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9/11 Was a Day of Unforgivable Government Failure
Lengthy, but well worth the read.[MISES Wire] Perhaps more than anything else, the rationale given for the necessity of the state—and the necessity of supporting the regime at any given time—is that it "keeps us safe." This permeates thinking about government institutions at all levels, from "thin blue line" sloganeering at the local level, all the way up to jingoism surrounding the Pentagon. Presumably, the hundreds of billions of dollars extracted from taxpayers, year after year after year, is all both necessary and laudable because without it, chaos would reign on our streets, and foreign invaders would slaughter Americans. Yet this rationale for state power also presumes that the nation's alleged defenders are actually competent at their jobs. Whether or not this is the case certainly remains debatable, as the recent military disasters in Afghanistan have made clear. The Pentagon brass pushed for continued war in Afghanistan for twenty years, and, ultimately, lost the entire country to the Taliban, the very people Pentagon generals assured us they would eliminate "soon." [Read More: "The Pentagon and the Generals Wanted This Disastrous War" by Ryan McMaken] Moreover, the so-called intelligence community in the United States has repeatedly failed in its mission at crucial times. This can be seen in the fact the CIA was asleep at the switch in the lead-ups to both the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962—both of which constituted an immense blow to American "safety" by the American regime's metrics. Needless to say, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were made possible by an immense military and intelligence failure on the part of the United States government. Not only did the US government provide the motivation for the attacks—through endless meddling in Middle Eastern regimes—but the US regime failed to protect its own citizens when the blowback arrived. Yet, as is so common following displays of incompetence by government bureaucrats, virtually no government agents were held accountable for this failure. The head of the CIA on 9/11, George Tenet, continued at his post for years afterward. There certainly was no "house cleaning" at the FBI either. Posted by: Besoeker 2021-09-12 |
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