If a house is on fire, one bickers about wether that was malice or stupidity
before putting it out, they're nuts. That as a foreword, a note to self and everybody.
> not to mention the body bags.
Unless you have a specific set of bodybags in mind, I would actually say, the way civilians get attacked with drones (including a second strike to hit first responders, yay), and also going to war with Iraq for exactly zero good reasons, including niceties such as Abu Ghraib, would make it obvious that "the government" is fighting for terrorism, that is, the creation of more terrorists, while ignoring warnings from both experts in the field as well as random strangers who happen to be able to add 2 and 2.
Of course they wouldn't want to actually get overtaken by terrorism, but at the same time, NO terrorism would be nearly as useless. All of this is huuuge business, taken in total. All the gadgets and wars, all the dead people ("even Americans") and all the people being spied on ("even Americans"), may not do anything to prevent terrorism, but they represent a real cashflow, that's one big, fat fact. They also do provide a justification for total surveillance and the militarization of pretty much everything. That doesn't mean it's all made up and just a scam; terrorists are real, and they're not all "created by being mean to people", sometimes people are terrorists because they're dicks. But that doesn't mean that a.) other parties can't find ways to profit off all that, and b.) they can't find ways to fuel the fire, either on purpose or by being so stupid and full of it, that there isn't a meaningful difference between that actual malice, and the question becomes moot.
Why is terrorism objectionable? Because it destroys lives, and the lives of all those who live in fear. Not "because it's terrorism", but because of those and related things. So something done "in reaction" to that, and to "fight" it, especially when it is zero effective in actually fighting it, that does those same things, is a sibling of terrorism, not its counterpart. Which is unrelated to the question at hand but I wanted to point it out anyway. That you and I are not activists that "goes to sleep each night worried they might wake up with a gun in their mouth" (to paraphrase Appelbaum), or kids in Elsewhereistan whose grandmother was killed in a random drone attack and who can't enjoy a sunny day without fear ever since, or any day for that matter, makes it easy to underappreciate how real and fucked up this is. The terrorism it "fights" does not cause as much pain to the American people as the actions of the military-industrial complex causes others, and, as sick and sad as it is to say that, it's a thousand times cheaper.
You know how some people don't light fireworks on NYE because they realized that's just blowing money and dirt into the air for no reason? Now consider all those drones and carriers and rockets, consider the data centers, consider the TSA, and stop pissing the future of your children away. Even if you can't be arsed to feel empathy for others, consider the damage it does to you.