Freedom vs. Security

“Any society which chooses to loose some freedom to gain security deserves neither and will loose both" -Benjamin Franklin

How do you perceive the threat?

Do you consider it of the same importance that those who support the patriot act do?

Would you rather keep your freedom in light of the danger, do you not believe that the danger is as great as some would have you think and suspect that ulterior motives are in play?

Essentially the goal of this thread is to address the methodology for dealing with the current situations and attitudes surrounding the issue of terroristic activity.

"Any society which chooses to loose some freedom to gain security deserves neither and will loose both" -Benjamin Franklin

How do you perceive the threat?

Do you consider it of the same importance that those who support the patriot act do?

The offenders cross all possible boundries, they are citizens, and non citizens, they are muslim and not muslim, but they are united generally by goal and ideology (or are they?).

Would you rather keep your freedom in light of the danger, do you not believe that the danger is as great as some would have you think and suspect that ulterior motives are in play?

Essentially the goal of this thread is to address the methodology for dealing with the current situations and attitudes surrounding the issue of terroristic activity.

I believe the use of 'terrorist' to label our 'enemy' is the most underhanded, hateful and deceitful practices ever design by the US government - and that's sayin' something.

We could think of a loooong list of worse practices by our government.

Besides, the perpetrators of 9/11 WERE terrorists. The word has been generalized (and therefore its meaning completely stripped away) to label a heterogeneous group of people who use terrorism as a tactic.

The Taliban could have been the worst government in the world since the Khmer Rouge.

By the way, is anyone else irritated (for reasons I can't quite articulate) by the name "Homeland Security"? It seems to warm and, well, Bushy, and it somehow smacks of old Stalin-style Soviet Realism. It makes me picture the couple with the pitchfork from the American Gothic painting. I'd prefer "Domestic Security".

"Any society which chooses to loose some freedom to gain security deserves neither and will loose both" -Benjamin Franklin



What, then, are we to make of the present situation concerning hypothetical terrorism. How do we ensure our freedom and security when the measures must be preventative rather than punative, and offenders are not defined until they have offended. The offenders cross all possible boundries, they are citizens, and non citizens, they are muslim and not muslim, but they are united generally by goal and ideology (or are they?).

How do you perceive the threat? Do you consider it of the same importance that those who support the patriot act do? Would you rather keep your freedom in light of the danger, do you not believe that the danger is as great as some would have you think and suspect that ulterior motives are in play?

Essentially the goal of this thread is to address the methodology for dealing with the current situations and attitudes surrounding the issue of terroristic activity.

Ah, but name one that has sought to intentionally defraud as many. The US treatment of Native Americans has probably been our most abhorrent policy, but I cannot for the life of me recall such a complete and blatant attempt to deceive the American public.

but what nation bears more responsibility for terrorism in the world than the United States?

Maybe, but at least they were honest. The Taliban didn't play around with their convictions.

You give them too much credit -- I don't think it's been intentional, I think it's been mostly dishonesty by default -- they let it happen because they don't care enough to prevent it -- and they're too dumb.

That's a pretty specious argument. That's like saying that Japan bears the most responsibility of any nation in the world for nuclear arms. Besides, there's been a lot more terrorism directed at Spain by Basque separatists, at England by the IRA, and at moderate Muslim governments (like in Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia) by Muslim extremists. Not to exonerate US policies, but that doesn't excuse the deliberate targeting of civilians as a commensurate response. The attack on 9/11 was a public relations move by Al Qaeda, not a battlefield tactic.

Do you seriously think that the idea of "honesty" can include a totalitarian oligarchy that brutally suppresses all dissent; and that exacts deliberate policies to keep its populace ill, underfed, and completely uneducated? That's not honesty, it's just corruption and brutality. It's about as honest as Robert Mugabe's "elections" in Zimbabwe.

They gave us an enemy that can be anyone - and use this to terrorize the American people with domestic policy like the Patriot Acts.

They even manage to tie the war on terror to the supposed war on drugs, which was a preexisting campaign of terror by the US government against the American people.

