from Hacker News

America's Chronic Overreaction to Terrorism

by markprovan on 8/7/13, 3:18 PM with 34 comments

• by DamnYuppie on 8/7/13, 4:01 PM

  This is a conversation that we need to continually have as a nation and I am glad to see it being covered in more "mainstream" press.

  What are we giving up to gain our freedom and is it worth it in the long run? The intelligence apparatus our nation has constructed only has value as long as we have fear, they are thereby induced to continually keep us in a state of fear whether real or fabricated. My biggest fear is that many of these recent "terrorist incidents", not 9/11, were in fact created by our own agencies...yes a bit of a tin foil hat scenario to be sure but one that is not all together unreasonable given the current revelations.

• by chiph on 8/7/13, 6:48 PM

  For the past century or so, America has needed an "enemy" in order to provide an opponent to focus on. For years, it was the Soviets and Communism, but with the quick collapse of the Iron Curtain, we suddenly lacked one. Luckily (!) terrorism stepped up as a replacement, and well, here we are. Victorious, at the cost of our treasure and our morals.

• by norswap on 8/7/13, 5:19 PM

  You fight terrorism by refusing to be terrorized. America (or at least, its successive governments) failed from the start.

• by djcjr on 8/7/13, 5:47 PM

  Seems deliberately deceitful.

  After listing historical terrorist events and responses, Mr. Koppel tries to lump in our invasion of Iraq as an over-sized reaction to terrorism from 9/11 which happened eighteen months earlier.

  The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, it was about oil, as we all know now, after the propaganda has died down and people have generally gone back to sleep.

  The loss of privacy and rights since then, and currently, is our govt misbehaving, and also has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.

• by D9u on 8/7/13, 7:52 PM

  I love (not!) the way people who were against domestic surveillance when the previous administration was caught doing it are now strangely quiet after the current administration admits to doing the same.

• by ape4 on 8/7/13, 5:31 PM

  I hope the US is actually doing something smart/tricky. The CIA (or whoever) say this is because of some chatter. Can't they decode the chatter? Maybe they are pretending they can't.

• by adamtj on 8/7/13, 6:27 PM

  I would bet that this particular incident is not like the others. This strikes me as an intentional overreaction by a government trying hard to justify their surveillance programs.

• by mtgx on 8/7/13, 5:40 PM

  Wait, is this a trap article? This is coming from WSJ?

• by avty on 8/7/13, 4:32 PM

  It's not an overreaction, it's the agenda.

• by iterationx on 8/7/13, 4:18 PM

  Everyone who perpetuates the lies of the official narrative of 911 is co-builder of the police state.

  When you help build the prison, don't be surprised when you find yourself in it.