Understatement of the day
by digby
I am quite certain terrorist threats exist and are thwarted nearly every day. But it’s not 100% clear IS has made the “homeland” significantly more dangerous.
He’s talking about this piece by Paul Waldman that is very much worth reading. Waldman points out the absurdity of this latest fear of Americans going to Syria to get “training” from ISIS so they can come back here and kill us all in our beds. As if they have to go to Syria to learn how to do that. It’s not like it’s hard to learn how to use a weapons, build a bomb or any other form of violence here in the peaceful US of A. Hell, you could even join the Army and get some real first world super-power training.
Moreover, the idea that having an American passport is especially valued is also absurd. Unless we close the borders completely, foreigners can still come here. And yes, there’s always the chance that one of them could be a terrorist.
I also can’t get past the fact that we’ve just spent more than a decade developing a massive “Homeland Security” operation to the tune of trillions of dollars. If they have the capacity to store all my cat pictures and bookmarked recipes, I’m going to guess they’re pretty proficient at tracking expats who’ve gotten special terrorist training. If they aren’t maybe someone should ask them why.
Kilgore says this, which I think its important:
Every now and then it’s probably healthy for us non-experts to ask some questions about the memes surrounding military actions.
Indeed it is, especially when we’re in the midst of a full court press to justify military intervention and the media is hyping threats like they’re the new fall line-up. They are so deep into the bubble that they don’t even seem to realize that they’re not making any sense.
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