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I don't believe that Osama bin Laden (or whoever the bogeyman of the week is) could give a flying flip whether you're being tracked by your government or not. I'm pretty sure that he wants the western world to stop supporting Israel and the Saudi government.


I think this is the key point that must be underscored in any discussion about terrorism/terrorists. The line "they fight against us because they're jealous of our freedoms" is a completely fabricated line of bull designed to make the discussion seem much more black and white than it really is. You look at the stated goals of Al Qaeda, and they all have to do with destroying Israel, destroying the US as retribution for their support of a Jewish state, destroying the U.S as retaliation for meddling in the affairs of fundamentalist Middle Eastern countries or groups, or even "driving the Jews into the ocean". Nothing about resenting any freedoms unless it's the freedom of a Jew to simply exist.

It's a much deeper more complicated problem than the average American, Brit, or other world citizen can imagine, and it can only be solved by figuring out the root cause of the millennia of Middle Eastern discord and fixing that. I'm afraid that if we talked about the problem the way the terrorists do, we'd be less unified in our resolve to beat the terrorists, because there's still a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment out there. I fear that many people could just come to the conclusion that "It's the Jews fault that we're in this mess, so what are we wasting our lives defending them for? All we have to do is stop supporting Israel and they'll leave us alone? Yeehaw."

It's much easier for those in power to just recast the problem as something everyone can get behind and agree upon. "These people want to take away your freedoms. If you like freedom, you're against terrorists. Oh, and they also eat babies. You'll be against the terrorists, unless of course you don't like babies". Plus it's a lot easier to enact totalitarian laws (that actually do take away your freedom), than to solve the real problem.
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-Aaron