We've given bin Laden what he wanted...

[Lamplighter]

I'm egotistic enough to believe this topic deserves a new thread,
but I have no idea how many others might agree with these thoughts.

Ted Koppel has published an editorial in the Washington Post
that is very close to what I have believed for the past few years.
The changes in lives of Americans since 9/11 have been over-the-top,
both physically (e.g., airline boarding procedures) and mentally (e.g., attitudes towards Muslims).
We stand passively in lines for body-searches and metal-detection devices at the entrances to government buildings.
We worry about someone wearing a burka or turban because it might conceal a weapon
... my own list goes on and on.

I too have responded passively.
For example, I'm retired so can afford to refuse to travel by plane
where I have to submit to procedures which I believe are unnecessary,
costly to me (time and $) and degrading to the psyche of every person.
I've also been passive about speaking out about this craziness
that has infected Americans in the last 9 years.
It's not a Democratic or Republican thing or a conservative vs liberal thing,
so much of it is a waste of the nation's time and energy and resources.

So I was pleased to hear a nationally known person speak out with similar thoughts.

Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos?

Ted Koppel: Nine years after 9/11, let's stop playing into bin Laden's hands
Sunday, September 12, 2010

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned.
This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power.
Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap.

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response.
And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another.
Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt,
and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician.
But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves.
Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams.

Koppel's editorial continues in the link above...