Pleasurepays

the issue of dealing with terrorism is an interesting issue, particularly for those who are more motivated by politics and paranoia, rather than finding practical solutions to practical problems.

they seem (by their arguments) to want both absolute privacy AND absolute security. Afterall, big government, patriot act, guantanomo etc etc etc or violently opposed to, but they can agree that they need protection and security OR... of course there are those who throw in the "those who would trade their freedom for security deserve neither" remark as if that means anything in the real world... and that we are not really talking about degrees and implies that government should always be at a huge dissadvantage to terrorists and criminals so everyone can feel more comfortable that no one see's their library history or how many soft core porns they ordered on cable.

so... what is the best answer? how many dead children are acceptable because someone ignored something they happened to notice might be suspicious behavior but didn't report it? how many WTC's should be blown up because we "shouldn't judge" others or "profile" criminals? How many planes should be hijacked because we can't single out terrorists or certain nationalities, religions etc for security screening have to have a totally fair and random process that doesn't offend anyone's sensibilities?

what i think is a very interesting issue that NEVER comes up is that deep down, we have all decided that there is such a thing as "acceptable losses" or "acceptable collateral damage" ... we can accept the idea that a certain amount of carnage and death will occur and we are very willing to accept that in order to protect what we precieve to be our "rights" while outwardly arguing differently.

if you don't do everything humanly possible to protect people from events you know will occur... from people you know are trying to comitt acts of terrorism, are you killing them? are you a murderer? we tell ourselves we're not of course... but where is the line? its all very gray and horrid to even think about.. so gray and so horrid that we like to distract ourselves with the specifics of the argument like "what NY fire department was told to do" so we can ignore the bigger picture of "how many people might be brutally murdered if they failed to recognize the signs and prevent something that could have been prevented" without having to confront the brutal realities, sacrifices and compromises that MUST be made.