"There's nothing a leader wants more than a highly visible enemy to unite his or her people." This is a fair point. Though does that mean US citizens are now h

"There's nothing a leader wants more than a highly visible enemy to unite his or her people." This is a fair point. Though does that mean US citizens are now highly visible enemies that unite the US military? A friend of mine participated in a GoRuck challenge in Portland. The team my friend participated in were mostly military or former military, trudging along in one of the most liberal, anti-military cities around. There were folks throwing out taunts (weirdly, most of them were on the top floors of buildings and other relatively inaccessible places). She said it was the first time she felt like kind of resentment and hate the military feels from civilians. She watched her teammates bear with it stoically, focusing on the mission. It was a sort of honor and duty servicemen feel when they stake their lives and sacrifice their innocence, dirty their hands to protect folks back home, even when those same folks don't appreciate it, can't understand it. There's honor in that. Sadly, there are often agendas that abuses this. And there's always that nagging bit, that maybe all the stuff you've seen and done was for nothing. The real change, I think, isn't a reform of the NSA. It's a greater and greater openness and awareness of the insanity of war and conflict. The root of the problem here isn't that the NSA are spying on ordinary people, it's that we've created enmity and now we're having trouble getting disengaging from conflicts. It comes from ordinary people demanding security, it's not something that can be pinned exclusively on the military.