I thought my country was going crazy before 9/11. Turns out I was still young, and “crazy” was one of those things I had to learn as I got older.
I can work up a case for pre-9/11 crazy. I was appalled by Ruby Ridge and Waco. I doubted the wisdom of Balkan nation building. I thought the National Security Homeland Industrial Complex Administration was already taking a little too much lebensraum. For my taste, anyway. Ah, to be alive, and young, when politics was only a matter of taste!
So what was what, back in the way-back-when? Vince Foster. The most important individual in politics, until that woman. Earnest college Republicans pressed their it-wasn’t-a-suicide conspiracy theories on me, in e-mails that still unselfconsciously bore a chain of “Fwd: FWD: Re: Fwd:”s in the subject. Like grandma, but creepier. It was one of the many reasons I wouldn’t ever be a College Republican.
And then The Day. Oh, The Day. I hate to sound like I’m belittling a genuine and horrible act of evil, with all of the associated loss. It was evil. For thousands of families, it was an awful and permanent loss.
But for a nation, 9/11 was perilously close to Aunt Ada Doom seeing something narsty in the woodshed. America, can you spare a Nagasaki? A Dresden? A London blitz?
9/11 wasn’t a tenth the size of the blitz, my dear countrymen. It wasn’t 1/300th of Auschwitz.
Grim calculus invites a cynical reply: Do we really have to wait until things get that bad before we get pissed off? Of course not. 9/11 deserved a forceful response. Even a pissed-off response. It didn’t deserve a crazy response—nothing does—but crazy is exactly what we got.
On the morning of 9/11, I opened Netscape to check out the New York Times. It was down, but stuff was down all the time in 2001. No biggie. I headed for class at Johns Hopkins. I first heard the news in the car.
Class was cancelled, so I headed to the Anne Arundel County Property Tax Office for an errand. It too was closed—the Anne Arundel County Property Tax Office being the terrorists’ next obvious target.
Things went downhill fast after that. This September 20, 2001 Reason interview with Robert Higgs is uncannily prescient:
[W]hen a crisis of major significance occurs–something as large-scale and pervasive as the Great Depression or the World Wars–there’s an overwhelming public demand for government to act. In the 20th century, every national emergency has seen federal government take unprecedented action to somehow allay the perceived threat to our security. These actions have taken a great many forms, but the common denominator is that they all entail the increased exercise of power by government over society and the economy. When the crisis ends, many of the emergency actions cease. But not all of them. Each emergency ratchets up the size and scope of the federal government. In some cases, agencies that had a very strict relation to the emergency transform to take on new missions…
We can expect thousands of reservists to be called to active duty and taken away from their ordinary jobs. We can expect the assignment of military forces to some unprecedented duties. It appears that some military units are going to be used for domestic police activities. It is clearly going to be the case that the FBI will become far more active in surveillance activities. The government will mount a variety of overseas actions requiring the armed forces, and perhaps a number of civilian employees, to attempt to kill, to disable, or to damage what are taken to be terrorist camps, facilities, or cadres. It is also fairly clear that the government is going to have to bail out the airline industry and maybe the insurance industry. When the government takes large-scale, unprecedented actions of this sort, unanticipated consequences always occur. Then the government has to expand even further to deal with those consequences.
I also share Jim Henley’s view that the anthrax letters changed America’s mindset permanently and for the worse:
When historians recollect the first decade of the 21st Century in tranquility, they will find it impossible to overstate the political impact of America’s most conveniently unsolved crime. The September 11, 2001 massacres were bad, but it was the anthrax attacks the following month that ramped up the “madness” … 9/11 was a shock. The anthrax attacks made terrorism feel like a siege. I think it’s possible that, absent the anthrax attacks, the Bush Administration might have failed to gin up the entirely equivocal support for the Iraq War that it managed.
Within the month, we had the USA-PATRIOT Act, a law that passed with only one dissenting vote in the Senate, though few if any legislators had read it at the time, and whose “USA” didn’t even stand for “United States of America.” Which was fitting, somehow. The sneak-and-peek provision of the USA-PATRIOT Act—necessary, we were told, only for this existential terrorist threat—is nowadays overwhelmingly used to search for drugs. Emergency powers become ordinary. But have we ever, even once, been granted an emergency freedom?
It was around the same time that Maureen Dowd went from a catty gossip columnist who didn’t really belong on the Times op-ed page—to a gibbering, Cipro-popping paranoiac with a yearning for big, manly, Republican politicians who would cuddle her in their burly arms after punching out a few terrorists and throwing back a slug of whiskey. Now she really didn’t belong on the Times op-ed page. But there she would stay, column after sordid column. If Osama bin Laden had subscribed to the Times, he would have been a happy man indeed. (I hear Tom Friedman is better in translation. He’d have to be.)
What was next? A thick green vapor would envelop New York, suffocating millions. Now, chemical weapons can’t actually do this; powers of three are unkind to volumetric, air-dispersed agents. So are wind, sun, rain, and time. Chemical weapons are a hellish poison, in Churchill’s phrase, but they aren’t nukes. A massive, well-organized, extremely lucky chemical attack kills several thousand at the outside, not millions. A more responsible government might have pointed this out, rather than advising the millions to buy duct tape. Which would have been, and was, useless in any case.
Still, people were scared, and “scared” needed a place to hang its hat. For a few weeks, duct tape was unavailable. Thousands got their first experience with sketchy online pharmacies. C-SPAN radio became even more of a freak show, which I hadn’t thought possible. Time magazine suggested gas masks, antibiotics, and hazmat suits, even atropine, but stopped short of Drager’s Civil Defense Set—able to sniff out airborne nerve gas, and yours for a cool $2,995. “It’s not just chatter, it’s a pattern,” said Senator Pat Roberts. A pattern of what? Chemicals, germs, nukes, radiologicals, UAVs, assassinations. When? After the hajj. Soon. Sometime. Right now. Who knows? Does it matter?
Travel changed, of course. A couple of weeks before 9/11, I had returned from a research trip in France. That flight would prove the last for me in a saner era. On my return to France post-9/11, a passenger overheard two tan-skinned men discussing something quietly in a foreign language. He notified an attendant. American fighter jets followed us over the Atlantic.
I tried to document this on the web. Since 9/11, there have been so many fighter jets scrambled for false alarms that I couldn’t even find my own.
We were detained at de Gaulle for many hours afterward. Our luggage was searched, crudely. Mine disappeared for days. I deplaned after business hours and couldn’t get my fellowship certified. Without so much as a toothbrush on hand, I went to the dorm where I’d hoped to live. Fast talk and pity got me a bed for the night. I was no stranger to France, but it was the first time anyone had pitied me for being an American.
September 11 was the day “Orwellian” stopped being an argument against anything. It became a checklist. My country started collecting various-sized bits of Nineteen Eighty-Four like so many grim commemorative postage stamps. Constant surveillance. Constant warfare. Constant suspicion. Last week’s enemy is this week’s friend, is next week’s enemy, and woe is you if you can’t keep up—Gadhafi, Putin, Arafat, Chirac. Censorship? Making steady progress. We didn’t get Victory Gin, but we did get Freedom Fries; close enough for government work. Oh yes, and torture. Because we are the greatest hegemonic power, and because we can do no wrong, and in the end, just because we fucking can, okay?
Who though is this “we”? It is the deepest, most festering wound of 9/11.
Someone does something shameful, somewhere, maybe just once, usually in secret. Someone’s data mining. Someone’s spying on citizens. Someone imprisons, with neither an indictment nor any other cover of law. Someone puts people on a secret plane, to a place where electrodes and power drills are the standard interrogation protocol. Someone cuts out the middleman and just tortures in place. Someone orders American citizens assassinated. Someone starts an illegal war.
In a braver time, these acts would have kindled a revolution.
Someone, however, is an agent of the state. Therefore someone wasn’t the real actor. No, we did it—that’s the core of the lie, right here, that that someone is us. Sooner or later, we find out about the thing we did. We say, in the awful light of morning, that we did it because we are fighting a dirty enemy, and maybe we have to embrace the dark side just a little bit if we’re going to win.
But really we did it because we were afraid. But really, we didn’t do it. But really, the ones who did it will keep right on doing it.
That’s what’s changed, post-9/11. In the end, we didn’t have the will to fight. We fought the terrorists, sure, and plenty of others who didn’t even attack us. But we didn’t have the will to fight as they took our civil liberties away. We didn’t even have the will to punish them afterward. The word “we” is the pawl on the ratchet of state power. It’s the little catch that ensures there’s no backsliding. The we clanks ever onward. The sun shines, the rain falls; the economy is good, or it’s bad. It doesn’t matter. The abuses haven’t gone away. We’ve mostly just gotten used to them.
—-
Image adapted from overWHAMmed. Licensed under Creative Commons. No endorsement is expressed or implied.
Excellent.Report
From time to time we are offered the chance to take a stand and perhaps, to make a difference.
But we rarely recognize these opportunities.
They come and go, and our well-reasoned excuses for demurring blind us to our complicity in our own imprisonment.Report
America, can you spare a Nagasaki? A Dresden? A London blitz?
9/11 wasn’t a tenth the size of the blitz, my dear countrymen. It wasn’t 1/300th of Auschwitz.
But it happened to “us,” and so it “changed everything.”Report
Kyle:
Yes 9/11 happened to us but during peacetime so I think the comparison to events during a war is BS.Report
What do you mean by peacetime? The US had been violently active in the Middle East for some time before the attacks on 9/11.Report
Kyle:
Yes we’ve been violently active for some time but so what? So what is your point, that OBL was justified in attacking innocent civilians? Last time I checked, he attacked us not us him but please correct me if I’m wrong.Report
The point is that 9/11 didn’t happen during “peacetime,” so your statement, “the comparison to events during a war is BS,” has no standing.Report
Kyle:
Even if I accept your point about us being at war which i don’t, you still can’t kill civilians like OBL did. Or have you forgotten that?
I’ll humor you and ask when this war started and who started it?Report
Scott,
What in my initial question gave the slightest shred of an impression that I might possibly think bin Laden justified?
I’ll humor you and ask when this war started and who started it?
When was the last time we had no military presence or threat of force in the Middle East?Report
So my analogies to Dresden and Nagasaki are reasonable, then.Report
No! You’re stilling not seeing the whole that was them this was us thing.Report
… unless you’re BP, in which case it’s business as usual. You’ve looked at Nigeria lately?Report
so shall we take the thousands of babies that an American company killed in south america, and compare it to that?
or shall we compare it to the Copper Wars and Pinochet? eliminating a democratically elected government during peacetime…Report
More deaths on 9/11 than Pearl Harbor. But we overreacted to that, too.Report
Our involvement in World War II had a just cause; I wouldn’t say everything our involvement entailed was just.Report
But we overreacted to that, too.
If you mean the Japanese internment, damned straight.Report
I think there are two key differences between 9/11 and WWII-era civilian deaths. First, and I think most importantly, during WWII there was a general acknowledgement that civilians do die during wars. Over the following five decades, people in developed nations came to view civilian deaths during warfare as something which can and ought to be avoided as completely as possible. Therefore, while more Londoners died in the Blitz than New Yorkers on 9/11, because the expectation of Westerners to be safe from attack in their homeland had risen so greatly, the loss of life on 9/11 was much more jarring than that during the Blitz. This speaks to the perception of the magnitude of the tragedy.
Secondly, my understanding of the Blitz is that while the Germans may not have gone to particularly great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, they were at least not directly targeting civilians, but rather infrastructure and industrial capacity. The 9/11 attacks, however, directly targeted civilians.Report
nu? I had no such expectation of safety. Anyone who thinks going to NYC for New years isn’t asking to be blown up is a loon — your chances have indeed increased, even if they’re still miniscule.Report
I’m not sure I understand your point. My comment on an expectation of safety was not made regarding acts of terrorism, but acts of war between nations. The bombing of Dresden, London, and other cities during WWII was done against a backdrop where carpet-bombing of sections of cities was commonplace and accepted. The death of hundreds of civilians during a bombing raid was not unexpected. 9/11 occurred in the age of the smart bomb. While there was certainly awareness of the threat of terrorist acts prior to 9/11, practically no one expected the sheer magnitude of destruction or death caused by the 9/11 terrorists.Report
Outstanding Jason. Just outstanding.Report
It wasn’t outstanding, it was a classy piece of broiler plate though.
What’s scary is that while we’re not in the same pew, we may be in the same church. Jaybird said something about Libs and paleos a while back that struck me as right on, or at least in the ballpark
My criticism is that you’ve drunk too much of the librul koolaide in that instead of a close analysis of the Bush regime’s reactions to the massacre, the possibilities that presented themselves, and what where the best choices predicated on civil liberties, national defense, and whatever other categories smart dudes with degrees in poly-sci or community organizin’ want to come up with you seem to jump on the librul bandwagon and paint the barn in broad, inaccurate, and grossly exaggerated and generalized strokes, leaving your readers half starved for insight and enlightenment.
I’d have appreciated a close differentiation of the issue/problem but, apparantly, that’s too much trouble. Or, you’re too biased, prejudiced, and bigoted against those you perceive as anti-homosexual ‘rights (GOP),’ which destroys any objectivity in your analysis and does great injury to your reputation as a political thinker and writer.
Oh, btw, the question here is, do you understand the difference between Waco and 9/11? It’s really, really significant.Report
You know, I might have blamed the Republicans. Easily, in fact. If Obama had been better on civil liberties, I would have.
But he wasn’t, and so I wrote very carefully to avoid mention of any political party post 9/11. Search all you like, they aren’t there. I mentioned the name of only one American politician in the entire essay — and, contrary to usage, I deliberately omitted his affiliation.
I’d invite you to ponder the reasons for this choice, but inviting you to ponder anything usually just results in some gobbledygook about gnosticism. Tell me, too, how does one paint a barn while riding a bandwagon? Sounds like you’ve been reading Tom Friedman in the original. But at least it’s not Voegelin.Report
..actually, it’s all Voegelin.Report
Great piece. I’ve heard a lot of conversations in the run up to the 10th anniversary that focused on the impact of 9/11. I thought a lot about its impact on me. At the time, I was a recently-turned 18-year-old starting my freshmen year of college in Boston. I had grown up just outside NYC in NJ, in a town in which you could see the Twin Towers from the top of a tall building. My father’s fire department went into the city that Saturday to lend support (in our town’s infinite brilliance, they refused to insure these guys during such a task, meaning they were relegated to running food and supplies from behind the barricades, a necessary job, no doubt, but I’m sure they could have been put to better use elsewhere).
While many, many people had far better reasons to be deeply impacted by 9/11, I felt that I had enough reasons to be impacted somewhat. Yet, I couldn’t really think how. Instead, I kept coming back to how I was impacted by our (and by “our”, I mean the government, society, individuals, the media, etc.) responded. How much collective time have we as a society lost because of increased security standards at airports? What is the tangible effect of this on productivity and the economy? How many thousands of people have died since then in actions directly responding to the act? How many more have been tortured? How many of our rights have been eroded?
I realize that many, many people lost loved ones in a truly horrible and unnecessary act and that my complaining about these things might seem callous or shortsighted. But the reality is, for the majority of us, these are the real and only impacts 9/11 had on us. And while they may not be as horrible as the loss of a loved one, they are just as unnecessary. And it is most unfortunate that we have compounded the horribleness of those 19 men and their supporters with some unnecessary horribleness of their own.
This is what I take away from 9/11. I don’t think the date will fade in the public consciousness in quite the way that Pearl Harbor did, if only because of the pervasiveness of the media nowadays. But eventually, 9/11 will become another day. People are already back to getting married on that day (after it seeming sacrilegious to even consider such a thing). Businesses and schools are open. What won’t fade away is all that we lost afterward, unnecessarily, at the hands of our own government and our fellow citizen.Report
Tangible impact? Insurance actuaries are reputed to be pretty dispassionate, As a portion of our workmen’s comp policy, indemnity against terrorism is .05% of our total payroll.Report
While this is true, much of that is designed to recoup losses for reinsurers since prior to 9/11 claims from terrorism were never factored in.
Also, most carriers charge significantly more than they need to for this coverage to incentivize companies to choose the Federal coverage option, which being a Federal Govt option is already pretty large from an actuarial point of view. WC actuaries like knowing exactly what losses are going to be every year within a percentage point or two, and they can almost always do this. But large terrorism occurrences are a completely unknown variable. They want no part in it.Report
Tangential, but I found <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-god-clause-and-the-reinsurance-industry-09012011.htmlthis article fascinating.Report
good findReport
What gets me is the 55 gallon drum of potential binary explosives that they have just sitting there in the middle of every TSA area.
They throw my toothpaste tubes and Pepsi bottles into this drum because they are potential binary explosives… but they treat them as if they are likely to explode as toothpaste or Pepsi if mixed together.Report
My theater friends have a saying — “it works for 30-30.” When the audience sees a prop for thirty seconds, from thirty feet away, you can get away with a whole lot in terms of authenticity.
It works in security theater too, I suppose.Report
That, or just have six guys each carry on three ounces of ammonia and three ounces of bleach.Report
I’m thinking this is the best post I’ll be reading regarding the 9/11 anniversary. (It’s the best one I’ve read so far)Report
The problem I have is that I support real and excellent national security, but scare tactics used to justify greater State power are bogus. Although al qaeda has drained us in many ways, our reaction has decimated them, and as I’ve said since 2001, if terrorism succeeds in America, it fails. In other words, if Americans, from generals to soccer moms, are really terrorized in an existential way, we’ll destroy everything that moves the wrong way in the mideast. It’s not chauvinistic chest-thumping, just human reality of power over power, and we have far more power. If we’re ever cornered and pushed to use our power in blind terror, we’ll cause the greatest amount of devastation ever witnessed. So, terrorists can only play the game of keeping us on edge, and the smartest thing we can do is not exaggerate the danger but be prepared. The last thing any country in the mideast wants is to really terrorize us with another major attack.Report
We should celebrate 9/11 in Mardi Gras style each year across the nation — have a freedom bash and let ‘er rip — the victims would liley approve.Report
I think “illegal war” is the sort of phrase that makes me take a more jaundiced look at the rest of the post.Report
Would you care to explain the legal basis for our actions in Libya?
With reference to the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Act, if you please.Report
“I am Barrack Obama and I’m not a Republican so when /I/ start a war, /I/ get a free pass. Oh and I’m the commander in chief and it means something different now than when I said it didn’t while I was a Senator”… “So there!”Report
http://foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Koh_Testimony.pdf
No saying I agree with everything in it. But it’s not like no one has offered the argument.Report
Well who cares what the Koch Brothers testimony is, anyhow?! Just a bunch of plutocratic shillery that … oh, Koh, nevermind. In that case, it’s just great and absolutely brilliant, and of course this has nothing to do with oil, as demonstrated by the complete absence of that word from the testimony. Please carry on!Report
9/11 wasn’t a tenth the size of the blitz, my dear countrymen. It wasn’t 1/300th of Auschwitz.
Also, about a Katrina, or a Johnstown, and a half, and less than half a Gettysburg.Report
And 9/11 is significantly smaller than the lynchings of African-Americans that occurred between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights era. Of course, only a weenie liberal would compare the horror visited on all Americans by those who hate our freedoms with a few isolated incidents that really expressed justified (if misdirected) anger at the oppressive Yankee establishment. Not to mention that fact that undoubtedly most of the lynched were guilty, having been found so by a jury of their (hooded and masked) peers.Report
Why do most folks think this post is so great. It is too easy to call this country crazy 10 years after the fact . Even European countries who are used to terrorism never experienced anything on the scale of 9/11. So maybe went a little crazy, maybe we just had to get it out of our system b/c of the magnitude of the attack.Report
Now that it’s out of our system, can I have my civil liberties back?Report
Jason:
Which civil liberties are you missing? Not to mention that the terrorists are still out there.Report
It might be nice for starters to be able to travel to Canada without a passport.
I’d like to see an end to the undeclared searches, warrantless wiretaps, data mining, and other forms of digital surveillance that have sprung up.
The idiotic rituals of airport security have caught — correct me if I’m wrong on this — zero terrorists, while a commonsense measure like locking cockpit doors would be enough to stop any future 9/11, and alert passengers have been enough to do the rest.
I’d like to see an end to the irregular trials, secret prisons, and assassination orders, too. That’d be nice.
But I’m really wasting my time here. If you’re curious, reread the essay.Report
And the drone-killing in countries in which we haven’t declared war and who haven’t attacked us. That doesn’t violate my rights, but I have a right and responsibility to condemn the attacks.Report
MFarmer:
If the country in which we are using the drones feels violated, they can complain about the violation of their sovereignty, they don’t need you and your liberal sense of righteousness. Maybe they don’t mind, did you ever think of that? Besides why should we wait to kill those that are bent on attacking us?Report
Holy shit, Scott, listen to yourself. I have a responsibility to condemn the bombing of innocent people, and there is evidence that drone attacks have killed many innocent people. Do you really believe that we as citizens shouldn’t question the actions of our government when they are bombing nations that have never attacked us. Can we go into Canada and start bombing if we suspect a bad guy is hiding out? Germany? France? Sweden? You can’t possibly demand silence for the State to do whatever it wants to do as long as it says it’s killing bad guys — I hate to bring up Nazism and Hitler, but you’re forcing my hand.Report
MFarmer:
You are really comparing the US’ world wide hunt for terrorists to the Nazis? Really, that is pathetic even for you. I hope our gov’t will go anywhere and kill the terrorists that are plotting against us. Last time I checked our gov’t has a right under international law to defend itself.Report
Godwin!Report
“You are really comparing the US’ world wide hunt for terrorists to the Nazis?”
No, I’m not, and I thought that was clear — I’m comparing the submission to authority you seem to embrace to the German people’s submission to authority.Report
That, I would contend, is a fair point.Report
Can we go into Canada and start bombing if we suspect a bad guy is hiding out?
Well, French Canada, sure. And that part with the funny name where the dark-skinned people live.Report
You have so much politically correct pizzazz. I’m always impressed. You should get a Comrade Badge or something for your little efforts.Report
Would it be OK to bomb them if they were statists?Report
Aren’t they called ‘provincists’ up there?Report
The U.S. has become absurdly racist since 9/11. Go investigate the immigration changes that occurred in 2007. Whether or not they were designed to keep the brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking and AIDS-having people out, that’s their singular effect.Report
“Would it be OK to bomb them if they were statists?”
Brown, gay, female statists?Report
“The U.S. has become absurdly racist since 9/11. Go investigate the immigration changes that occurred in 2007. Whether or not they were designed to keep the brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking and AIDS-having people out, that’s their singular effect.”
Absurdly racist? Let’s not get carried away.Report
How am I getting carried away?Report
Really? It’s okay to attack other countries if we think they *might* attack us? If so, what is a possible interpretation by the residents of the Middle East of US actions with respect to the following :
* Prince Sultan air base
* Al Udeid air base
* Khobar towers
* Port of Aden
* 32nd parallel (later, the 33rd parallel)
* 36th parallel
* Desert Storm
* The Carter Doctrine
* etc.
By your own logic, what is within their rights?Report
Jason:
Just b/c you want something doesn’t mean you are legally entitled to it, such as no passport entry into Canada. BTW, if that is your worst complaint then I have little sympathy for you. Maybe you’ve heard of FISA, if an administration disobeys that law(or any other) then they should be punished. If an admin acts legally but offends your delicate sensibilities too bad.Report
The idiotic rituals of airport security have caught — correct me if I’m wrong on this — zero terrorists,
That is, as many Russian spies as Joe McCarthy caught in his entire career.Report
Mike:
Just b/c Joe didn’t catch any doesn’t mean that the Russkie spies weren’t out there. He was also right that we needed to get off our butts and hunt them down.Report
And the fact that he never managed to find even one doesn’t make you think twice about him?Report
Mike:
Can you accept that Joe’s basic premise about spies in the gov’t and military was valid, I guess not.Report
Of course there were spies. There are always spies. I will guarantee you that Pollard wasn’t alone; the Israelis still have spies in our intelligence agencies, and most of them are Jewish. Tell me, am I then justified in making speeches about how Jews are security risks, holding hearings in which I grill Jews about their loyalty, and smearing politicians as soft on Judaism? Particularly if I never find a single Israeli spy?Report
Mike:
If you can admit that there were spies then please tell me why Joe was wrong to try and see they were caught.Report
Because he was evidently so bad at it?
Or maybe because he did nothing of the sort. He bellowed and blathered and drank himself shit-faces and got his name in the paper, and wouldn’t have known a real spy if he’d tripped over one. For which he was made a hero by the same people who think that kidnapping and torturing a random collection of people is how you fight terrorism.Report
… i’m told the israelis run a whorehouse in Washington. And that the Japanese version of espionage is reading journals. It’s the french you should watch out for.Report
Technically, that’s because they’re stealing the essence of our Government.Report
…scott, no because the Russians weren’t dum. why choose communist-sympathizers to give money? good old fashioned Republican capitalists will do the same,and without as much potential for getting caught.Report
I wasn’t aware Joe McCarthy was channeling Elliot Ness? Seems to me that actual law enforcement personnel managed to catch a spy or two, but maybe I just read that in a book.
For the record, Joe was a complete jerk. Also for the record, “useful idiots” had indeed infiltrated many levels of our society.Report
Wrong. If we weren’t so distracted by the non-existent socialist menace, we’d be able to see the real authoritarian menace.Report
“The idiotic rituals of airport security have caught — correct me if I’m wrong on this — zero terrorists…”
Just like the idiotic ritual of vaccination has caught — correct me if I’m wrong on this — zero epidemics. Therefore we don’t need to bother with vaccination (which might be killing our kids’ brains anyway.)
Whooping cough? Measles? Whatever, that’s what doctors are for, right?Report
Hey, so I’m selling these tiger-repellent rocks for $600 dollars a piece, if anyone’s interested. Just send me a check. I promise no tigers will attack you while you’re carrying my tiger-repellent rock or your money back.Report
While it is true that nobody has been eaten by a tiger since we put up the tiger-resistant fence, I still argue that the fence is a waste of money because it’s possible that the rate of tiger attacks naturally dropped to zero. I mean, the tiger made his point the first time; why would he come into our village and eat someone twice?Report
Lisa, I’d like to buy your magic rock.Report
When I ask doctors — experts in health — whether vaccines are a good idea, they say yes. Unequivocally.
When I ask security experts whether it’s a good idea to ban curbside check-in, to ban nonticketed people from boarding areas, to make everyone remove their shoes, to racially profile passengers, or even to perform enhanced pat-downs, I get a very different answer.Report
If you want to carry the analogy out, talking to “security experts” about security is like talking to hospital administrators about doctoring.
If nothing else, the first thing a “security expert” should say is that they don’t know about anything that’s classified and therefore can only talk in general terms.Report
Quite untrue. People with current or former security clearances are welcome to speak to the public in general terms about the efficacy of various programs and do so all the time.
Even if they weren’t, “I need to restrict your civil liberties for… no reason I could possibly tell you” is a pretty weak argument.
Can you imagine if someone tried to justify a CO2 abatement program on the same grounds?Report
“People with current or former security clearances are welcome to speak to the public in general terms about the efficacy of various programs and do so all the time.”
Your assertion was that security practices haven’t “caught any terrorists”.
To start with, you don’t take precautions to stop activity in progress. There’s a reason that I cited vaccinations (and tiger-resistant fences.)
And people aren’t exactly going to walk around describing sources and methods for something like this. (Do I really, truly need to explain that to you?)Report
… funny, then, that kos has repeatedly cited sources saying that torture doesn’t work, as used in an American context. Funny how we know torture was used, isn’t it?Report
you don’t take precautions to stop activity in progress.
May I just say this is the dumbest characterization of counterterrorism work I have ever heard?Report
“May I just say this is the dumbest characterization of counterterrorism work I have ever heard?”
So vaccines are intended to cure ongoing infections, then?Report
DD,
polio vaccine cures ongoing epidemic. ya?Report
There is a good, solid, scientifically backed basis for presuming that vaccinations can halt pandemics.
There is no good, solid, scientifically backed basis for backing the rituals of airport security.
I know, you’re now going to insist that I’m refusing to engage with you because any example you give of airport security I’ll just point out how stupid it is.Report
Which the terrorists are you talking about?
The terrorists who flew the planes into the towers died on 9/11.
The guy who masterminded the whole thing was shot and his body dumped in the ocean.
Which the terrorists are left?Report
Jaybird:
Which terrorists you ask? Have you been paying attention to recent events? Clearly not as that same group of terrorists has not just disappeared and is still trying to attack us.Report
Terrorists have been trying to attack Americans since the Barbary Wars.Report
Yeah, like, evil exists. Do we really need to make old ladies take off their diapers to realize this?Report
Right, because nobody ever puts explosives in their shoes or their underwear.Report
And because the bombers were only caught thanks to the USA-PATRIOT Act.
Oh wait. They were caught by alert passengers, who wrestled them to the ground. Not by anything secret, or new, or destructive of our liberties. Those things all failed us… because the bombers still got on the planes.Report
“Oh wait. They were caught by alert passengers, who wrestled them to the ground.”
er, after they’d ignited the bombs, and if they’d been better at making bombs then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
“Those things all failed us… because the bombers still got on the planes.”
You’re making an excellent argument that the court system is a failure because people still commit crimes.Report
… wouldn’t that be the police system? and yeah, the police system is a failure. In Japan, one could make the case that their policemen are significantly more competent. (lol)Report
A failure at interdiction, sure. Not what it’s designed for.
The security measures at airports are designed — we’re told — for interdiction. They can and do fail. All the time.Report
> “Those things all failed us…
> because the bombers still
> got on the planes.”
>> You’re making an excellent
>> argument that the court
>> system is a failure because
>> people still commit crimes.
Here’s a thought, Duck.
Why don’t you try engaging the argument inside the context in which it is relevant, instead of picking up the argument and plunking it down in another context where it has entirely different practical ramifications, and then declaring victory?Report
Kim, I don’t know if that’s a reference to “Japanese people don’t commit crimes” (because the Yakuza has a monopoly on crime in Japan) or “100% conviction rates” (due to forced confessions).Report
The court system has never been about prevention. It’s about justice. Back in the day, humans recognized that evil exists and it’s best to deal with it as it comes instead of being arrogant and foolish enough to think we could stamp it out completely. This is why neoconservatism is fundamentally a species of progressivism.Report
Christo,
That was a reference to the Japanese policemen’s habit of classifying things as “not crimes” actually [man loses wallet, man commits suicide with gun — not man robs other man with gun and then shoots him]. That, and that most of a Japanese policemen’s job is giving directions. It’s significantly easier to be competent at “knowing the neighborhood” ya?Report
Kim, I forgot about that one. I see you’ve somewhat cracked the eggshell that is the riddle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in mystery that is Japan.Report
… or takes garrotes on planes (friend of a friend did that). Or is a martial arts expert. Or smuggles flammable substances onto a plane (that was a writer for the Atlantic, I believe)
It’s theater, pure and simple. Because the ability to kill large numbers of people is not something you can take away from people, without straightjackets or knockout gas.
Not that I mind knockout gas….Report
As someone who came of age in the 1980’s, the criticism that PATRIOT does not protect us against Ninjas hits close to home.
We need a team of American Ninjas to help protect us all from Taliban Ninjas.
We need Louis Gossett Jr.Report
Oh crap, I hadn’t even considered the Ninja threat.Report
We need to let the ninjas all get on the plane at the same time, so we can fight them in accordance with the inverse ninja law.Report
White American here. I am not Muslim and don’t consume much Islamic material. I read and watch pretty boring entertainment. Oh and for better or worse I haven’t (yet) given any money to Wikileaks.
In many ways then, life is pretty much the same for me as before 9/11, aside from the incredibly degrading experience of flying. I don’t *feel* like I’m missing many civil liberties.
But isn’t this the problem? Most people don’t know anyone who has been nabbed in the dark and held in isolation without any kind of due process for years. Most people don’t know anyone who was tortured. Most people don’t know anyone who has had her laptop confiscated at the border just because. Most people have not even heard of Bradley Manning and most have no damning information to leak even if they were brave enough to do so. Most people don’t think that their emails are read or their phone calls eavesdropped upon because they’re not terrorists and they trust the government knows who the bad guys really are.Report
Conservatively, about a million people had access to the same material Manning (allegedly) released. Are they all evil or cowards (or evil cowards)?Report
… each person has a conscience.Report
I do find our society torn apart.
Scientists have willingly done no differently than Mengele, experimenting on the unwilling, torturing “in the name of science!”
If one person, anywhere, is tortured, it is an affront to my civil liberties, and a danger to those I love.Report
This is a truly brilliant piece Jason.Report
I can’t bring back the thing I wrote immediately after 9/11 because it was multiple computers ago. I do recall saying to my friends in those emails (blogs weren’t my thing then) that as usual we were fighting the wrong enemy and as usual the enemies’ goals were not what we thought they were.
America on 9-10-01 was a very free country, the antithesis of what Sharia law represents. Fundamentalist Muslims were apoplectic about the threat to their children, their religion and their diminishing social status from our freedom, our music and our inherent happiness. They fought back, not against our citizens (merely collateral damage) but our free and easy society. That has clearly gone by the wayside. There are no more dramatic attacks not because the threat is gone completely but because they simply aren’t needed. The 9/11 attacks achieved their goal, in spades.Report
Ward:
Really no need for more attacks? That is funny since they still keep trying to attack us.Report
Small potatoes by bit players. The big attacks aren’t needed anymore because they’ve already achieved their goal. Many generals need to remember this from Sun Tzu, “For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. “Report
Really, really fabulous. The best thing, by far, I’ve read during this whole week’s 9/11-athon.Report
Jason –
I really enjoyed this post, particularly your close:
In the end, we didn’t have the will to fight. We fought the terrorists, sure, and plenty of others who didn’t even attack us. But we didn’t have the will to fight as they took our civil liberties away. We didn’t even have the will to punish them afterward. The word “we” is the pawl on the ratchet of state power.
I like this because I tend to think we get the government we deserve. In a democracy, it’s not our leaders we need to convince of the desirability of the liberties we seek.Report
“I like this because I tend to think we get the government we deserve”
I’ve done some awful stuff, but nothing that bad.Report
Mike –
Geez, Mike, I’d have thought you’d agree with that. As Jason writes, the state is not likely to grant emergency freedoms on its own volition. The citizenry is going to have to demand them first. Ol’ Ben had it right about what those would give up their liberties for security deserve.Report
62, I was making a joke — it was, like, humor.Report
> I’ve done some awful stuff,
> but nothing that bad.
Full point to Mr. Farmer.Report
I feel really ambivalent about this distinction between us and we you end with. Isn’t saying we didn’t have the will to stop it just a different way of phrasing our saying that we did it? Maybe I’ve just been reading too much Hobbes stuff lately, but it’s not at all clear to me that our fear somehow negatives our will.Report
Hobbes? The Father of Totalitarianism? Or Calvin and Hobbes?Report
The philosopher who lived and died hundreds of years before totalitarianism’s brief run on the world’s stage.Report
Idea have staying power, and sometimes they bloom late.Report
ideasReport
What exactly is your position on Hobbes, then, Mike? That he shouldn’t be read? That we can’t learn anything by reading him?Report
LOL. No. Mike, no. I’ve read Hobbes. Why do you ask I wonder?Report
In the history of domination and freedom, Hobbes is a valuable teacher regarding the ideas which lead to domination.Report
If this continues, I may have to subject the League to a Hobbes seminar.
Hobbes was at once weirder and more boring than most people imagine. Yes, he was definitely an apologist for absolutism. And a first-rate crank and a pedant to boot. Yet he’s still worth reading despite it all.Report
That said, Elias makes a pretty good critique of the last part of the essay. He may have identified my second misstep, actually.
My first being that I called duct tape “useless.” I really did, and no one called me on it.Report
Hobbes was on the quiet side. A bit peculiar. A good companion, in a weird sort of wayReport
Please do. I disagree with several of your assertions there already, and I think this comment thread on Hobbes is all over the lot.Report
“I may have to subject the League to a Hobbes seminar.”
So, you think we’re in need of a better understanding? I for one would love to debate Hobbes’ thought, because I think it speaks directly to the current conflict between progressives/statists of all stripes and libertarians/limited government conservatives.Report
I did not intend it to be taken personally. I’ve taught from the text before, and I do know a thing or two about intellectual history.
Add to that the fact that most people’s knowledge of Hobbes stops at “nasty, brutish, and short.” Add also some apparent interest in the guy.
It seemed like enough to justify a post or two, especially because the text is very different from what I think most people imagine of it.Report
“Add to that the fact that most people’s knowledge of Hobbes stops at “nasty, brutish, and short.””
Well, that certainly isn’t me, so I should have something very valuable to add to the converstation. I also have studied intellectual history for at least the last 27 years. This ought to be good.Report
I’m familiar with the facile understanding of Hobbes, those simplistic dismissals, but as Strauss pointed out, there’s more to it than that. Hopwever, I believe there is more to the more to it.Report
Well I know fuckall beyond some excerpts from a freshman level philosophy course, so I would enjoy reading a Hobbes discussion.Report
A hopwever is a chinese bunny.Report
Then, Paul, you’re in for a treat, because public educators don’t know jack about Hobbes.Report
Then, Paul, you’re in for a treat, because public educators don’t know jack about Hobbes.
I find this sort of blind observation amusing.Report
“I find this sort of blind observation amusing.”
Uh, I was being hyperbolic and joshy. You might want to check that humor box to see if it’s shorcircuited. There are some serious dudes and dudettes online these days.Report
Oh, and Jason, I did not take it personally — I thought you were referring to Elias.Report
Add to that the fact that most people’s knowledge of Hobbes stops at “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Was that Hobbes or Danny DeVito?Report
“Hobbes? The Father of Totalitarianism? Or Calvin and Hobbes?”
Well, the latter is named after the former, so…Report
Reading the two, though, is somewhat different.Report
The collective “We” thing is obviously problematic, or even just obiously false and pernicious if you prefer, even if we know that it is an inevitable rhetorical tactic of politicians. But it actually cuts many ways. If we prefer the plural “we,” then it isn’t the case that “we” didn’t have the will to fight. Many of “us” did. The ACLU exists. Glenn Greenwald exists. But it is true that there are other “we”s. Some “we”s, indeed, didn’t have the will to fight, with implication being that they would have been inclined to fight on the side of those who fought the loss of liberty had they been inclined to fight, but just didn’t in the event have the will to do it. But there were still other “we”s. Some “we”s truly didn’t give two shits one way or the other. Will isn’t the issue for them that I can see; getting them to engage in the first instance is. But then there were other “we”s who were kind of like those who lacked the will to fight, except that had they been inclined to fight, they’d have fought on the side of the measures that “we” (though not that we) would say eliminated our liberties. And finally (though certainly even finer distinctions can still be made among these “we”s), there are people who did actively fight for what they said were needed security measures that, they said, either didn’t curtail liberties that were actually protected prior to 9/11, or did so only to an extent that we ought to accept in light of that event.
These “we”s all really existed after 9/11, and I think that event had real effects on who found themselves among which “we”s. I think saying that “we” lacked the will to fight on civil liberties while also rejecting the construction of a single collective “we” is really pretty much facially rejecting a proposition while relying fully on it to make a different argument. What I think the strongest advocates for civil liberties don’t give enough consideration to is the extent to which 9/11 really did change people’s views (not theirs, but many of their fellow citizens’) on liberty and security, and that these changes are entirely legitimate and real changes in the polity, if truly lamentable ones. It’s not that “we” lacked the will to fight the loss of our liberty, though a few of us did (for example I think that description actually does fit me pretty fairly). It’s that, in fact, within our plural republic, there was a substantive shift in attitudes relating to what we expect from government vis a vis security and liberty. We did in fact give up essential liberties for certain measures of security, but I don’t think we did it out of lack of will – except maybe in a few cases. But that can’t erase from history the fact that a non-negligible, and I’d argue more likely a critical middle mass of us, did this consciously, with eyes open. It’s what “we” – some of the “we”s among us, in any case – chose to do, not just what we all together failed to exert the will to not do. That latter is just not what happened.Report
Indeed, we had 2002 right afterwards, and it would have been quite easy to vote out those politicians who’d supported military actions and the DHS. This didn’t happen.Report
Didn’t the FBI find the guy who mailed the anthrax letters?
Yes, some people say he didn’t do it. Same way that some people say there were bombs planted in the World Trade Center.Report
> Didn’t the FBI find the guy who
> mailed the anthrax letters?
Most likely. Bruce E. Ivins killed himself, to be 100% accurate, but there’s more than enough reasonable evidence to point to him being the culprit.Report
I’ve been catering and busing tables lately to make ends meet. One of the girls I work with is a senior in high school and she told us all today that her class is the last class that actually remembers 9/11. None of the kids younger than her have any idea what happened. These kids have grown up in the world Jason describes above. They think it’s normal.
When I heard this, a profound sadness came over me, because I realized we’ve missed our window.Report
I heard about the attack on the first tower on the news when my clock radio woke me up. My first thought wasn’t “Oh, no — what will they do next?” or “Am I in danger?” It was that terrorism would be the new communism, that Bush would get a blank check to fight any war anywhere in the world, that stocks in the military-security-industrial complex were about to go through the roof, and that they’d probably pass through police state legislation giving the FBI all the goodies it asked for but didn’t get after OKC. My second thought was if there was another big attack, my red card from the Wobblies would probably be enough to get me held without charge in a detention camp.
For the next few weeks, I felt like I was living in a madhouse with all the waving flags and jingoism. When I saw Tom Daschle say there was “no daylight between him and the President on foreign policy,” and Dan Rather said “just tell me where to line up,” I wanted to spit on the floor.
I was working at the VA, and three different times a nurse in a supervisory position brought in homemade flag pins to distribute. I didn’t realize the VA had political officers like the Soviet army.
It sickened me to see Americans, who at their best — in peacetime — are skeptical of government, acting like good Germans.Report
My first thought was a shrug. Nothing new.Report
Bearing in mind your level of fidelity regarding assertions that can be substantiated, what reason do I have to trust you when you assert something both difficult to believe and impossible to substantiate?Report
because I can tell you the exact moment when my world Did fall apart?
Psychologists would probably claim I was just going through shock. But I don’t think 9-11 really effected my mental state much. Sure, I heard about people in trouble… but that was nothing new to me. After all, hadn’t I been hearing about bombings in Tel Aviv for years? Every time, i had to ask myself, “are my relatives still alive?”Report
I believe self-report of mental state is a reasonable substantiation, under these circumstances (not the least of which is that I’m reporting something outside of the normal groupthink).
BTW, re philanthropic aims of corporations:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractsprof_blog/2008/09/business-asso-1.html
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractsprof_blog/2008/09/business-associ.html
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractsprof_blog/2008/08/business-associ.html
Seems like “yeah, you could sue, but the corporation would fairly easily win the favor of the court”Report
From the second of your links.
Law professor Lynn Stout writes: “Among non-experts, conventional wisdom holds that corporate law requires boards of directors to maximize shareholder wealth. This common but mistaken belief is almost invariably supported by reference to the Michigan Supreme Court’s 1919 opinion in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. ”
To which fellow law professor Jeremy Telman replies, in part “[The case] states a legal rule that courts do not follow.”
In other words, your “evidence” supports the exact opposite of what you have repeatedly claimed in comments over the last two weeks.
Remember, the corporation’s victory in these hypothetical cases would mean that it doesn’t have to maximize shareholder wealth. There is no such legal obligation.Report
… it is in fact true that I am capable of being wrong. 😉Report
What’s strange is that you manage to actualize your capability so frequently.Report
“But have we ever, even once, been granted an emergency freedom?”
The Future Handbook of Quotable KuznickiReport
Jason: What you said is reinforced by the fact that all the purported mechanisms of shareholder control are near-mythical. Proxy fights almost always lose. Almost all new investment — as opposed to mergers and acquisitions — is financed internally through retained earnings. Takeovers, after a brief surge of hostile takeovers in the ’80s followed by a series of countermeasures, are usually acts of collusion between two sets of management.
As for boards of directors, they’re more likely to engage in logrolling with the boys in the C-suite.
What management tries to maximize is management salaries, bonuses and stock options. It does so by maximizing the quarterly numbers, often through short-sighted measures to cut costs at the expense of hollowing out human capital and long-term productive capability — thus destroying shareholder value.
The assets of the corporation are legally owned, not by the shareholders severally or collectively, but by a legal person. It’s more accurate to say that management are the real residual claimants, and shareholders are simply another class of contractual claimants entitled to participate in the charade of a shareholder meeting and to collect whatever dividends the management sees fit to issue. Corporate management, just like the Soviet nomenklatura, is a self-perpetuating oligarchy in de facto control of a large mass of unowned capital.Report