Why aren't we dead?

I'm not complaining mind you, but following the dramatic conclusion (yawn) of Enterprise last week it made me wonder. "Why aren't we dead? Dead as in killed by a terrorist attack here in the USA?" Remember after September 11, 2001 how everyone was predicting another terrorist attack in the US? How during the election Dick Cheney said if we would be attacked if Kerry was elected?


Located here in at Star Fleet headquarters as I often am, I fully expected something to happen to the Golden Gate Bridge and by extension, everyone who is in the general vicinity when something really bad happens.

When discussing this issue with the most wonderful "The Voice" after watching the movie The Interpreter he brought up a couple of possibilities:

1) The extent of the terrorist network was much smaller than we were lead to believe.
2) We got most of the serious players.
3) We got serious players as well as innocent people "just to be safe."
4) We tortured innocent and guilty people to get more info and swept up more innocent and guilty people.

Whatever we did, it has worked so far (opps, not counting the Antrax, but we don't like to talk about that.).

Now I know that I have a huge number of readers in the NSA and CIA who constantly come to my blog to see how resident aliens view what they do. In addition to defending the CIA to David Brooks I've also talked about the folks at the NSA using their big brains to protect America.

But should we question the methods that keep us safe? To wonder about the scope and the practices?

Someone called up "The Ethicist", New York Times columnist Randy Cohen, on All Things Considered on NPR recently to ask some silly question about the Pope and "Holy Cards". Here's a tougher question that I could ask because I want people to question their acceptance of torture.

"It is quite clear there is a systematic rounding up and torturing of innocent, as well as guilty, people in the attempt to fight terrorism both here in the US and abroad. I live in a highly ranked target area (around the Golden Gate Bridge). Since I haven't been killed in a terrorist attack, it appears that these tactics are working. I think torture is wrong, do I have an ethical obligation to protest these tactics? Am I jepordizing the safety of my friends and family around me if I ask that these tactics stop? Are these procedures that use torture necessary to keep the terrorists at bay? "


View of Golden Gate Bridge from one of the many non-inspected boats that cross under it every single day.

Now I know that reading about and writing about torture is no one's idea of a good time, and I'm sure some people might say, "Heck, it's fine with me if they have to torture a few innocents to keep me and my family from blowing up." to those people I will ask, 1) Do you call yourself a Christian? 2)If you are not a Christian, what ethical system to you subscribe to? Does this system allow this torture? What is this system called? 3) If you think toture is necessary and acceptable, why are we so coy about it and deny we are doing it? Here is the president saying we don't torture (of course he can say we follow the law and then change the law, you can do that when you are in charge.)

President Bush Press Conference
Q: Mr. President, under the law, how would you justify the practice of renditioning, where U.S. agents who bust terror suspects abroad, taking them to a third country for interrogation? And would you stand for it if foreign agents did that to an American here?

BUSH: That's a hypothetical.

We operate within the law, and we send people to countries where they say they're not going to torture the people.

But let me say something. The United States government has an obligation to protect the American people. It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way.

And we will do so within the law. And we will do so in honoring our commitment not to torture people.

And we expect the countries where we send somebody to not to torture as well.
But, you bet, when we find somebody who might do harm to the American people, we will detain them and ask others from their country of origin to detain them. It makes sense. The American people expect us to do that. We're still at war.

You know, I've said this before to you, I'm going to say it again: One of my concerns after September the 11th is the farther away we got from September the 11th, the more relaxed we would all become and assume that there wasn't an enemy out there ready to hit us.

And I just can't let the American people — I'm not going to let them down by assuming that the enemy is not going to hit us again. We're going to do everything we can to protect us.

We've got the guidelines. We've got law.

But, you bet, we're going to fight people before they harm us.