So pretty much everyone is aware that the US has not been attacked by terrorists since 9-11. My question is, do people think this is by chance? Do people think that al Qaeda and Islamist terror organizations have forgotten about US? Or do people think that Islamists no longer want to attack the US?
It is not by chance that we have not been attacked. And it certainly isn't true that terrorists have lost interest in attacking their number one nemesis.
The reason we haven't been attacked again is the Patriot Act. It's working. But it's about to expire.
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to renew the Patriot Act. Which is a good thing in my opinion. The vast majority of the Democrat caucus voted against the bill as did Senate hopeful, Vermont's Bernie Sanders. What was passed in the House was a bill agree to by House and Senate members to reconcile the separate legislation passed in each body. So you would figure that it would now speedily pass the Senate.
And would would figure wrong.
as soon as the compromise agreement was announced it became clear that it faced a high hurdle in the Senate. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, refused to endorse the accord, complaining that Democrats had been excluded from important negotiations.
And a group of three Republicans and three Democrats in the Senate vowed to work against the compromise version. "We still can, and must, make sure that our laws give law enforcement agents the tools they need while providing safeguards to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans," they said in a statement.
I think this argument would hold more weight if people felt oppressed by the Act. But here's what I think about that philosophically, I don't think the Act abridges any right afforded by the US Constitution. And if it does, those parts will be challenged in court and invalidated. So I am not very impressed with the argument that says my civil rights have been abridged.
Second, I think that the FBI, CIA and local law enforcement are too busy to be randomly looking into people's private lives. I'm pretty darn sure they have enough to do checking into people who they believe are actual criminals. And if something I do makes them believe that, fine they can look into me too. By all accounts, I won't even know about it so what do I care.
Will there be abuses by individuals. Probably. But there have been abuses before the Patriot Act and there will be abuses after it is gone. Is it possible I will be wrongly accused of something? Yeah. But that's always been the case.
But here's the thing: what the hell good is it to be cleaning up the mess after an attack? What everyone wants is for the attack not to happen. Doing this requires the "P" word: Preemption.
We need to preemptively strike at terrorists. We need to get them before they commit the crime.
You get that? Before they commit the crime of terrorism.
And the only way to do that is to use the same tools that are available to take down organized crime, which, to a large extent the Patriot Act is based upon. But there are other provisions as well.
Call be complacent, but I'll start yelling when I see people I know begin to get disappeared or I begin to second guess my ability to speak my mind on any given subject.
Until then, I would prefer that another 9-11 is prevented before it has to be investigated as a crime.