Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The war on terror primed America for autocracy

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 301 posts

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#61

Post by csb6 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #42
marssaxman wrote: post #5

This seemed obvious to me at the time. It was hard to understand why people in the cultural mainstream let themselves get swept up in it. I felt like I lost my country, back then, as they pretty much all went off into crazyland together.

How old are you? I think a lot of younger folks don't fully adjust for important factors: plane hijackings used to be much more common, 9/11 was committed by the second group of Islamic terrorists who tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and 9/11 was the third major terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda in a 4 year span. It's easy now to say that it was a crazy worst-case scenario, but that was not at all obvious then; fo…

"Real excesses" is a bit of an understatement. There is the security theater instituted by the TSA, the militarization of police, normalized Islamophobia, mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, torture as an official military policy, indefinite detention of "unlawful combatants", a trillion dollars spent destroying Iraq and Afghanistan, a million killed and many more made refugees. The rise of ISIS and the refugee crises in Europe can be traced back to the War on Terror. The Middle East should not be the punching bag for America to take out its "crazy" feelings (where "craziness" appears to be a polite way of saying "bloodlust").

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#62

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

40four wrote: post #26

[flagged]

As I've told people before and I'm sure will tell them again, you're complaining to the wrong people. I'd love to get back to a world where politicians and political decisions are less relevant to hackers and their news; if you want to help get there, you'll have to convince said politicians to stop randomly wrecking relevant things.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#63

Post by inigyou »

bobjordan wrote: post #34

I subscribed to the economist from ~2008 for 10+ years before I cancelled. I'm mostly a centrist but admit to leaning libertarian these days, I think both sides do not represent "democracy" anymore, I do not trust the Democrats any more than Republicans in this regard. One only has to look at how the Democrats have turned California into a single party state to stop taking serious their tropes about anyone endangerin…

Are there any sides other than democrats and republicans?

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#64

Post by derektank »

Animats wrote: post #19

Yes. History will record that bin Laden won. There's a pre-9/11 book about bin Laden, "The Man Who Declared War on America". Bin Laden was interviewed. Consider the situation at the end of the Clinton administration. The US was at peace. The Soviet Union was gone. The US got along with China and Russia. No major enemies remained. The federal budget was balanced. Bin Laden looked at that, and realized that America had…

Bin Laden’s ultimate objective was to evict US military forces from the Middle East. In response to 9/11, we massively expanded our footprint in the region and formed even deeper relationships with the Saudi government (whom Bin Laden hated for in his view, “[suspending] Islamic laws, and replacing it with statuary laws”). You can read it all in his original, late 90s declaration of jihad against the United States[1] and decide for yourself if you think he ultimately achieved what he wanted, but for my money, he lost basically everything. In the strictest sense, we did stop “occupying” (stationing troops) in Saudi Arabia itself after we kicked off the Iraq war and concentrated our forces in Iraq and at Al Udeid airbase, but I don’t think that was really the spirit of the thing.

[1] https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Declara...

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#65

Post by inigyou »

jazzpush2 wrote: post #30
yanhangyhy wrote: post #24

What do people really think about Mearsheimer's book? (John Mearsheimer, co-author of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy") His analysis and interpretation of the Jewish lobby provide excellent answers to a lot of questions. Perhaps this is a topic that isn't easy to discuss openly? I don't want to make a sweeping statement that the U.S. is Israel's lapdog, but it is true that regarding many policies—especially…

It's actually incredible that you can share that bottom paragraph with a straight face after we just went to war with Iran. Let's discuss it openly, as you prime: how do you contrast what you just shared with the war, and Israel's actions after the agreed to ceasefire and declaration of war's end?

In the last few DAYS the republican party has started putting on an anti-israel face to set up for the midterms, with JD Vance in particular giving a speech about how we need to separate from Israel. The democrat party, in its typical useless fashion, has not. So it looks at this point like the midterms will be another republican landslide.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#66

Post by inigyou »

roarcher wrote: post #20
applicative wrote: post #17

That my every movement is known to Google, Meta, Apple, et al, is much more disturbing than any autocratic effect of the dismal Patriot Act. The idea that ‘the state’ is the thing to fear, or even worth a moments’ thought, is basically childish and premodern. Witness eg the apotheosis of Snowden for revealing nugatory CIA corner cutting … in the same historical period when the above mentioned are completely hoovering…

Those corporations are certainly to be feared, but they don't have the power to impose violence or prison on you. The state does. It was the state that forced Snowden into exile. It is the state that is detaining people for the crime of walking out of Home Depot while speaking with an accent. Both must be kept in check.

Google has the power to fire me from my job by deleting my Google account.

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#67

Post by vessenes »

jmyeet wrote: post #46

That's just not looking back far enough. The war on terror was a continuation. I'd say we're seeing the results of not stringing up all the slave owners after the Civil War. American industrialists going back to the robber baron era and beyond have always loved autocracy, specifically fascism. This was heightened by the fear of communism. When FDR was elected, there was an attempted coup (ie the business plot [1]). H…

I’d like to pick on a couple points here that I think are not just nits:

> more concessions to the working class. The 1950s were incredibly prosperous as a result

This is absolutely not a common read of the boom in the 1950s. The common read of the boom in the 1950s is that America leveraged its success in WW2 into a global imperial economy, exporting its goods everywhere in the world. The combination of massive manufacturing expansion at home during WW2, the brain drain into the US and the trade deals, power brokering and treaties that carved out the post war world order made America very wealthy. There is no world in which a “labor value” oriented economic order on its own would have resulted in an ‘incredibly prosperous’ 1950s without WW2.

The fall of the Soviet Union ushered in what I would consider more of a golden age, overseen by Clinton in the US, when we had a balanced budget, low global conflict and massively reduced inflation compared to Carter / Reagan early years. If you went back to 1994 and could have gotten 10% of working Americans to vote to return to 1980’s labor market, I’d be shocked. These were qualitatively different economic times. Post Iraq war, gas was at $0.99/gallon. In the earlier era you’re lionizing, there was rationing throughout the US.

I agree with your perspective on 9/11 being blowback, although I’d characterize it as blowback from our Middle East policy - I haven’t read a lot about Bin Laden, although I did read his manifesto — and I didn’t take away that he cared much about 18th century American imperialism (such as it was; we got much more effective at this in the 20th century in my opinion).

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#69

Post by gmadsen »

rayiner wrote: post #25
xbar wrote: post #6

Exactly what everyone said when Patriot Act was passed and renewed repeatedly. America permanently traded away basic freedoms for the bogus promise of safety in the shadow of fear. And the Supreme Court was too scared to stop it despite its obvious constitutional problems. Crying eagle photos in chain-emails were sufficient propaganda to keep it in place.

It wasn’t just the GOTW. It was much of the 20th century from World War I onward. Each step led to further centralization of government, a larger and larger security apparatus, and more and more foreign entanglements. We are more or less retracing the path of Rome as the Republic expanded militarily until it was no longer practical to run it as a republic and it transitioned to empire.

A Pax Romana would be a considerable upgrade

Re: The war on terror primed America for autocracy

#70

Post by shakna »

rayiner wrote: post #59
shakna wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The failure to integrate the barbarian Goth refugees is generally marked as the beginning of the fall - and absolutely changed the trajectory of the empire.

“Failure to integrate” is one way to describe the Goths sacking Rome. But I agree the barbarians did them in at the end. My point was that the Iran fiasco is more like the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, where Rome backed off after taking a beating. That didn’t mark a transition away from Empire, simply a retreat after a military loss.

And my point, is the current administration is closer to Caligula and Nero, than they are to Varus. You see this as nothing more than another blip in a long history. I see unstable and dangerous individuals getting standing ovations for failure.

"I don't care if they respect me so long as they fear me." - Caligula.

Post reply on HN