ubertuber

I'm not so sure about this rebuttal, Ustwo. The Israelis aren't really getting blown up by people OUTSIDE their borders these days. The threat they face isn't because of who their neighbors are - it's from the inside.

With that in mind, I do wonder what all of that security has bought the Israelis. On the other hand, perhaps it would be worse without their measures?

I'm not sure that you can count the cost of increased security in terms of lives lost or minutes spent waiting in line or in numbers of victims of inaccurate profiling. I mean, you could try, but since so much of the question is either hypothetical or classified, I don't know how productive that would be.

Like kangaeru, I think that you can mark some of the changes as a sort of death of character... I'd always thought of the US (fondly) as a place that existed because of ideals - liberty, opportunity, social equality, etc. I thought our way was better than the alternatives. Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, NSA wiretapping, rendition and torture... All of these things make me question what I thought the character of the US was. If we're not willing to extend our due process to others over technicalities (enemy combatants) because they aren't our citizens and they fall into a crack, then maybe we don't believe in liberty as much as we claim to.

Thinking of the line from Munich, "every civilization has to negotiate compromises with its values," I question some of the compromises we seem to be considering. Rendition and allowing torture by proxy (if not doing it ourselves) seem to be so far outside of what we claim to represent that I'm not sure what to make of it. The way those compromises are negotiated says a lot, and I don't think I like what we're saying.

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Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam