I think this may be the essential flaw in the logic that says we should be dead by now. Maybe there is a shortage of people who want to blow things up without thinking.
The flaw in the argument is likely GP's inference that "there are some controls there that I'm sure if the wrong person pushes that red button, something will go kaboom." Critical infrastructure tends to be better engineered than that. Cybersecurity threats are newer, less widely understood, and inadequately guarded against, but human error is an age-old problem.
Well. If it were the case that there are lots of people trying to buy explosives from fbi agents posing as jihadists, I would go so far as to conclude that there are a lot of people who want _the ability_ to blow things up.
If there were a lot more office bombings, infrastructure bombings, etc, then I would agree that there appear to be a lot of people who want to actually blow things up.
By running these stings, the FBI has made it very hard for real terrorist plotters to get in contact with real would-be foot-soldiers. If someone agrees to carry out a bombing when a fake terrorist is asking, what makes you think they wouldn't do it when a real terrorist asks?
"Get close to" in law enforcement parlance means "encourage criminal activity". If you read the details in these court cases, you repeatedly see an almost universal pattern of activity on the part of law enforcement to egg their targets on towards the criminal act. Drug "dealers" hassled for months to purchase LSD and repeatedly being told "no", only to finally give in and then get arrested. "Terrorists" being repeatedly contacted by informants or agents and plugged pro-terrorist encouragements for months until they agree to a part in some kind of "plot".
You have to remember that the vast majority of people won't take action by themselves. Even the crazy people that want to blow something up won't go out of their way to do it. It's the leaders you should be worried about. People that coordinate or incite others. Part of my career as an infantryman involved "riot police" training. The number one thing for arrest teams to do is to isolate and detain the people inciting the others. And this is why the powers that be are so hungry for mass surveillance: It's actually pretty easy to make giant relationship graphs of these networks to find the leaders. Remember the military talking about dropping five hundred pound bombs on phone numbers? They don't know who the person is, but they know he's a leader. Those people are easy to identify with enough information (and no, they don't need to unlock our iPhones to get at it).
It is in their best interest to keep pushing this idea that any random anti-government person is capable of an Oklahoma City bombing. The fact is, they're not.
> Drug "dealers" hassled for months to purchase LSD and repeatedly being told "no", only to finally give in and then get arrested.
That sounds exactly like pretty real dealers I know, who don't sell to people until they think they know them.
Do you think that real terrorist plotters just ask nicely once and then leave you alone?
Also, we're talking about mass murder here, not selling some acid. Maybe you're right about some of these drug cases crossing over into entrapment. A lot of people feel that drugs "aren't that bad" and if a friend bugged them enough, maybe they would try to find some. I don't know the facts sufficiently to conclude either way. But that's not what we're talking about here.
"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."
How would a real terrorist find recruits inside a Western country? They'd find people that posted something indicating their support, and then they'd try to talk them and coach them into carrying out attack.
There's plenty of stories of tptb totally overstepping the bounds of peer pressure and coercion. I'd even argue that most people will choose to follow the crowd to fit in, not rock the boat, rather than go against their peers.
So should we wait for the real terrorists to apply this "peer pressure and coercion" instead?
We're talking about mass murder here, not pushing a little dope. Under what possible logic is an FBI agent able to convince someone to kill people, but a real terrorist isn't?
As other comments have suggested, there are plenty of "ordinary" people who could easily be radicalized if 5/6 of their friends were actually agents telling them they had to do something for God and Country. We don't round them up in stings because they function just fine in society with nobody trying to push them over the edge. What the FBI is doing is entrapment.
Have any of the attacks in the US since 9/11 been caused by people recruited on the ground in the manner used by the FBI stings? No, they come from people acting spontaneously. The challenge isn't recruiters on the ground, it's extremist ideology. And FBI entrapment fuels that ideology, rather than tempering it.
There have been way more attacks in Europe, and people have been recruited with those tactics. Coincidentally, these kinds of sting operations aren't very common in Europe, and are even banned in many countries. If we want to win this battle, there's no room for bleeding-hearts. We must be methodical, cunning, and ruthless against those who would kill us.
This same bleeding-heart attitude is what leads to people serving a measly four years in prison for shooting at police officers with an AK-47 while trying to get away after committing a bank robbery. No one should be surprised that this same person was one of the Brussels bombers.
>The older brother, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, robbed a Western Union branch in Brussels in 2010, spraying gunfire at police from a Kalashnikov as he attempted to flee, according to his lawyer at the time and government officials. Mr. Bakraoui was caught and sentenced to 10 years in prison. In 2014, he was released with an obligation to contact his parole officer once a month.
(http://www.wsj.com/articles/belgium-rues-missed-terror-signs...)
> Then, a shock wave hits the Enterprise and Timothy says that his ship was also hit by a shock wave. Picard tells Worf to raise shields but a new shock wave is even stronger than the first one. More power is diverted to the shields and another wave hits and is even stronger. Picard and Geordi discuss putting the energy of the warp engine to the shields. Timothy states that is what they said on his ship.
> Data suddenly asks Picard to lower shields and Worf does so. The next shock wave is harmless and the Enterprise is safe. Data realized that giving energy to the shields caused even heavier shock waves (the more power the ship generated, the heavier the shock), and these were ultimately responsible for the destruction of Timothy's ship.
The lesson learned is that a strong and more vicious front may be met by an even stronger response. Obviously analogies and metaphors are only illustrations, not arguments, but judging from what I know of human nature amidst intense opposition, I don't think that a "ruthless" approach will do anything but breed more ruthlessness.
Another line comes to mind now, where Picard wonders in amazement about how silly we were to let differences about "economic systems" drive us apart during the Cold War. Star Trek is like the poster child for wishy-washy moral relativism.
I'll take my political and moral cues from reality, not fun scifi shows written by an eccentric with a political agenda.
I already pointed out that I was using TNG as an illustration, not an argument. But if you want reality, here's reality: people get pissed off when you attack and marginalize them and their friends and family. It's the role of the greater power to deescalate and try to integrate the oppressed, not wipe them out. Reality is that ruthlessness begets ruthlessness, and if your best counterargument to that is to call a TV show "wishy-washy", then you already know it's true.