We need to start demanding the truth, not what ‘national security’ tells us we need to know.

[kpete]

Matt Stoller
The Solution to ISIS Is the First Amendment


As the elite panic about ISIS — the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant — continues apace, it’s worth looking at how violations of the First Amendment have allowed this group to flourish, and just generally screw up US policy-making. The gist of the problem is that Americans have been lied to for years about our foreign policy, and these lies have now created binding policy constraints on our leaders which make it impossible to eliminate groups like ISIS.

............

Adopting a realistic policy on ISIS means a mass understanding who our allies actually are and what they want, as well as their leverage points against us and our leverage points on them. I believe Americans are ready for an adult conversation about our role in the world and the nature of the fraying American order, rather than more absurd and hollow bromides about American exceptionalism.

Until that happens, Americans will not be willing to pay any price for a foreign policy, and rightfully so. Fool me once, shame on you. And so forth.

Unwinding the classified state, and beginning the adult conversation put off for seventy years about the nature of American power, is the predicate for building a global order that can drain the swampy brutal corners of the world that allow groups like ISIS to grow and thrive. To make that unwinding happen, we need to start demanding the truth, not what ‘national security’ tells us we need to know. The Constitution does not mention the words ‘national security’, it says ‘common defense.’ And that means that Americans should be getting accurate information about what exactly we are defending.



MORE:
https://medium.com/@matthewstoller/the-solution-to-isis-is-the-first-amendment-95fc2c94f52e

[gordianot]

1. Maybe Media has taken on tobacco growers financial model who are subsidized not to grow.

If something happens you are paid not to report it.

[MANative]

2. I'm in my early fifties, and I vividly remember thinking, when I was 16...

that the whole idea of "National Security" secrets was bogus. Whose country is it? And why wouldn't all citizens want to participate in the discussion and decisions about its commitments, engagements, opportunities and challenges? We've been told for almost the entirety of the nation's existence that someone would "take care of" those big issues, problems, and concerns on our behalf via representative government. I thought that was crap when I was a teenager; I think it's even more crap now. The idea that we are a democracy is ludicrous (not to mention technically wrong, anyway - it's a republic, at best, and a plutocracy in truth), and allows all of us sheep to go along with our heads in the grass, thinking that it'll all sort itself out. Sad.

[randome]

4. I don't think we want 300 million pair of hands in the pie. The result would not be tasty.

'Demanding' answers means little since we will never know if we're being told the truth. The only recourse in a democracy is to elect people whom we trust. You don't trust someone? Un-elect them.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you don't give yourself the same benefit of a doubt you'd give anyone else, you're cheating someone.[/center][/font][hr]

[blkmusclmachine]

3. They can tell you, but then they'd have to kill you.

Welcome to 1984, courtesy of 9/11

[L0oniX]

5. Without truth this government is invalid.