Ah, I see. So, I don’t believe Bin Laden foresaw the Patriot Act in any way shape or form. From his perspective specifically, it’d be about sowing as much fear and discomfort as possible. I doubt he personally was able to predict the exact form that fear and discomfort would take, but it doesn’t really matter. Surveillance harms us exactly because it creates more fear and discomfort. The specifics are an irrelevant detail though, not something he has influence over or needs to care about. Not mission-critical information.
The fear and discomfort in turn leads to more radical behavior, it helps drive folks crazy, to speak colloquially.
This is the real key that can and probably eventually will drive us from the Middle East. Without it, and the emotional feeling of disgust it creates within us, it would’ve taken a mammoth amount of casualties and/or economic damage to accomplish that. We have a long history of being unbelievably stubborn. Additionally, we weren’t yet energy independent back then, before our fracking boom, so being there was an additional economic necessity he would’ve felt needed to be overcome.
Look at it this way: He wanted to create more Islamophobia. So we would leave all the Muslims alone, eventually, since genociding them isn’t an option for decent folk, which we (mostly) want to be. Something we now have to wrestle with concerning Israeli actions.
It’s basically how terrorism works as a political and military tool, how it attempts to accomplish its intended goals. It’s not usually so successful, though. But I would say this time, fear was successfully sown, and domestic harmony effectively destroyed. We haven’t really been politically functional since then, though that’s my opinion, again.
Ah, I see. So, I don’t believe Bin Laden foresaw the Patriot Act in any way shape or form. From his perspective specifically, it’d be about sowing as much fear and discomfort as possible. I doubt he personally was able to predict the exact form that fear and discomfort would take, but it doesn’t really matter. Surveillance harms us exactly because it creates more fear and discomfort. The specifics are an irrelevant detail though, not something he has influence over or needs to care about. Not mission-critical information.
The fear and discomfort in turn leads to more radical behavior, it helps drive folks crazy, to speak colloquially.
This is the real key that can and probably eventually will drive us from the Middle East. Without it, and the emotional feeling of disgust it creates within us, it would’ve taken a mammoth amount of casualties and/or economic damage to accomplish that. We have a long history of being unbelievably stubborn. Additionally, we weren’t yet energy independent back then, before our fracking boom, so being there was an additional economic necessity he would’ve felt needed to be overcome.
Look at it this way: He wanted to create more Islamophobia. So we would leave all the Muslims alone, eventually, since genociding them isn’t an option for decent folk, which we (mostly) want to be. Something we now have to wrestle with concerning Israeli actions.
It’s basically how terrorism works as a political and military tool, how it attempts to accomplish its intended goals. It’s not usually so successful, though. But I would say this time, fear was successfully sown, and domestic harmony effectively destroyed. We haven’t really been politically functional since then, though that’s my opinion, again.
OK, looks like I misunderstood what you were saying. Fair enough.