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That's a fine-sounding statement, but unfortunately the September 11th attacks did destroy the America many of us grew up in. It gave the perfect excuse for unp

That's a fine-sounding statement, but unfortunately the September 11th attacks did destroy the America many of us grew up in. It gave the perfect excuse for unprecidented empire expansion into the Middle East, and expansion of domestic power far beyond anything balanced or reasonable, all in the name of safety. Which is to say, in the name of terror.

tptacek 13y ago
During the Cold War it wasn't simply the subtextual goal of the US to expand its influence in strategic regions but its outright goal; in fact, our problems in West Asia stem in large part from the Cold War and its idiotic attendant strategy of propping up despots to avoid Soviet communism. The Iraq War was a terrible blunder, but it pales in comparison to Vietnam, which inflicted horrible costs on the US but even worse costs on the Vietnamese and Cambodian people, whose civilian populations were carpet bombed with napalm. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. Speaking of which, if you're really ready to engage with the 20th Century, imagine what would have happened had the Soviets "won". Read about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It will be another 100 years, at least, until we're no longer feeling the immediate aftershocks of colonialism.
- sillysaurus 13y ago
  Why are we comparing blunders with even larger blunders? It sounds like you're saying "this isn't that bad." Why, though? It's still very bad, and should probably be opposed, not justified. Can you help me get into your head a bit?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Say the NSA really is reading all of our emails, and that that's happening because of 9/11. That would be an enormous setback for civil liberties. But it wouldn't be indicative of a terminal condition; our country has weathered worse, and what's important (over the long term) is that our compass points towards liberty and that we keep struggling to go where it points us.
    - jamesjporter 13y ago
      Thank you for bringing some sanity to the discussion. "our country has weathered worse" is true and an excellent way of putting all this shit in perspective.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - waterlesscloud 13y ago
    I believe he's saying the America you believe to be lost never existed.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Thank you.
      - sillysaurus 13y ago
        If it never existed, then it can't be true that our country's moral compass has been aligned toward civil liberties, unless we still haven't achieved that ideal after two centuries of struggle. I don't have a specific position that I'm defending. I'm trying to learn some more historical perspective, and to understand your political philosophy in general.
        tptacek 13y ago
        60 years is the blink of an eye in world historical terms. An eyeblink. 60 years ago, the color of your skin determined where on the bus you had to sit. In that contest, 20 years is the single beat of a heart. 20 years ago, the media was entirely controlled by a handful of corporations, and you had no means whatsoever of telling an audience as large as the one you have now that you think America died on 9/11. Say you want to make the NSA drama especially bad for Obama, and assert that the worst of their snooping is just a couple years old. A couple years. Just a few neurons have fired in that interval. Maybe wait for a few more before we rush to judgement at a world historical scale.
        enraged_camel 13y ago
        >>60 years is the blink of an eye in world historical terms. In world historical terms, yes. But not in US historical terms, which is what matters here.
  - danso 13y ago
