On Defense Spending

Every time you hear a politician talk about cutting our ridiculously bloated, bigger-than-the-rest-of-the-world-combined defense budget, think of these words by Matthew Yglesias:

If you think about, say, Denmark there’s probably some level of concern there that al-Shabab will take over Somalia and create a congenial atmosphere for Islamist radicalism. Then there’s some secondary concern that some of this radicalism might lead to efforts to infiltrate Denmark and launch terrorist attacks in Copenhagen. The proposed remedies for this, however, are going to be general considerations about physical security in Denmark. The country needs effective policing and border security agencies, and it needs to be resilient in the face of the possibility that a bomb may go off somewhere someday without wrecking the country. 

[...] 

The reporters say the “rapid expansion” of these military efforts “is a reflection of the growing alarm with which U.S. officials view the activities of al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia.” No doubt it is that. But it’s also a reflection of a very grandiose conception of the appropriate role of the American military in the world. After all, a radical who’s in Yemen or Somalia is, by definition, not in the United States. It would be cheaper and easier to focus on making sure people can’t get from Yemen to Yuma or from Somalia to Sacramento than for us to go halfway around to try to kill them. But America’s strategic concept is basically that if there’s a problem anywhere in the world that could potentially be ameliorated by dropping American bombs, then we ought to drop the bombs. That strategy requires an extremely high level of defense expenditures. Bombs, planes, bases, “secret” airstrips, etc. are all expensive. To reduce military spending, we would need to adopt a more restrained view of the role of the American military. That hasn’t happened.

Defense spending is going no where, at least not in any meaningful capacity. Not until we discontinue our fetish for Endless Wars and piss pants reactions to anything that goes bump in the night and smells like a terrorist. And unfortunately for us, I don't see either of those things ever happening. 

Terrorist Until Proven Innocent

This is exactly the kind of shit that I was talking about in my post about the shameful legacy of our piss pants reaction to 9/11. 

And note how blithely the FBI spokesperson states that the public prefers that they overreact rather than under react. Personally, I would rather prefer they act with a modicum of sanity and not use heavily armed SWAT teams to drag innocent citizens off of an airplane for no reason other than they are brown. And let's be honest with ourselves - that is exactly what happened here.

The Onion, excellent as usual, nails it here.

The High Cost of Overreacting

I've said it before, but there is never any cost/benefit analysis to Absolute Safety. Ever. Why? Because freedom isn't free. And because shut up, that's why! And you don't want to get snuffed out in your bed at 3:00 am by a terrorist do you?!

I think someone once said something about all of this, years ago:

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.
He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers."
"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.
He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."
"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said.

We may have had Navy SEALs swoop in and shoot him in the face, but you can't argue that he didn't ultimately accomplish his goal. I know I'm not the first freedom hating, anti-American liberal to point this out, but it bears repeating as the ten year anniversary of September 11th nears tomorrow. We allowed two terrorists armed with box cutters and a plot that cost $500,000 to fundamentally alter the fabric of America and by extension, the world. We essentially reacted like Gotham City did in The Dark Knight at the hands of the Joker: "Look at what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets." We played right into their hands, launching two endless wars, one of which was completely unrelated to the attack on our soil, and spent billions and trillions of dollars in the pursuit of the laughable ideal of Absolute Safety. We circumvented civil liberties long enshrined by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution, to the extent that many who have grown up during the time of 9/11 now view this as normal. Even when bin Laden came out and publicly stated that this was his end game, we kept right at it anyway. And we continue to do so, and these same policies will continue into perpetuity. He got in our heads, altered our psyche, altered who we are as a people, even going so far as to justify torture as a means to an end, and gave birth to the insanity of the national security apparatus that has its tentacles firmly wrapped about America, ever wooing citizens to forego their civil liberties and basic governmental services commonly offered by other Western democracies so that we can plow billions into defense and security spending in pursuit of the specious goal of wholly preventing all future and potential terror attacks. All of this despite the overwhelming volumes of evidence that show that more Americans die in car accidents than they do as a result of terror attacks. Maybe it is time for no-drive lists and screening shoes and liquids before people get behind the wheel!

Contrast this with how Norway's prime minister reacted when recently confronted with a violent attack on his nation by an unhinged extremist:

Earlier Mr. Stoltenberg said the attacks were directed at Norway's "fundamental values" - democracy and openness - and that the response would be "more democracy, more openness." He said he expected people to participate more broadly in politics.
He added it was too early to consider new security laws.
"Now is the time for comfort for those who have lost family members [and] friends, and to help those who are still wounded," he said.
"Then afterwards, and especially after the investigation is finished, there will be a time for going through all the experiences, learning from what happened and then draw the conclusions regarding, for instance, security measures."
But the prime minister said the time would come when it was necessary to move on.
"We have to, at some stage, move back to some kind of normality, and also to convey the message of sadness with a message of something positive - and that is that we have seen a very united Norwegian people."

