World Trade Center north tower explosion.
On September 11, 2001, terrorists defeated the United States. We got our ass kicked. The September 10 United States is nothing but a memory.
Since 9/11, we have created the very government the Founding Fathers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely. However, we expect our politicians to lie to us and they do at every chance they get.
There is no end to the War on Terror. Terror will never surrender.
We have lost our liberty. I challenge anyone to find a clause—not even a whole sentence—in the Bill of Rights that has not been violated by our government.
In our current legal system, we are guilty unless we can prove ourselves innocent.
We are under constant surveillance. There are cameras everywhere. Our phone calls are intercepted and stored. Our texts are intercepted and stored. Our emails are intercepted and stored. Our government uses warrantless surveillance and can force companies and organizations to turn over information on our finances, communications, and associations. The government offers immunity from lawsuits to the companies and organizations that assist them in warrantless surveillance of citizens, removing the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy.
We have secret courts that issue secret warrants and use secret evidence in secret trials to convict citizens. How can someone defend themselves in court if they are not even allowed to know what crimes they are charged with? Our government invokes the State Secrets Privilege to shutdown any claims against the United States.
We have militarized our police forces. Many times our domestic police are more heavily armed than our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We engage in preventive detention—arresting and imprisoning citizens before they commit a crime. We have indefinite detention. We imprison material witnesses—people that have committed no crime, but have information on other people’s crimes. We torture prisoners.
The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal. Our military tribunals are ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections.
The government can order the assassination of U.S. citizens without a trial or conviction.
Our military and intelligence agencies regularly commit war crimes and we use our might to stop other countries from investigating us.
If you want to fly somewhere, the TSA is free to grope anyone, even children. Where else would a parent allow someone to do that to their children?
Most people want to pretend everything is okay. We wave our flags and talk about the Land of the Free, but we are losing our freedoms at an alarming pace. The terrorists did more damage to the United States than they could have ever dreamed of.
“All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen … to raise a piece of cloth on which is written ‘al Qaeda’, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations.”
— Osama bin Laden, quoted in “Bin Laden: Goal is to bankrupt U.S.”, CNN.com, November 1, 2004.