No one says it's a myth that the Muslim world is up in arms against us for killing a million civilian Iraqis, and a half-million of their children before that from a decade of medical sanctions.
What critics say is that "terrorism" has never been defined. Laws like the Patriot Act allow government to spy on anyone who might be a "terrorist." Since those laws don't define the word, the word means everyone in the country, since the new laws also allow local FBI offices to wiretap without getting court approval.
It takes courage to buck the system. Every word on your cell phone, e-mails, and message boards are now searched by computers for key words and behavioral patterns, in order to prevent about 1 explosion per year, killing a small number of people every few years..."every few years" because in many of the annual acts prevented, it is shown later that they wouldn't have killed anyone, since the bomber was incompetent (e.g. using the wrong chemicals).
Yes.
Get out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and this will end.
No.
Ending those two wars doesn't fix anything. "Forgive and forget" isn't exactly the thought process in the Middle East. These are people that still, to this day, see world events through the lens of the freaking
crusades. Anger and resentment for the wars in Iraq and (and less so) Afghanistan will live on forever, in almost all Middle Easterners, not just the extremists.
And besides, this whole terrorism mess isn't about Iraq and Afghanistan. It's been going on for a long time. The Middle East is in a bad way right now, and it is going to hell in a hand basket when the oil runs out. What we're seeing right now in terms of extremism isn't about American imperialism or even Israeli-Palestine (but those issues make great talking points for extremists to garner public sympathy.) It's just a natural result of a once mighty empire crumbling. Power-hungry people will always be there to fill the void.
Before the US started provoking Muslims by killing and torturing them en masse, there was one similar event in this country, ever--it was against one of NYC's Twin Towers.
As far as terrorism on American soil, I think that our perception of terrorism has changed, which results from (and in) increased media coverage. It's like school shootings in the 1990s. Overall, they were way down from the 70s and 80s, but we focused so much attention on them, they seemed like they were a huge problem.
Meanwhile, all Americans have lost our freedom of privacy, to save a couple of lives per year.
I don't think that's why. Our freedom of privacy was going to be lost anyway, but when terrorism is used as an excuse (by those taking it away) it enables them to do so publicly. Otherwise, it would have been done so privately. Doing it publicly acclimates people to it (you can already see that in this very thread), gets them used to the idea of being watched and that being o.k. (reality TV, youtube, social networking are also good examples of this.) It had to be done publicly, or it wouldn't have had the intended effect, which is to gradually change the culture.
Oh, and is anyone else having trouble not cringing every time BGrantFan and HAAK72 get into a little tiff? Yeesh.
