The Wrong Way

I support the war on terror. Before anything else, I have to say that.

And the next most important thing I have to say is that I hugely, HUGELY admire "This American Life." I have neither seen nor heard better journalistic endeavors or integrity. Ira Glass and his ilk are the real deal. These guys do it right.

As an example of how seriously I endorse them, I'll tell you that I donated ten bucks (I am very poor) a few weeks on their website. See, it's a free podcast, and a non-profit. That means they need donations to survive. And I very much want them to survive.

You might be wondering what it is I'm even talking about. If you haven't heard of this brilliant program, go here, here (this one has some neat video clips), here (wiki!), or here (buy it.)

So anyway. I heard something today that disturbed me pretty deeply. This is the description of this weeks radio show:

The U.S. government spent two years on a sting operation trapping Hemant Lakhani, whom they suspected of being an illegal arms dealer. In the end, they got him red-handed: the only problem was, nothing in the sting was what it appeared to be.

The short of it is that it really looks as though many of the terrorists we've caught and prevented from performing acts of terror were basically set up. That they were the kind of people that probably wouldn't have done anything, but who were guided into compromising, incriminating situations by informants who are desperately eager for a catch.

I would strongly advise you to listen to the whole program. If you don't, what I say won't mean much because it's too easy. What these guys have done is gone and talked to all the integral people in their story. They did the hard work, went the distance, and brought back facts from the actual sources. There are interviews with the convicted terrorists, with those who prosecuted them, and those who defended them. And they cite extensive external resources to fact check every possible element of the narrative that they can.

For now, all I can do is give you my conclusions. We, as a nation, want badly to stop terrorists from terrorizing us. They kill men, women, and children indiscriminately. Civilians are primary targets because it hurts us more. The price we're willing to pay to see acts of terror against our country are very high, and appropriately so.

But they're smarter than we are most of the time. It's too difficult to catch them, and we are too easily infiltrated. We have a President who's dead set on cutting defense costs, making it ever more difficult to strike effectively outside of our borders, and, I have come to learn, a domestic defense plan that is strikingly negligent and woefully misleading. We don't have the knowledge or capabilities we need to effectively catch most of the dangerous terrorists who are within our own borders (and there is no dispute as to whether they exist), so we catch fools instead. Malignant idiots or psychos who are basically harmless until equipped (by us) to appear otherwise.

It's a sobering truth. The most unsettling aspect of it is that it makes more sense than anything else. We're new at this game. We've been fighting terrorists for a handful of years. They've been terrorizing for much, much longer. They're better planned, and they're task is easier.

I'm not condemning those behind the incompetent policies. What would you do? You're trying to keep a nation of 300 million people from panicking, what do you do? You have to put someone in jail, for heaven's sake. So you fake it. But that's not all--you do such a good job of faking it that you even begin to believe that it's right. There are interviews with Chris Christie that are chilling because the man honestly believes what he's saying. He's not feeding you lines, he's just dangerously mistaken.

There's a war on, and if we pour our energies and confidence into dysfunctional, corrupting policies, we're going to lose.