Any American politician uttering these words would be labeled a dirty hippie, pussy-ass coward and Unserious.

I'm not even going to go into the opportunity cost of $3 trillion dollars and what we could have done with that money. Just remember during all the flag waving and high-minded, freedom loving, America #1 speechifying that will take place tomorrow, it didn't have to be this way. We voluntarily embarked on a lifelong, national policy of absolute insanity in the wake of the death of 3,000 of our fellow citizens, co-opting their deaths and memories to subvert the rest of the nation into accepting endless wars and the perpetual empowerment of the security state. Their lives and legacies deserve better than this. 

UPDATE: ThinkProgress gives the thrust of my post a leg up, noting that in the ten years since 9/11, only 33 Americans have been killed as a result of terror attacks, while 150,000 Americans have been slain in murders.

I'm In Ur Base, Killin Ur Doodz

Via TPM, just in time for Memorial Day, the Pentagon is already ratcheting up its justification of the next round of decade-long, speciously planned exportation of Jebus, freedom, and democracy:

The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military.

In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks," said a military official.

It's probably just a coincidence that the origin of cyber attacks are often difficult to determine, prone to misdirection, and without allegiance or connection to a given nation. Sounds strangely like our current wars of choice, does it not? Uniform-less combatants that we pursue until the ends of the earth in pursuit of Absolute Safety utilizing a grossly overmatched military force with a 20th century strategy that costs a fuckton of money - hackers quickly become tomorrow's terrorist.

This shift in policy is obviously not aimed at any two-bit hacker with a Dell and a cursory knowledge of Trojan horses. But it's a reaffirmation of our continued insistence on using American military power as a response to pretty much anything. And you are going to love the yard stick for how this will be applied:

The report will also spark a debate over a range of sensitive issues the Pentagon left unaddressed, including whether the U.S. can ever be certain about an attack's origin, and how to define when computer sabotage is serious enough to constitute an act of war. These questions have already been a topic of dispute within the military.

One idea gaining momentum at the Pentagon is the notion of "equivalence." If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a "use of force" consideration, which could merit retaliation.

So in other words, use of force will be commensurate with the damage which the cyber attack caused. And in case you haven't been paying attention, we are not particularly adept at measured, 'equivalent' responses. A single terrorist attack that killed 3,000 American citizens gave way to two wars that continue to this day  almost a decade after the fact, not to mention the trillions of dollars we have pissed into the wind, the complete erosion of our moral character through indefinite detention and torture, and the ways in which average Americans now accept the persistent extraconstitutional intrusions into their privacy, civil liberties and even the very act of boarding a fucking airplane. And that list goes on and on - it is by no means conclusive, but just a small list of the number of insanities we allowed 9/11 to entrench in American policy.

The DoD is just gearing up for the 21st century and beyond. If we ever get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, we are going to need another hopeless military conflict to softly caress our national trigger finger and something else on which to spend our $800 billion defense budget. The cyber attack policy is just the framework for that.

Maybe We Should Also Profile People That Laugh

This has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever read:

Don't like the way airport screeners are doing their job? You might not want to complain too much while standing in line.

Arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator Transportation Security Administration officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists, CNN has learned exclusively. And, when combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny.

CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 "behavioral indicators" that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially "high risk" passengers at the nation's airports.

[...]

But one addresses passengers' attitudes towards security, and how they express those attitudes.

It reads: "Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures."

In addition to being profiled for carrying killer Pert Plus and bottled water, we now also arouse suspicion by having an opinion about the ridiculous three-ring circus to which we are subjected every time we wish to board a plane. And no, I don't care that there are 69 other things that TSA "officers" examine, this is just fucking stupid. I can't imagine that a criminal or would-be terrorist is going to spend a lot of time yelling and causing a scene over our ridiculous security protocols. You know who might complain about those same things though? Your average American. Innocent people. People who just want to get from Point A to Point B to see their family or go on vacation without a lot of bull shit hassle or what is increasingly bordering on unreasonable searches. I guess the TSA wasn't happy any longer shitting on your fourth amendment rights - now they want to go after the first amendment too.

I shudder to think of what airport security will look like in 3-5 years from now, because this shit will only get worse. And by then, we'll also be throwing a few more billion dollars at it too.