Death by a Thousand Cuts

From a news item this morning .....

WASHINGTON – Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is promising more small-scale attacks like its attempts to bomb two U.S.-bound cargo planes, which it likens to bleeding its enemy to death by a thousand cuts, in a special edition of the Yemeni-based group's English on-line magazine, Inspire.


The editors boast that what they call Operation Hemorrhage was cheap, and easy, using common items that together with shipping, cost only $4,200 to carry out.



Commentary
The thousand cuts started in 2001 and are now being multiplied  - and are largely self inflicted.  Yes, you read that correctly - self-inflicted.


I always wondered why those planes were flown into those towers. Statistically speaking, in the grand scheme of things 3,000 out of 300 million is insignificant. (Remember that 60,000 were lost in some of the WWII engagements.) 

Then, as I saw what started happening in my own country, I realized that perhaps it was not about the 3000, but about the effect that the act would bring about in the United States. Indeed, have they already not already figuratively (and sometimes literally)  brought us on our knees as we stand around waiting to be fondled, as we are forced to submit to searches and seizures that violate every tenet of freedom and inalienable right, as we tolerate the imposition of fines of $11,000 for leaving the airport as a way of opting out of the groping.

All this intrusion and over-reaching occuring with bleating citizens standing on the sidewalks cheering on the parade of "Public Safety" .

Now I see what was the real desired aftermath of the 2001 attacks and every attack thereafter - to take America from a land where the people stand against the intrusion of the STATE, and instead meekly stand while the STATE engages in one civil liberty infringement after another. The eventual end game I fear is a STATE where the STATE has us stand  in line to take even a shower. (For those of you too young to remember, or for those that miss the reference to "showers", go back to your history books and check out what was happening in 1939.)

Think it can't happen here? They thought it could not happen there either, and indeed, over there, just as is happening over here, it started happening with just a few small infringements, then a few more, and then a few more.