I am not a pacifist. I do not excuse the actions of the terrorists, I denounce them in the strongest possible terms. There can never be any justification for what they have done. But I have less standing to criticize their actions than to criticize those of my government. Part of my job as a citizen of this country to hold opinions on its behavior, and my opinion is that since 9/11 we have been largely fighting the wrong people, and that the fight has been expensive in cost and in civil liberties. I believe the cure has been worse than the disease, and that the severity of the disease has been, and continues to be, overstated.
You are, of course, right that it's easy to criticize from an armchair, but representative democracy is all about finding a balance between the opinions of the experts with the most skin in the game and the wider populace, of which I am a part. I don't need to be a direct participant in the struggle against terrorism to be entitled to an opinion on it.
"I believe the cure has been worse than the disease, and that the severity of the disease has been, and continues to be, overstated."
I don't agree with you. Specifically, the threat of radicalized Islam is real and present. Downplaying that threat when it was still confined to overseas military targets led directly to 9/11. We (the US) missed several opportunities to effectively neutralize UBL and AQ in the decade before 9/11.
Where I think you're going wrong is to dismiss or de-emphasize the complete shift of military power away from large nation-states towards small non-state actors. Terrorism is winning as a strategy.
If we do not find some way to stem this threat, the world is going to get a whole lot more unstable and unsafe for everyone. And I'm not talking about just the USA. I'm talking about most of Europe and Asia as well.
I know some people look at the Arab Spring as a promising development, but history shows that there is a high likelihood of further bloodshed and tyranny taking root where there is a power vacuum. (n/b Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt)
I'm fine with you disagreeing with me, but I'd prefer you to disagree with my actual belief. I believe that the threat has been overstated, not that there is no threat. There is an extremely wide band between "no threat" and "such an enormous threat that our society must be fundamentally altered in order to meet it". The former would be a vast understatement, but I believe the latter is a (much less vast) overstatement. Of course I have no hard data to base any of these beliefs on, because any such data is secret, these are merely the conclusions I've drawn from what I'm allowed to know.
I completely agree with you that terrorism is winning as a strategy. The goal of terrorism is to make us afraid, and we are afraid. I do think it warrants a strategic realignment. I'm not against all new strategies, just the ones that appear to me to be illegal or outside what I believe to be the spirit of the law.
I totally get your argument though. It is a dangerous world. I think we are just willing to make different trade-offs in the mitigation of that danger.
You are, of course, right that it's easy to criticize from an armchair, but representative democracy is all about finding a balance between the opinions of the experts with the most skin in the game and the wider populace, of which I am a part. I don't need to be a direct participant in the struggle against terrorism to be entitled to an opinion on it.
I'm very sorry about your friends.