The US is not the primary target of terrorists, the US is most responsible for terrorism around the world.

No government is entirely honest with the people, and the Taliban was what it was (or is, I guess they are still fighting), brutal and oppressive.

Mugabe is pretty straightforward as well

Come on -- terrorize? The worst 99.999% of us will ever know of the Patriot Act and similar measures is inconvenience at the airport security points. That's not to defend the Patriot Act, which I feel is unconstitutional and an egregious potential abuse of power. But seriously, do you wake up every day feeling terrorized?

Drugs are a major public health crisis in the United States and no one has figured out what to do about it.

I'm sure there will be a million opinions about how legalizing them will work, but that's frankly an opinion that's devoid of any supportive data so I can't take it seriously. US drug policy has been terrible, but it's multifactorial and it's difficult to deal with without intervening in the affairs of other countries -- which is why the DEA is reviled in all of South America.

Terrorism is a tactic, Thomas, it's not an aim. The US is not responsible for tactical decisions made by adversaries except in the few SPECIFIC instances where a terrorist group is directly supported by the US. Examples would be the Sandanistas. Otherwise, what's going on is we're playing global politics, and terrorism is a common tactic among the adversaries we have -- but just because we create adversaries doesn't mean we create terrorism.

Yes -- as I said perhaps the worst in the world since the Khmer Rouge, or maybe the current government in Sudan. They were never open and honest about their policies because they were basically inaccessible -- but even if they were, I hardly give that a pass in light of the giant human rights abomination that Afghanistan became under the Taliban.

No he's not, I've been following their politics for years and he's never been honest about it. He jails opposition figures for manufactured crimes, he sends thugs into the street to intimidate voters, and he claims all the while that he's standing up for democracy.

Which drugs? Alcohol, tobacco, yeah, serious crisis. The death toll from illicit drugs does not even come near that of legal drugs.

The example of alcohol prohibition doesn't seem instructive?

It's not about comparison to legal drugs, it's about the public health burden that illegal drugs bear unto themselves. Your argument here is like saying that cancer isn't important because far more people die of heart attacks. It's irrelevant.

That's an example of an illegalization policy where it had been legal before. It's the opposite of a new legalization policy for which we do not have precedent.

Furthermore, rates of alcoholism and alcohol use decreased during prohibition. The main reason for its repeal was that it was too expensive for US law enforcement to enforce, not because it was a failed policy.

While one can argue that that's already the case for heroin and cocaine, one can also easily point to the disability-adjusted life years, lost work productivity, and health care expenditures of the predictable increase in addicts to these drugs which would almost certainly outweigh the cost of enforcement.

And the health issue is irrelevant to the topic at hand

And don't we already have to accept that the War on Drugs is a failed policy as drug use has increased across the board?

It's hard for me to buy the idea that 'disability-adjusted life years, lost work productivity, and health care expenditures of the predictable increase in addicts to these drugs' would be a significant problem when drug use becomes increasingly popular despite government policy.

I made the point that it's a major public health issue, which you're apparently not contesting -- and that's why the country NEEDS to have a policy to cut down use. The war on drugs, irrespective of its efficacy or lack thereof, is SPECIFICALLY a response to the public health problem, which is a lot more real than the ubiquitous terrorist threat we keep hearing about.

I don't believe it's "failed" -- I believe it's irrelevant. Drug use, at least hard drugs like coke and heroin, seems to rise and fall along with other economic factors. This argues to me that the federal drug policy is neither making it better nor worse. Although cocaine use seems to be down considerably since the early 1980s.

Why is that so hard to buy? Health care expenditures for adults over 65 are increasing too despite government policy. On the other hand work productivity and DALYs are improving among AIDS patients thanks to government policies that provide free antiretrovirals. Government drug policy would not exist were it not for objective justification -- and if you limit your understanding of the issue simply to overdose deaths and not other measures of morbidity and mortality, then you're going to lose the actual measurable impact of drug use.

the War on Drugs, seems to be an oppressive policy. A policy that terrorizes the public.

