The War on Terror Is America's Mania

[n2doc]

A Commentary By Klaus Brinkbäumer
The NSA spying scandal shows that America's pursuit of terrorists has turned into a mania. Spying on citizens is as monstrous and unlawful as Guantanamo Bay and drone warfare. The German government's response has been woefully weak.

America is sick. September 11 left it wounded and unsettled -- that's been obvious for nearly 12 years -- but we are only now finding out just how grave the illness really is. The actions of the NSA exposed more than just the telephone conversations and digital lives of many millions of people. The global spying scandal shows that the US has become manic, that it is behaving pathologically, invasively. Its actions are entirely out of proportion to the danger.

Since 2005, an average of 23 Americans per year have been killed through terrorism, mostly outside of the US. "More Americans die of falling televisions and other appliances than from terrorism," writes Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, and "15 times as many die by falling off ladders." The US has spent $8 trillion on the military and homeland security since 2001.
America has other threats. The true short-term danger is homegrown: More than 30,000 Americans are killed by firearms every year. An American child is 13 times more likely to be shot than a child in another industrialized country. When it comes to combating the problem, President Barack Obama and Congress are doing very little -- or, to be fair, nothing at all. They talk about it every now and then, after every killing spree. The gun lobby, incurably ill, counters that the weapons are necessary for self-defense.

And when it comes to real long-term dangers, such as climate change, America, its prime perpetrator, does nothing -- or, to be fair, too little too late.

more

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-commentary-on-us-internet-surveillance-a-911256.html

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. The War on Terror is mostly about the money and then about the power to protect the money

The MIC and the 1%'ers realized a few decades ago how much money could be made by sending millions of American jobs to the once hated communists in China. Since the MIC still needed a boogieman to keep the rivers of money flowing, their deep thinkers hit upon the idea of making the next great enemy of the American people a stateless, amorphous one that will last forever. Why base your existence on an enemy that just up and crumbles as the Soviets did? Al Queda was the perfect creation. It will never be defeated. The era of perpetual war began on 9/11 and it will never go away which insures a never ending stream of money to the MIC.

[truth2power]

2. It's about "the money and the power to protect the money". About as true as anything I've read..

And the only real terrorists I know of are in Washington D.C.

[n2doc]

3. The Terrorists are all around us

One example:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023271753

[90-percent]

4. The WOT is mutually exclusive to "keeping Americans safe"

You have choice;

1. Build a surveillance state infrastructure (that shreds the Constitution we've fought many many wars to protect, including the 500,000 dead Civil War) to prevent a twice in the history of America terrorist attack on the US mainland (Pearl Harbor and 9/11) which resulted in the loss of perhaps 6,000 souls. over a 60 year period.

or

2. Develop programs to lower the 500,000 deaths per year of preventable causes. (see link for numerical details) If we assume that death rate has been constant for the last 60 years, then we lost 30,000,000 (thirty million) lives in the same period of time we lost 6,000 to terrorism.

The numerical magnitude of #2 about is 5,000 times greater than #1.

This whole bullshit "War on Terror" is kinda like spending trillions of dollars to prevent death by hangnails instead of death by cancer.

9-11 seems to have been used by our government entirely to repress their own citizens and strip them of their Constitutional Rights! Especially since our conduct in the Middle East since 9-11 is nothing more than a blowback factory to insure we will suffer from terrorism for many generations to come.

we sure got some Machiavellian sociopaths running the planet these days, don't we? Our world leaders are all Dick Cheney's now!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3000300

-90% Jimmy

[yurbud]

5. The War on Terror is the excuse of the rich for Cold War levels of military spending and using that

military to take what they want from other countries.