    tptacek is arguing that we need to take a longview in addressing political and societal issues. You're arguing that nope, America is irrevocably fucked like it's never been fucked before since your existence on Earth. You may actually be right, depending on when you were born. If you were born in the 80s, then things weren't too bad (unless you were a homosexual or other estranged group, of course). I think tptacek is reasonable to counter that, a decade or two earlier, things were noticeably worse than they were now. That's not to say that he's justifying what's going on now with "well, this is fine, because Vietnam was way worse". You know who else thinks that the current period of time is absolutely the scariest, most dangerous time in American history? The kind of politicians who enact the laws that you are opposing.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  To add to your points on Iraq, I have always maintained we should never have gone. I opposed the war at its inception and hoped we could pull back before we became responsible for the wellbeing of the Iraqi people. This being said one thing that really differentiated Iraq from Vietnam was that when backed into a corner, Bush had one of his few shining moments as President when he tied the troop surge to political reforms aimed at a more inclusive Iraqi government. One of the problems in Vietnam was that we were so used to propping up despots we were unwilling to confront Diem on issues of governance. At least Bush learned from that lesson albeit late and with his back to the wall (and I think further it is pretty damning that Bush's finest moment was one that merely managed to contain a mess he created).
tomasien 13y ago
Unprecedented empire expansion? You must JUST be saying unprecedented into the Middle East if anything, I would even argue that. I'm a major, MAJOR opponent of the Iraq War especially, but it was arguably an empire expansion at it's grandest, and certainly not an unprecedented one.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Speaking of precedent, something something something Barbary Pirates something.
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  If you live in California, the irony of calling it "unprecedented empire expansion" would be quite thick.
einhverfr 13y ago
What is actually scary is that the expansion was not as dramatic as we tend to think. Consider the following: 1. Nixon signed the Banking Secrecy Act requiring banks to report suspicious transactions to the Treasury Department to fight organized crime. This was held to be Constitutional in California Bankers Association vs. Shultz. 2. Carter signed FISA, in a bid to contain Nixon-era domestic wiretapping. Under Carter you also see the rise of FBI Swat teams and expansion from there to local police forces. 3. Reagan asks for and gets a drug exception to Posse Comitatus, allowing the military to be directly involved in enforcing domestic narcotics law. Reagan also expands on Carter's SWAT programs by forming the outright military arm of the FBI known as the Hostage Rescue Team (involved in both Waco and Ruby Ridge, working aside the military in both cases under the drug exception to Posse Comitatus). 4. Clinton asks for and gets the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which provides for most of what was in the USAPATRIOT Act. Clinton Asks for the rest and a bill written by Biden fails to pass. Clinton also asked for a terrorism exception to Posse Comitatus and this also failed to pass Congress. 5. Bush, in the wake of 9/11, signs the USAPATRIOT Act into law, and embarks on Nixonesque wiretapping of Americans. Seeks to hold Americans without trial. 6. Obama sucedes in getting the Bush-era wiretaps legalized, and argues that Americans suspected of being in terrorist organizations can be killed anywhere in the world without trial. The point is that 9/11 was not a tipping point. It was not what destroyed this nation. This has been going on for a long time. It just started to be thrust into public discussion after 9/11. I am both optimistic and pessimistic on this. On one hand, we are losing what we need in order to recover this country, as the economics and politics are deeply interconnected. On the other hand, at least we are having the discussion which we were not having to the same extent under Clinton or Reagan.

