An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times tells it like it is.
Sarah Chayes, a former assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff explains how our national obsession with terrorism has led to us being less free and less safe.
For more than a decade, the U.S. government has been focused on one type of threat above all others: terrorism. This obsession has not only been used to justify an erosion of Americans’ privacy, it has opened them to other dangers and, paradoxically, made it easier for terrorists to achieve success. (source)
She explains how our reaction to 9/11 played in to Bin Laden’s plans.
Demanding zero risk of terrorism at home, moreover, makes it easier for terrorists to succeed. If the bar is set at zero, then a single successful attack means the terrorists have triumphed. And it is likely to produce the kind of dramatic overreaction that, according to Osama bin Laden’s own writings, is Al Qaeda’s ultimate aim: disrupting the U.S. economy, obtaining a disproportionate psychological impact and eroding the trademark values and liberties of U.S. society. (source)
Bin Laden thanks you for being such stupid cowards.
