tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31461204.post9067858046852865203..comments2023-12-11T06:11:11.449-05:00Comments on Bruce's MidEast Soundbites: Connecting the Dots Has Never Been Easier...but virtually no one is doing itBrucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09331211089963297411noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31461204.post-28466844343010859472015-11-17T17:39:32.499-05:002015-11-17T17:39:32.499-05:00Hi LHwrites,
As a solidly anti-jihadist, I certai...Hi LHwrites, <br />As a solidly anti-jihadist, I certainly support the mass data farming that Snowden and his ilk have attacked. When weighing potential civil liberty breaches with my family's personal safety, I'll go with the breaches. On that we agree. <br /><br />As you probably deduced, we disagree on Glick. If you read the full piece [it's long] you'd like it even less. She goes after Hillary Clinton's recent remarks. In any case, the most important point she makes is that referencing "radical Islam" or "Islamism" or "political Islam" is important in this fight. On that point she and I agree. Making that distinction is important because without our doing so, we disempower moderate Muslims who have a difficult struggle with their brethren. <br /><br />Respectfully, <br />Bruce :}Brucehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09331211089963297411noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31461204.post-52192750559590615922015-11-17T17:22:41.187-05:002015-11-17T17:22:41.187-05:00I meant to include this in my previous comment as ...I meant to include this in my previous comment as an example of why Glick is speaking out of her, um, misunderstanding of the situation. "...insisting that someone has to be a card carrying member of a recognized terror group before authorities will go after him makes it almost impossible to find operatives and prevent attacks..." <br />This doesn't happen. That's what the mass data farming was meant for, to search out patterns, because no one is looking or waiting for proven affiliations. LHwriteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15890891351498768757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31461204.post-48317319073419556372015-11-17T17:19:18.580-05:002015-11-17T17:19:18.580-05:00This is a simplistic, inaccurate (and in the few c...This is a simplistic, inaccurate (and in the few cases where it is accurate), it states what is already being done. This isn't surprising as I find Glick off the mark most of the time. Primarily, since 9/11, Western governments and especially the U.S. have done an excellent job of uncovering terrorist plots and stopping them. No, things haven't been perfect and any lapse is sadly unacceptable, but lapses will happen unless we want a big brother complete surveillance police state. Truthfully, I do not have the knee-jerk abhorrence to the current surveillance practices as they were data gathering and there seemed no impetus or risk that people's private conversations were ever going to be used against them---unless they were terrorists, anyway. Even then, it is hard to cover everything 100%, especially when some terrorists will work alone with their own ideas, following an ideology but not any orders or actual guidance. It's a dangerous world and we need to address the things we've done that increase terrorist recruitment and try to adjust our actions so they match how other people actually react instead of how we believe they'll react. There are plenty of people who know how these things work, but too often in our recent past we had politicians who refused to listen. Our government totally misunderstood the repercussions of our invasion of Iraq. However, plenty of diplomats and academicians called it very accurately.LHwriteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15890891351498768757noreply@blogger.com