tptacek 13y ago

During the Cold War it wasn't simply the subtextual goal of the US to expand its influence in strategic regions but its outright goal; in fact, our problems in West Asia stem in large part from the Cold War and its idiotic attendant strategy of propping up despots to avoid Soviet communism. The Iraq War was a terrible blunder, but it pales in comparison to Vietnam, which inflicted horrible costs on the US but even worse costs on the Vietnamese and Cambodian people, whose civilian populations were carpet bombed with napalm. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. Speaking of which, if you're really ready to engage with the 20th Century, imagine what would have happened had the Soviets "won". Read about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It will be another 100 years, at least, until we're no longer feeling the immediate aftershocks of colonialism.

sillysaurus 13y ago
Why are we comparing blunders with even larger blunders? It sounds like you're saying "this isn't that bad." Why, though? It's still very bad, and should probably be opposed, not justified. Can you help me get into your head a bit?
- tptacek 13y ago
  Say the NSA really is reading all of our emails, and that that's happening because of 9/11. That would be an enormous setback for civil liberties. But it wouldn't be indicative of a terminal condition; our country has weathered worse, and what's important (over the long term) is that our compass points towards liberty and that we keep struggling to go where it points us.
  - jamesjporter 13y ago
    Thank you for bringing some sanity to the discussion. "our country has weathered worse" is true and an excellent way of putting all this shit in perspective.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  I believe he's saying the America you believe to be lost never existed.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Thank you.
    - sillysaurus 13y ago
      If it never existed, then it can't be true that our country's moral compass has been aligned toward civil liberties, unless we still haven't achieved that ideal after two centuries of struggle. I don't have a specific position that I'm defending. I'm trying to learn some more historical perspective, and to understand your political philosophy in general.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        60 years is the blink of an eye in world historical terms. An eyeblink. 60 years ago, the color of your skin determined where on the bus you had to sit. In that contest, 20 years is the single beat of a heart. 20 years ago, the media was entirely controlled by a handful of corporations, and you had no means whatsoever of telling an audience as large as the one you have now that you think America died on 9/11. Say you want to make the NSA drama especially bad for Obama, and assert that the worst of their snooping is just a couple years old. A couple years. Just a few neurons have fired in that interval. Maybe wait for a few more before we rush to judgement at a world historical scale.
        enraged_camel 13y ago
        >>60 years is the blink of an eye in world historical terms. In world historical terms, yes. But not in US historical terms, which is what matters here.
- danso 13y ago
  tptacek is arguing that we need to take a longview in addressing political and societal issues. You're arguing that nope, America is irrevocably fucked like it's never been fucked before since your existence on Earth. You may actually be right, depending on when you were born. If you were born in the 80s, then things weren't too bad (unless you were a homosexual or other estranged group, of course). I think tptacek is reasonable to counter that, a decade or two earlier, things were noticeably worse than they were now. That's not to say that he's justifying what's going on now with "well, this is fine, because Vietnam was way worse". You know who else thinks that the current period of time is absolutely the scariest, most dangerous time in American history? The kind of politicians who enact the laws that you are opposing.
einhverfr 13y ago
To add to your points on Iraq, I have always maintained we should never have gone. I opposed the war at its inception and hoped we could pull back before we became responsible for the wellbeing of the Iraqi people. This being said one thing that really differentiated Iraq from Vietnam was that when backed into a corner, Bush had one of his few shining moments as President when he tied the troop surge to political reforms aimed at a more inclusive Iraqi government. One of the problems in Vietnam was that we were so used to propping up despots we were unwilling to confront Diem on issues of governance. At least Bush learned from that lesson albeit late and with his back to the wall (and I think further it is pretty damning that Bush's finest moment was one that merely managed to contain a mess he created).

tomasien 13y ago

Unprecedented empire expansion? You must JUST be saying unprecedented into the Middle East if anything, I would even argue that. I'm a major, MAJOR opponent of the Iraq War especially, but it was arguably an empire expansion at it's grandest, and certainly not an unprecedented one.

tptacek 13y ago
Speaking of precedent, something something something Barbary Pirates something.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
If you live in California, the irony of calling it "unprecedented empire expansion" would be quite thick.

einhverfr 13y ago

What is actually scary is that the expansion was not as dramatic as we tend to think. Consider the following: 1. Nixon signed the Banking Secrecy Act requiring banks to report suspicious transactions to the Treasury Department to fight organized crime. This was held to be Constitutional in California Bankers Association vs. Shultz. 2. Carter signed FISA, in a bid to contain Nixon-era domestic wiretapping. Under Carter you also see the rise of FBI Swat teams and expansion from there to local police forces. 3. Reagan asks for and gets a drug exception to Posse Comitatus, allowing the military to be directly involved in enforcing domestic narcotics law. Reagan also expands on Carter's SWAT programs by forming the outright military arm of the FBI known as the Hostage Rescue Team (involved in both Waco and Ruby Ridge, working aside the military in both cases under the drug exception to Posse Comitatus). 4. Clinton asks for and gets the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which provides for most of what was in the USAPATRIOT Act. Clinton Asks for the rest and a bill written by Biden fails to pass. Clinton also asked for a terrorism exception to Posse Comitatus and this also failed to pass Congress. 5. Bush, in the wake of 9/11, signs the USAPATRIOT Act into law, and embarks on Nixonesque wiretapping of Americans. Seeks to hold Americans without trial. 6. Obama sucedes in getting the Bush-era wiretaps legalized, and argues that Americans suspected of being in terrorist organizations can be killed anywhere in the world without trial. The point is that 9/11 was not a tipping point. It was not what destroyed this nation. This has been going on for a long time. It just started to be thrust into public discussion after 9/11. I am both optimistic and pessimistic on this. On one hand, we are losing what we need in order to recover this country, as the economics and politics are deeply interconnected. On the other hand, at least we are having the discussion which we were not having to the same extent under Clinton or Reagan.