This article by Walter Russell Mead says a massive intelligence effort is an necessary corollary of Obama's position that the Global War on Terror is over, that we can return to a 9/10 mindset: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/06/06/public...:
Key bits:
"From the day he took office, President Obama has sought to defuse the war and decrease public concern about it....
"It is in many ways an excellent strategy, but it has one serious flaw: it leaves the President terribly vulnerable if a significant terror strike should succeed....
[ Details the intelligence effort required. ]
"More than that, he has to be able to act. If terror is to be nipped in the bud, drones must fire down from the skies. If the al-Qaeda leadership is to remain stunned, scattered and incapable of large scale actions against the United States, houses in Waziristan must mysteriously blow up. American citizens making war against their homeland must die, even if that means they don’t get to hear their Miranda rights first.
"President Obama’s core war strategy depends on massive intelligence capabilities that were undreamed of twenty years ago. It depends on the substitution of drones for troops. PRISM and similar programs aren’t a ghastly misstep or an avoidable accident. They are the essence of Obama’s grand strategy: public peace and secret war. To cool down the public face of the war, he must intensify the secret struggle."
This reads like pro-Obama propaganda. Why does Obama want to decrease public concern about war? I'd say he doesn't want a public debate about it. He doesn't want a public debate about PRISM/NSA either.
Oh, but Obama says he welcomes the latter, even congratulates us for wanting to have one, "[...] it's a sign of maturity because probably five years ago, six years ago we might not have been having this debate." (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/06/07/obama_on_n...). Who could possibly complain?
I'm curious what you believe about the Boston bombing and 9/11. Do you think the threat of Islamic terrorism is fabricated?
I'm also curious what you think about American communism. American communists were instrumental in getting the Soviet Union the Bomb, thereby bring the world to the brink of destruction. They also leaked information from the top levels of government during WWII, helping to deliver millions to the rule of Soviet tyranny. The domestic communist threat was very real. Sorry to quote myself, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843702
There will always be threats. That is not the problem. The problem is the Us vs Them attitude that causes overreaction to a relatively small number of deaths while larger dangers go unnoticed. You endure road accidents and gun deaths every day. Why do you think you can't endure Islamic terrorism?
You're ignoring that we spend a great deal of treasure and effort in minimizing road accidents and "gun deaths", and with quite a bit of success in both as measured in just that, especially when adjusted for population increase. We're spending so much ordinary people can't afford new cars (OK, there are environmental costs as well, and the $1,000? for a 5 mph bumper isn't for safety, really), and the current generation of the young is to an unprecedented degree avoiding them.
Therefore, why is our reaction to Islamic terrorism an out of line overreaction? I mean, any more than our vehicle safety one, or at least as that can be argued as an overreaction?
If, or more likely when, it gets to the point of nukes slagging our cities, I don't think the word "endure" will even vaguely apply. I would also hate to tell my friends who lost friends in 9/11 that that was something simply to be "endured", with obviously lots more to come.
Ask yourself if your desires are realistic. Would the American people allow such to pass? Would not a suppression of the reaction to attacks result in worse reactions when we finally do? It can be argued that our tolerance and "enduring" of al-Qaeda's attacks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Attacks) that killed over 300 prior to 9/11 allowed the latter to occur, with our resulting "overreaction".
Do you have friends who lost friends in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? What do you tell them? The wars made us less safe. What do you tell your kids who have to pay for them?
Look, I'm not saying don't act. Sometimes military action is the best option. Just keep your eyes open. Sometimes invading countries that want to be left alone, or increased authoritarianism at home isn't the best idea.
Unlike the victims of al-Qaeda, the casualties of those two wars signed up for the risks. (I could have been one of them if eyesight hadn't kept me out of the military.)
We disagree on whether these wars "made us safer", and I'll also note the effort to quarantine Saddam (the no-fly zone et. al.) prior to the 2nd war wasn't cheap, in lives or treasure.
If the Taliban controlling Afghanistan at the time "wanted to be left alone", they could have delivered Osama and company to us as we demanded. To the extent they weren't complicit and supporting al-Qaeda, they violated Niven's Law 1b: "Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man."
And I think the peoples of Iran and Kuwait would find it extremely curious to describe Iraq under Saddam as a country "that wanted to be left alone".
One could argue that the Russians getting the bomb meant that no nukes were used in the Korean war.
As for WWII it wasn't Russian spies that allows the USSR's land grab, it was combination of rubbish negotiation and political wrangling within the allies.
Key bits:
"From the day he took office, President Obama has sought to defuse the war and decrease public concern about it....
"It is in many ways an excellent strategy, but it has one serious flaw: it leaves the President terribly vulnerable if a significant terror strike should succeed....
[ Details the intelligence effort required. ]
"More than that, he has to be able to act. If terror is to be nipped in the bud, drones must fire down from the skies. If the al-Qaeda leadership is to remain stunned, scattered and incapable of large scale actions against the United States, houses in Waziristan must mysteriously blow up. American citizens making war against their homeland must die, even if that means they don’t get to hear their Miranda rights first.
"President Obama’s core war strategy depends on massive intelligence capabilities that were undreamed of twenty years ago. It depends on the substitution of drones for troops. PRISM and similar programs aren’t a ghastly misstep or an avoidable accident. They are the essence of Obama’s grand strategy: public peace and secret war. To cool down the public face of the war, he must intensify the secret struggle."