There is really only one way to win a war on terrorism: Stop being afraid!
Achieving this victory does not require large armies, invasions, illegal spying, torture, detention camps, Kangaroo courts, or multi-billion dollar Congressional appropriations. Neither does it require us to shred the Bill of Rights or the Geneva Conventions. All it requires is a little backbone. And a little common sense.
The minute the first politician proposed the first imposition on the Bill of Rights, or the first call to invade Iraq, or the first request for large new bureaucracies to fight this tiny dot, the terrorists won, and we lost.
And they've been winning, and we've been losing, ever since.
Can we stop being afraid of terrorists, foreign and domestic?
Can you?
No American freedom is currently at stake in the middle east. It is impossible to imagine an argument to the contrary, just as the war in Iraq was clearly fought for the interests of empire, the profits of defense contractors, and the edification of neoconservative theorists. It had nothing to do with the safety or freedom of the American people. The last time the U.S. military deployed to fight for the protection of American life was in World War II – an inconvenient fact that reduces clichés about “thanking a soldier” for free speech to rubble. If a soldier deserves gratitude, so does the litigator who argued key First Amendment cases in court, the legislators who voted for the protection of free speech, and thousands of external agitators who rallied for more speech rights and less censorship.