"In the name of counterterrorism, many Americans have given their assent to indefinite detention, the criminalization of gifts to certain charities, the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens, and a sprawling, opaque homeland security bureaucracy; many have also advocated policies like torture or racial profiling that are not presently part of official anti-terror policy.
***
"It ought to be self-evident that non-Muslims perpetrate terrorist attacks, and that a vanishingly small percentage of Muslims are terrorists, but those two truths aren't widely appreciated in America. That doesn't mean they won't reassert themselves, for terrorist attacks have always been with us; the tactic has never been exclusive to a single ideology for very long; and the power the state marshals against one sort of terrorist is sure to be first to hand when another sort strikes.
***
"Having flattened so many laws (and a good many innocents) in pursuit of the terrorist, the American majority is naturally loath to focus its attention on a terrorist who looks, talks, and dresses as they do. It is particularly uncomfortable for those in the country who feel most reflexively safe when "an American" is beside them on a plane, instead of a bearded man with a turban. Watching [the Sikh temple massacre], that subset of Americans was put in a position to realize that a day prior they'd have identified with the terrorist more than his victims.
"And so they quickly looked away."
History shows that when people try to ignore terrorism done to others -- pretending that it doesn't effect them -- they end up vulnerable, alone and exposed.
And letting our fear of terror get out of hand makes people stupid.
And it should be clear that the failure to really investigate 9/11 (and the government's bumbling incompetence or worse) has led to the spread of terrorism. Specifically, there was state support for 9/11 from at least one government ... and yet we haven't changed our foreign policy based upon that fact. And if people knew that 9/11 was preventable, they would demand real national security, instead of the ruthless global war and shameless fear-mongering which has been the government's response to those attacks.
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