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To date, ISIS has killed four Americans, a horrible tragedy for those people and their families. But since the idea of the group’s threat to America is at this point entirely hypothetical, we should be as specific as we can when we talk about that threat. Do we think they’re going to try to hijack planes or send agents here to set off bombs? And if so, what do we need to do to counter those threats that we aren’t already doing? If we’re going to expand our military involvement in the Middle East, is there a way to do it that won’t create more problems than it solves?
Those are simple, obvious questions, but so often they’re overwhelmed by people waving their arms and shouting “We’re all gonna die!” In the days and years after September 11, Republicans repeated that al Qaeda was an “existential threat,” a notion that was utterly insane yet seldom examined. And we certainly acted as though the very existence of the United States of America was indeed in question. Congress gave the federal government a slate of new powers to spy on its citizens. We created a surveillance apparatus of gargantuan size and scope. We deployed a network of secret prisons as sites for a program of torture. And we all got used to the idea that the War on Terror is forever.
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A couple of hundred thousand Americans die every year from preventable medical errors and the response from the government amounts to “Gee, that’s too bad,” but all it takes is a few videos of brutal executions 6,000 miles away to spur a wholesale reexamination of American foreign policy. (via wilwheaton)
pretty much agree with this perspective. I get annoyed at the gym because they play CNN on the big TVs, and CNN seems to really love rebroadcasting ISIS’s videos of beheading people (or whatever). ATTN CNN. YOU ARE MAKING IT SO MORE PEOPLE WILL BE BEHEADED, BECAUSE THE WHOLE GOAL OF THE PEOPLE DOING THE BEHEADING IS FOR YOU TO BROADCAST THEIR VIDEO. this should not be hard for the executives at CNN to figure out.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1CD8E7G.
