{"id":185209,"date":"2011-09-11T14:29:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-11T19:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/09\/11\/osama-bin-laden-won-2\/"},"modified":"2011-09-11T14:29:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-11T19:29:00","slug":"osama-bin-laden-won-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/09\/11\/osama-bin-laden-won-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Osama bin Laden Won"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK, it&#8217;s the 10<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of 911, and looking back, I can draw no other conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>As a result of the events of that day we are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Embroiled in two ruinously expensive wars, neither of which has any meaningful end in sight.<\/li>\n<li>Have no money for even the most basic infrastructure.<\/li>\n<li>Have set up a state security apparatus that is structured, and frequently functions, as the core pillar of a police state.<\/li>\n<li>Have convinced the generation after mine that the idea of a unipolar world, with US military and Hegemony is foolish.<\/li>\n<li>Has turned us into torturers.<\/li>\n<li>Has set to policies that create more terrorists.<\/li>\n<li>Has massively expanded and radicalized, the right wing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I would suggest that anyone who hasn&#8217;t read Eric Frank Russell&#8217;s magnum opus <i><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wasp_%28novel%29\">Wasp<\/a><\/i>, in which a man is sent to be an <i>agent provocateur<\/i> on the planet of an empire at war with Earth, and his mission is not to collect intelligence or do damage, but rather to provoke an overreaction by the authorities:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>&#8220;Phew!&#8221; Mowry raised his eyebrows.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Finally, let&#8217;s consider this auto smash. We know the cause; the survivor was able to tell us before he died. He said the driver lost control at high speed while swiping at a wasp which had flown in through a window and started buzzing around his face.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It nearly happened to me once.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ignoring that, Wolf went on, &#8220;The weight of a wasp is under half an ounce. Compared with a human being its size is minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid, and in this case it didn&#8217;t even use it. Nevertheless it killed four big men and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;However,&#8221; Wolf went on, &#8220;the problem becomes less formidable than it looks if we bear in mind that one man can shake a government, two men temporarily can put down an army twenty-seven thousands strong, or one small wasp can slay four comparative giants and destroy their huge machine into the bargain.&#8221; He paused, watching the other for effect, continued, &#8220;Which means that by scrawling suitable words upon a wall, the right man in the right place at the right time might immobilize an armoured division with the aid of nothing more than a piece of chalk.&#8221; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The country has changed, and none of these changes to our benefit, and none of them were really required, but rather the product of mindless over-reaction.<\/p>\n<p>We are those drivers in that doomed car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, it&#8217;s the 10th anniversary of 911, and looking back, I can draw no other conclusion. As a result of the events of that day we are: Embroiled in two ruinously expensive wars, neither of which has any meaningful end in sight. Have no money for even the most basic infrastructure. Have set up a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1011,1175,1003,1076],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-literature","category-philosophy","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}