It also strikes me that the feelings of safety, above mentioned, come at entirely to high a cost.
That is true, but so too is opposite of this. In a "free" society, we give folks a lot of room to concopt, refine, and implement various sorts of terrible things. Don't get me wrong. I am not at all saying we should give up our rights. I am only providing insight into the opposite view that can result in high costs as well.
I found many of the comments of various leaders in the US and expressed on some gun boards that if we have to modify our 'free' way of life, then the terrorists have won. WTF?
I also found that many of these same folks are the ones crying out, "Never again!" Aside from the fact that we are a very forgetful society and keep making this cry after just about every disaster and sneak attack on us, bad things keep happening to us again and again, in part because we are slow or unwilling to implement procedures that would help prevent such events, or are not willing to continue with said procedures for any length of time after a threat is perceived to be over.
Think about all the times the US has been surprised by aggressive actions against us. They often happen during lulls in combative periods or during periods where we are not engaged in combat. Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor, USS Cole, various overseas barracks and embassies, and even twice at the World Trade Center.
What surprises me most is that we have such a powerful military, and yet we don't use our military to patrol our own borders or have an active air cap over us as they do with aircraft carriers. It was something like 30 or 40 minutes before the first fighters arrived in New York after the second tower had been hit by a plane. By that time, they were not needed as the damage was done.
I don't know. I just have problems with the notion that our overseas military is doing more to protect themselves and the areas in which they are located than we use to protect our own country directly. Since we don't properly protect our own homeland with the vast forces we have, then we remain vulnerable.
Plus, we don't even attempt to enforce many of the problems we have with foreigners inside our own borders that are here illegally, such as some of the 9/11 terrorists. We knew they were here and knew their visas had expired, but we did not round them up and deport them.
In short, we can be doing a lot of things to increase the security of the US that would not necessarily infringe on individual rights.
