STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Fred Reed: Government Can't Protect Us From Terrorism
By Daily Bell Staff - December 04, 2015

A few cheering thoughts on terrorism … Terrorism by Moslems in America and Europe cannot be stopped. If attacks do not occur, it will be because nobody tried very hard. Stopping them would require excluding Moslems, deporting them, or controlling them by totalitarian methods. Or, improbably, minding our own business in the Middle East. What you think of the foregoing approaches doesn't matter, since none of them will be used. In France the result would be a civil war. America is too divided to do anything about anything. The notion that the government can prevent terrorism suggests studied inattention to the obvious. – LewRockwell.com

Dominant Social Theme: Fortunately, the West's massive intelligence apparatus will keep us safe from the most destructive elements of the War on Terror.

Free-Market Analysis: Over at LewRockwell.com, Fred Reed has posted an insightful article on government responses to terrorism. Written from a libertarian standpoint, its main thesis is simple but often overlooked: Government cannot protect us from the consequences of its "long wars."

Of course, we know government cannot protect us because there is ample evidence that elements of Western government are actually involved in fostering the vey dangers that government purports to combat. We've written about this "false flag" approach in numerous articles recently. Reed's point is more circumspect: From a hypothetical standpoint, the idea that government is a force for stability and safety is illogical.

Even libertarian types will grant that the one feasible job that government has is "protection." But modern Western governance doesn't do what is right, which would be to organize the voluntary sinews of society into a mass of defensive muscle. Modern Western governance is all about lying to young people to entangle them in a military-industrial complex that then uses them for fodder to feed a much grander scheme of global control.

Modern (Western) governance is incapable of protecting society even hypothetically because its goals are quite divergent from what is suggested for public relations purposes and because it recruits via subterfuge and wages wars that actually inflame and expand the enemy.

Modern militaries are in thrall to Western intelligence agencies that create the circumstances that give rise to the battlefields on which today's Western soldiers must fight. And these intelligence agencies have obvious mandates that have little or nothing to do with publicly stated sociopolitical and economic goals.

That's something almost nobody usually mentions because it gets into issues of how modern societies really work and who holds the actual power. The same groups that control intelligence agencies also seem to control the modern mainstream media so the chances of having this sort of conversation are, well … nil. Fred Reed is circumspect about the larger picture but his points are well taken, nonetheless. Here's more:

To begin, the intelligence agencies have proved useless. NSA did not prevent the first attack on the Twin Towers in 1993, nor the successful one. French intelligence did not prevent the recant attacks in Paris, nor Russian intelligence the downing of the airliner over Syria. On and on.

The idea that terrorism can be prevented must include the idea that a package containing ten pounds of C4 (or Semtex, or RDX, or….) and a blasting cap can be kept out of a country with long and almost open borders.

Much libertarian analysis (of a certain type) tends to get tangled up in the "whodunit" question and Reed is clearing out the rhetorical underbrush by explaining that modern governance is not organized for purposes of legitimate civil protection.

Almost all of what government has mustered as "protection" is what Fred Reed calls "security theatre." Airport security, SWAT teams, elaborate after-the-fact press conferences – the point here is to create a reality that doesn't exist except in Hollywood movies.

He doesn't elaborate on this significant point, so we will. The animating memes of modern society more and more resemble an actual Hollywood movie – one of the big action blockbusters. Fred Reed does imply this on a more general level. He writes:

"It is interesting to remember that terrorism is not bad for everybody. For the Pentagon, Nine-Eleven was a windfall, providing wars and new drones; for NSA, a massive expansion in its powers; for Israel and AIPAC, the destruction of Israel's arch-enemy, Iraq; for the arms manufacturers, hundreds of billions; for the federal government in general, near-dictatorship and, for jihadists, the involvement of the US in crippling and endless wars. Which is what they wanted.

Reed doesn't explain who "they" are, but he is obviously referring to monetary powerbrokers that operate behind the scenes in Western society and make the big decisions that intelligence agencies then implement as a matter of policy.

We often focus on the subterfuge of the modern elite that leads the Western world from the shadows. It is important to peel back the layers of phony leadership in the 21st century until you arrive at the hard core of real power. Only then will you be in a position to begin to analyze the modern miasma of sociopolitical and economic memes enveloping us.

Here at The Daily Bell we see this as our deepest mission, to analyze the memes disseminated by the powerful for purposes of misinformation and confusion. But sometimes it is good to be reminded that on a very basic level the reality simply doesn't make sense. Modern Western governments are growing massively and justifying this growth by claiming it is necessary to "protect us." But they can't and they won't.

After Thoughts

As Fred Reed reminds us, "they" don't want to anyway.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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