You know, to fully understand our motivations as a nation, and to understand the motivations of our enemies, you really have to go back to WW2 and start from there.

Having formerly been convinced that the US gov't was headed the direction of the NWO, enslaving its own people to support its own interests, I must say that extensive studying of history has put everything into a new perspective, made me drop my ridiculous theories, and take a look at the world from a perspective that doesn't come from armchair conspiracy nuts, but from within my own mind.

All we do as a nation, we do to avoid an open WW3 caused by any number of factors. If it makes us look like international bullies, criminals, despicable human beings with no regard for life, etc... so be it. Because none of those things are as terrible and as ghastly as another world war will be.

You think torturing suspected terrorists is terrible? I'm one of those who says that it may be terrible, but it is less terrible than the sheer amount of torture that happens during wartime by soldiers on all sides.

There is no such thing is Eutopia, and there never will be.

I very much would like to see world peace as much as any other hippy out there, but the fact is that here in America, we're kind of poor at seeing the world as it really is, instead of how we wish it would be.

Whether al-Q is an invention of the US gov't is irrelevant. Because there will always be folks in Islam who will push for a holy war against the west. Until they are all dead, they will continue this war. That means that as long as these people are breathing, they will find a way to strike at you. DOn't believe for a second that if we were to simply pull out of the middle east, they would go away. That really does seem to be a popular mindset, and is utterly missing the point. Here is the point, borrowed from elsewhere:

Our enemies believe that they are executing Godâ??s will, and that those who oppose them also oppose God. Negotiations and dialogue are meaningless because any sort of compromise or understanding would be in conflict with what they believe to be the wishes of God. They cannot be reasoned with; they can only be killed.
Whether you like it or not, the pot has been stirred-indeed, has been stirring for hundreds of years- and these people will not simply go away quietly into the night.

My honest assessment of 9-11 is that al-Q (or at least Muslim extremists) very much carried it out, however, we DID let it happen. Now, why did we allow this to happen? Shouldn't the job of our government be to protect every single precious little life in our country?

A nation, any nation, demands sacrifice. Our whole lives are built on sacrifice vs reward. And as Robert Leckie said in his memoir, -
...sacrifice says: "Not the blood of your brother, my friend- your blood."
Your life, my life, is not as precious as you would probably like to think.

Moving on.

Lets take a step back to WW2 as I mentioned earlier. The thought coming out of this war is that another should be avoided at all costs. This is probably about the time the constitution became ignored in favor of national security. The cold war was the transition between intelligence used for battlefield warfare, and intelligence warfare as a standalone tactic. Our tactics differed not from the ones openly used now and outlined in Patriot Act 2. And the result?

It worked. USSR fell, we survived.

But then we had (have) a whole host of other issues! Namely, that everybody who was involved in the cold war is now free of USSR control. And to make matters worse, Russia couldn't keep track of its weapons, its generals, its soldiers, its agents, etc... On top of that, we probably cut people loose all over the place, no longer needing them.

So now, our national security is at stake from hundreds of unaccounted-for fronts. We have to step up our game.

This becomes increasingly difficult. The world is a nasty, nasty place, far more than us civilians can fully comprehend. And we don't care to. The population just wants to spend money, read Cosmo, and take vacations. With an attitude like that, you can hardly blame our govt for stepping it up a notch.

So, we have these very very dangerous enemies, we always have and always will whether you hear of them or not. And finally, maybe somebody gets wind of 9/11 who is in a position to stop it. And maybe they let it happen. Why they let it happen is likely never going to be clear.

I'm reminded that during WW2, we had busted open literally every major code the Axis powers used. We knew when they were going to hit, where, and how. But sometimes, you have to let 3000+ sailors die to protect your source, or the codes would be changed, and thus MORE people die. So there is a precedent.

Or maybe its as simple as this: fighting our secret small-scale wars all over the world (on every single continent on the planet, don't fool yourself.), we make enemies everywhere. AS the world becomes a more dangerous place, it becomes harder and harder to do this out of the eyes of the public, and still maintain the required resources.

Boom, boom, the towers fall, and suddenly, our leaders have a blank check to "Fight Terror!". Is there deception at play? You bet. Is it insulting, dirty, deadly, embarassing, shameful, immoral, dishonest, etc...? You bet.

But I challenge any of you living in the US without military combat experience to try and picture a world where we mobilize all of our young men to go fight and die in some nameless, useless part of the world, instead of seeking out every dirty little trick first.

It's a complex world, a world most people can't comprehend 1% of. I'm not supporting all of our actions in the US, but I will say that if it wasn't for actions just as despicable as allowing 9/11 to happen, likely none of us would even have the ability to sit on the internet and bullshit about sasquatch, you dig?