gutted and left to die on harsh,
\n ungrateful foreign shores. <\/p>\n In addition, we are sure our enemies have noticed that we are doing a fine
\n job of beating ourselves up and self-immolating as our economy heads
\n for the crapper, the out-of-control energy industry spirals into terminal
\n power-lust and the political class have fallen to rabid scrabbling over
\n the spoils of the security power grab. If your enemy is falling apart,
\n don’t give him an excuse to pull himself together. <\/p>\n Make no mistake, the terrorists are planning something big. They
\n won’t be content with an isolated attack, or bringing down a few planes. They
\n are saving up for something big, something as paradigm shifting as 9\/11. These
\n people have shown their ability to paint on a large canvas. And
\n they know that after their next move, the game will change forever once
\n again, and many of the freedoms we as Americans take for granted, and
\n extend to visitors, will be things of the past. <\/p>\n After the next one, the proposed national I.D. cards will be a fact,
\n a requirement, and we will all be carrying around a smart chip with our
\n biodata and
\n who knows what else. Be prepared to present this card at airposts, roadblocks,
\n post offices, demonstrations, train stations, sporting events and when
\n voting.<\/p>\n After the next one, our border will close tighter than the welfare office
\n on Easter Sunday. We will have armed Minutemen and maniacal militias
\n patrolling every inch of the Mexican and Canadian borders. <\/p>\n After the next one, we would not like to be even a legal alien in most
\n parts of the US, especially if we wore a turban or spoke with an accent. <\/p>\n After the next one we will have to give a DNA sample to get anywhere
\n near an airport, where the cheapest tickets will cost over $1,000, after
\n security surcharges <\/p>\n After the next one, the Bushies will rush their slate of hanging
\n judges through the Congress as fast as they can get the votes on the
\n record, and wiretaps will become easier to get than parking tickets. <\/p>\n After the next one, the 4th amendment will be amended to include "except
\n in cases of national security" and we will all cheer. <\/p>\n After the next one, every web site you visit, every google search you
\n perform, every document you check out of the library, every charge on
\n your Visa card and every phone number you call will go into a central
\n data backup. But don’t worry, only your government will have access
\n to it, and only with the permission of one of the above mentioned hanging
\n judges. <\/p>\n After the next one the American landscape will be so altered that the
\nlast four years will be seen as a golden interregnum, like the blessed puddle
\n of denial between the diagnosis of fatal illness and the appearance of
\n major symptoms.<\/p>\n It seems like nothing is happening right now, because the important
\n movements are still happening behind the scenes, out of sight of a mesmerized
\n public. But the mechanisms are being put into place, the draft
\n legislation is being written, the pieces are being arranged on the chessboard. <\/p>\n When the change comes it will be swift and irresistible. It is
\n probably best not to dwell too much on the unfortunate transformation
\n about to be thrust on our poor, unsuspecting asses, as it is probably
\n too late to do anything about it now. Better to enjoy our last few months
\n or years of unencumbered, carefree innocence before the reality of our
\n new servitude becomes painfully clear.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a country at war, America seems to be going about its business pretty much as usual. Despite the best efforts of the government and the MSM to ratchet up a low-grade atmosphere of fear and insecurity, the better to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-screeds"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |