09/13/11 Iguazu, Argentina – We dipped our toes over the weekend, Fellow Reckoner. Re-tested the waters. We wanted to know whether, over the past ten years, the public discourse regarding 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror” — waged both on foreign soil and, increasingly, against the liberties of American citizens at home — had shifted. A few questions…
Are people still waving flags and crying “traitor!” toward anyone with the inclination to question directives from the state’s military machine? Or has the mood become more reflective, more contemplative…more conducive to free and open discussion? After a decade at war, fighting on multiple fronts at a cost of trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, has “war fatigue” finally set in?
“I originally was supportive of George Bush’s call for a war against Saddam Hussein,” responded one reader. “Since then I have come to be a huge believer in Ron Paul and have become disillusioned with our ‘war’ mentality. Thank you for your open dialogue.”
Wrote another, “…[I]t appears that I would be in agreement with the DR writers at this point, even though that would not have been the case 7-10 years ago. I was hoping for ‘getting the job done, and get it over with,’ but that hasn’t happened. Enough is enough now. But what should I have expected from a government that still has in place wool subsidies from WWII and a telephone tax from the Spanish-American war? We have now progressed far beyond ongoing taxes and ongoing subsidies to just plain ongoing wars.”
Setting aside the financial costs of “ongoing wars” abroad, there is also the cost in terms of personal liberty to be considered. Our mates over at The 5-Minute Forecast provided the following, disturbing observation last week…
The Patriot Act authorized ‘sneak and peek’ search warrants — where you, the suspect, don’t have to be notified of the search until after the fact. If you’re a patriot and thought those powers would be used to fight terrorism, well you would be wrong.
Meanwhile, the National Security Agency (NSA) has opened a massive $2 billion, 1 million-square-foot complex in the Utah desert…devoted to storing and sorting through emails, web searches and business transactions. Perhaps yours.
A similar complex is being built near San Antonio. By 2015, according to journalist James Bamford, the NSA will store data equivalent to 1 septillion printed pages. That’s a 1 followed by 24 zeroes.
“Somewhere between Sept. 11 and today,” wrote Bamford last week, “the enemy morphed from a handful of terrorists to the American population at large, leaving us nowhere to run and no place to hide…”
At the NSA, thousands of analysts who once eavesdropped on troop movements of enemy soldiers in distant countries were now listening in on the bedroom conversations of innocent Americans in nearby states…
A surveillance system capable of monitoring 10 million people simultaneously this year will be able to monitor 100 million the next year — at probably half the cost. And every time new communications technology appears on the market, rest assured that someone at the NSA has already found a way to monitor it. It’s what the NSA does.
Is this how the victims of 9/11 are to be “honored”? Are the dead to be used as tools to incite fear and paranoia forever? Will the tragedy of their deaths be always used as an excuse to usher in an Orwellian age of snitching, snooping and ’round-the-clock surveillance? When, we wonder, will they finally be allowed to Rest In Peace?
Here’s Bill Bonner, reckoning on the subject…
So much 9/11 remembering! On the TV. In the newspapers. Even our good pastor, saying a few words of welcome at our mother’s 90th birthday party brought it up.
We pray for Mrs. Bonner. We give thanks for her 90 years…We hope for many more. And we pray for the victims of 9/11…and for the first responders…let us remember them…
But, frankly, we’d rather forget…
9/11 did no serious damage to the nation. As a whole, Americans were not made significantly poorer or significantly less safe. Yes, good people died on 9/11. But there have been a lot of good people murdered over the last 10 years. Every victim had his virtues. And every murderer had his reasons.
What did lasting damage to the nation was not 9/11, it was remembering 9/11. Not only did overreaction to 9/11 play a substantial role in bankrupting the country…it also made Americans fearful and sheepish. They’re convinced the towel-heads are trying to kill them. They believe they can protect themselves by spending trillions of dollars they don’t have on military campaigns that don’t work.
Ten years ago, only a few fanatics wanted to do Americans harm. Now, after throwing so much military weight around, half the world would happily pull the trigger on an American tourist if he had the chance.
Joel Bowman
for The Daily Reckoning
Joel Bowman
Joel Bowman is managing editor of The Daily Reckoning. After completing his degree in media communications and journalism in his home country of Australia, Joel moved to Baltimore to join the Agora Financial team. His keen interest in travel and macroeconomics first took him to New York where he regularly reported from Wall Street, and he now writes from and lives all over the world.
