So far I have struggled with what to think about the TSA scanner/enhanced pat down issue. I absolutely do not like the idea of those two options, but have been reluctant to come out against them without another strategy in place. If, however, it's all going to lead to this then I say the hell with all of it:
“[Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through,” Napolitano said in an interview that aired Monday night on "Charlie Rose."
“I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?”
The implication is that the use of the scanners will spread even further to federal government buildings and also trains, buses, and mass transit. Along with God knows what else.
No. No, no, no, no. Where does it stop? I am prepared to listen to a reasonable explanation about how we need to carve out an exception for air travel, but if that's just going to be a steppingstone to the next exception, and the next, and the next, then we might as well repeal the Fourth Amendment and acknowledge that we have to live in a police state. And you know what? I will not live in a police state. I simply won't.*
If we are going to get backed into choosing between living in a police state or getting brutal against the barbarians who foster and execute Islamic terrorism, and let's be honest that Islamic terrorism is what is pushing us to this point, then I choose stepping up the fight against the barbarians and getting brutal. And that means also aggressively hunting down and killing the bastards who promote this crap, wherever they live. If that means an Imam preaching "kill Americans" in a madrasah in Pakistan, kill him. If that means a Saudi prince who funds that madrasah, kill him.
I think nearly everyone in the West and nearly every Muslim wants to avoid a war between the two because it would be far more horrible than all of the wars of the 20th Century combined. The path to avoiding that is not less freedom, but more. But it also means we both must be absolutely ruthless against those who will use that freedom against us, wherever they live. We need to make it existential to those barbarians now, before it escalates into a conflagration beyond any control. If we aren't at the tipping point now, I think we are close.
Very close.
*Spare me the hysteria over "Domestic spying." If communications ultimately have one end in a foreign country they are not "domestic", they are international. And international commerce and communications are not entitled to constitutional protections the same way that purely domestic actions are. To say otherwise is just fucking retarded.
Recent Comments