"That’s the stuff that drives me crazy—this response of more violence and more war to make us all safer actually creates more violence."
Perhaps that's the goal. I've spent a long time trying to understand the grand chessboard of geopolitics and military strategy, and my general conclusion about the WOT is that it was designed as a destabilization program in the first place. Destabilization helps by allowing the jackals to manipulate the power structure to allow whatever the real objective(s) are. In the case of Iraq, for example, it was largely about two things: control of oil (not about getting oil for ourselves, but about controlling who did get it), because the real intellectual hawks (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger, etc kind of people who persist in the beltway over decades) feel that Russia and China are the real threat as we move towards resource wars, and by extension Iran is a threat because it doesn't comply with our power structure. We isolated Iran with both Afghanistan and Iraq, and continue to allow both neo-cons and the hawkish left to isolate them even more. I don't think they understand the gravity of such actions though.
I gave Wartard some pointers on this article that is worth a read if you are interested in this sort of subject matter.
Anyway, I digress, the point is that we need to acknowledge and accept that actual national security from terrorism has never been the primary goal, and instead is the cover for the perceived national security situation that is soon to be here, namely, a neo-cold war era of global resource and economic wars. Until this fact is acknowledged, I will continue to be disappointed in journalists who simply stop at "but we are creating more terrorists!" and don't move on the the bigger picture of why this is the current state of the union.
There's a general bigger picture perspective that goes something like this: "Government is a disease masquerading as it's own cure." EG: Government creates problems in order to justify more power by claiming it needs the power (or money) to solve the problem.
It's not just the War on Terror. The war on drugs has had a similar effect -- drug enforcement focusing on importation, incentivizes more concentrated drugs allowing for profit per pound in smuggling operations. These drugs happen to also be more addictive. Cocoa Leaves -> Cocaine -> Crack
In fact, I submit you can probably find a similar effect in every "grand effort" at the federal level that gets called a "war".
"but the Chinese did manage to sneak a diesel powered sub into the middle of a carrier group during USN exercises off Taiwan in 2006."
I was stationed in Japan when I was in the Navy and just missed this little event. Supposedly the sub surfaced directly in front of the Kittyhawk. Shortly thereafter, the Kittyhawk went into General Quarters.
Just wow. Great post and the linked blog post was also fascinating. I find it almost incredulous that there are people in the throws of power who play this as a game with the lives of billions hanging by a thread in their hands.
Perhaps that's the goal. I've spent a long time trying to understand the grand chessboard of geopolitics and military strategy, and my general conclusion about the WOT is that it was designed as a destabilization program in the first place. Destabilization helps by allowing the jackals to manipulate the power structure to allow whatever the real objective(s) are. In the case of Iraq, for example, it was largely about two things: control of oil (not about getting oil for ourselves, but about controlling who did get it), because the real intellectual hawks (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger, etc kind of people who persist in the beltway over decades) feel that Russia and China are the real threat as we move towards resource wars, and by extension Iran is a threat because it doesn't comply with our power structure. We isolated Iran with both Afghanistan and Iraq, and continue to allow both neo-cons and the hawkish left to isolate them even more. I don't think they understand the gravity of such actions though.
I gave Wartard some pointers on this article that is worth a read if you are interested in this sort of subject matter.
http://wartard.blogspot.com/2012/01/phase-ii-why-us-wants-to...
Anyway, I digress, the point is that we need to acknowledge and accept that actual national security from terrorism has never been the primary goal, and instead is the cover for the perceived national security situation that is soon to be here, namely, a neo-cold war era of global resource and economic wars. Until this fact is acknowledged, I will continue to be disappointed in journalists who simply stop at "but we are creating more terrorists!" and don't move on the the bigger picture of why this is the current state of the union.