The Daily Reckoning is your premier source for making sense of the news Washington and Wall Street generate. Each business day, The Daily Reckoning calls on its stable of world-class writers and thinkers to show you how to get ahead.
Start your 100% FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning today and you’ll get a free research report, “How to Survive the Fall of Social Security.” Simply enter your email address below to get your free report and join over 495,000 worldwide Daily Reckoning subscribers!
We Respect Your Privacy and We will
Never Share or Sell Your Email Address
I suppose somewhere on the planet some will be persuing freedom, so I’ll have some hope.
Ron Paul gets my vote, even if its too little too late.
Apparently, people at DR have not yet discovered that 911 was an “Inside Job”. Actually, it was an “Outside-Inside Job”, perpetrated by Israel (Mossad) AND a bunch of TRAITORS on the Inside. Give it another 10 years, right?!
Ever hear of James Fetzer, PhD and founder of “Scholars of 9/11 Truth”?
Ooops – it might have been “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth”!
Let me try that again: “Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice”
As a Public Service, the link below will take you to a summary of the leading websites calling for a Re-Investigation of 911, including James Fetzer’s website:
http://novalight.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/global-campaign-to-re-investigate-911-israel-did-it/
Sorry GodSend, I afraid americans no longer want to know the truth. They certainly don’t want to do any work to find it. They’ll get a dose of reality soon enough though.
What’s truly amazing, Jeff, is that so few Americans seem to be interested in WHO is responsible for their accelerating misery and America’s destruction, not just the CRIMES (and deception) of 911. The “boiling frogs” analogy is perfect. By the time the millions of American “frogs” get that dose of reality in their faces, they will be cooked!
Somehow, the financial industry has (so far) succeeded in convincing “investors” that the main architects of America’s financial problems (Greenspan & Bernanke, et al) are just DUMMIES – rather than the cunningly calculating evildoers that they really are. “Death by 1000 Cuts” was NO “accident” or “bad policy decision”. QEI, II and III (coming) are part of the DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION PLOT! “Sheeple”, indeed.
Best article you’ve ever posted, way-to-go Joel.
The Daily Reckoning should start by reckoning with 7 seconds of 9/11 Evidence:
Google “Hires Building 7 Collapse” and then follow this start-up kit:
http://911truthnews.com/jon-golds-official-911-justice-start-up-kit/
There is no reckoner that can portend upon world financial moments without understanding the implications of Building 7 et al being demolished.
The credibility of those that carry on pontificating without taking on board the evidence of 9/11 demolitions, explosions, and lies is at stake.
What’s even more amazing is that so few Americans have been able to connect the dots (more like bloody blobs) of 911, the GRAND DEPRESSION (now in progress), the ME wars for Israel, the “Israel Lobby”, the USS Liberty attack and the JFK assassination – among many others, all clearly leading to Zionist Israel. The Zionist-controlled MSM has done a great job in stonewalling what lies at the heart of America’s (and the world’s) problems. Leading the MSM pack are the NYT, the LAT, FOX, CNN and the BBC – but Rupert Murdoch & Co are beginning to feel some heat!
Good people generally die sooner than bad ones. A fact, but no explanation, hitherto.
“Good people generally die sooner than bad ones.”
More of a myth than a fact! Risk takers (with their lives) die sooner than fence-sitters – probably. In any case, it’s not worth pursuing.
What’s worth pursuing is exactly how millions of Americans were turned into “sheeple”. Google “The American Sheeple” for some clues and a pretty clever description.
I think just as many fanatics wanted to attack us before as after 9/11. They just had not figured out how. The efforts of our security forces have greatly diminished their numbers but more importantly has disrupted their networks and resources. Some claim, on theory, that what we have done only increased their recruitment, but those on the ground refute that. It has not been without cost but that cost has been only a tiny fraction of the cost of worthless poverty (vote buying) programs, illegal vote buying subsidies, and distortions in the financial sector (political insider payoffs). There are those who questioned us going toe to toe with the Japanese and Nazis and the Soviets. To all of you I say, bow down to your conquerors or cowardly ride the backs of your protectors.
AQ was never a great world power.
They never, ever, posed, nor could they possibly ever pose, anything like the threat to world stability that was posed by the Axis or the USSR.
Learn to count! Learn to measure! Learn how to read a map, ffs. The differences are very obvious, and there is no excuse for your failure to notice them.