Last week, Dahlia Lithwick had a terrific piece in Slate in which she ponders America's "Terrorism Derangement Syndrome [TDS]."
America does seem to be in the grip of morbid fear, doesn't it? Khalid Shaikh Mohammed could irradiate Manhattan if he's given a trial there ... terrorists can melt the walls of supermax prisons ... the Underwear Bomber is so diabolically clever he would laugh off traditional interrogation methods. With all this terror, you might even think ... I don't know, that terrorism is working pretty well.
Lithwick attributed some of the cause of TDS to Republican fear-mongering and to Democratic acquiescence in GOP scare tactics. I agree - but I think there's something more fundamental going on, something that explains both the fear and the fear-mongering.
Something like ... our own policies.
I believe some deep-seated part of our national consciousness is aware there will be consequences for what we've done, and continue to do. The wars, and kidnappings, and illegal imprisonment, and off-the-mark Predator strikes, and, most of all, torture - we sense a reckoning for all this, a conflagration waiting to engulf the combustible materials we insist on piling recklessly, relentlessly higher. Our tactics worsen the danger.
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