The idea is that legalization will increase 'disability-adjusted life years, lost work productivity, and health care expenditures of the predictable increase in addicts to these drugs', right?

I have a hard time buying this because, despite criminalization, drug use goes up, which would mean those problems increase.

This is something else that I fail to feel terrorized by, and I bet 99.999% of the country agrees with this too.

I vehemently disagree with many government policies. But feeling terrorized by them is a different story. I work in a refugee clinic at the department of public health -- THOSE are people who have felt terrorized. I know it's semantic, but I'd use that word more gingerly.

The idea isn't about legalization, no. The idea is that a policy that successfully reduces use of IV drugs will decrease the measurable economic and medical costs of these drugs. And I brought them up because these drugs cause a huge public health burden that extends far beyond just the number of people who outright die from them -- and this burden is borne most strongly in disadvantaged communities. So before trivializing their importance with statements about how alcohol and tobacco kill more people (true or not), you need to understand the very large quantifiable impact of them AND how these quantifiable endpoints depend solely on usage rates.

I'm not making a case about criminalization. I think decreasing supply is a major component. Subsidizing farmers to pick crops other than opium is pretty cheap in a place like Afghanistan where the per capita income is crap. Problem is, a lot of opium comes from Myanmar, northern Thailand, and southern China, and it's a lot harder to influence these areas. Cutting the supply will increase price and make it less affordable. This is a lot more meaningful than running after street criminals.

Then I think you underestimate the scope of this policy.

However, the government is terrorizing the population when the government institutes draconian punishments for crimes that a large portion of the population commits, especially when that crime is non-violent.

The government allows this stuff to come into the country

You say "one can also easily point to the disability-adjusted life years, lost work productivity, and health care expenditures of the predictable increase in addicts to these drugs which would almost certainly outweigh the cost of enforcement."

So, we have a policy that costs us huge sums of money to enforce, which does not seem to be of help with respect to reducing drug use. Tons of money spent, drug use increases anyway. Health crisis grows.

Absolutely - the demand exists. But if we can end production, at least large scale production, we will have done some good. Meanwhile, Afghanistan went from producing almost no opium under the Taliban to producing nearly 80% of the world's supply under US occupation. This, if I recall, has lead to a large increase in the availability of heroin, and all at cheaper prices.

For the four years of my residency one of the medical floors in my hospital was a maximum security prison floor, and I worked regularly on this floor with the prisoners. Believe me, I don't underestimate it.

I've heard this argument many times and I'm not impressed by it. While I think the efforts are misdirected, I don't agree that it falls within the scope of the words draconian or terrorize. The law is the law, for all its flaws, and if some dumb college kid goes to jail for selling pot, he doesn't get to hysterically claim draconian punishment as if he didn't know it was illegal. I agree wholeheartedly that it's a waste of effort and money, but this isn't the Spanish Inquisition here. Live by the law, change the law, or move.

Amazing the presence of DEA officers I encountered in the Peruvian Amazon, and amazing the stories with them burning farms and conducting raids. Again, it's barbarically-conducted policy but you're kidding yourself if you think it's some open door policy.

Cost-benefit analyses are an important part of medical policymaking. A huge amount of money is lost to the economy because of the medical implications of drug use. This is one of many elements of the societal cost that one would hope to recoup by having effective and efficient drug-control policies.

My argument is not in favor or against any specific policy -- although I think outright legalization of heroin, cocaine, meth, and XTC would be frankly criminal.

YOU are the one who started this conversation out by dismissing the importance of cocaine and heroin use. That's my point. They have huge societal costs.

Then you know that more than 99.999% of the population is affected by the current drug policy. And you know that more than 99.999% of the population risks regularly incarceration for their recreational drug use.

The Japanese Internment during the second world war wasn't the Inquisition, either, but those citizens were certainly oppressed by their government.

To say 'it's the law' doesn't justify the law. Much less make the law any less oppressive.