Legal scholar and lawyer Jonathan Turley, writing in USA Today reflects on "what has been lost, and what has been gained" in the reaction to Osama bin Ladin and the attack on 9/11.
First, a list of what Turley feels has been lost, which includes this (h/t DN via email; my emphasis):
What has been most chilling is that the elimination of Saddam and now bin Laden has little impact on this system, which seems to continue like a perpetual motion machine of surveillance and searches. While President Dwight D. Eisenhower once warned Americans of the power of the military-industrial complex, we now have a counterterrorism system that employs tens of thousands, spends tens of billions of dollars each year and is increasingly unchecked[.] ... If bin Laden wanted to change America, he succeeded.And also this:
Police power works like the release of gas in a closed space: expand the space and the gas fills it. It is rare in history to see ground lost in civil liberties be regained through concessions of power by the government.Whew, that's a lot to have been lost. Now for what Turley says has been gained:
[He doesn't say]Bad trade. I'm with the Teabags; I want my country back too. All of it.
GP
