(image courtesty of The Intercept)

The Best Threats to Eliminate Are the Ones You Make Yourself

Using informants and undercover agents has been a staple of police investigation technique for decades. It's one of the most effective ways of arresting people in the War on Drugs, and the incredible number of arrests over the last decade would indicate that it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do: encourage people to engage in illegal activity so law enforcement can arrest them and charge them with a crime. If this sort of manipulation of human behavior works for the DEA and the FBI when it comes to drugs, why not use it in the War on Terror? Surely it's better than letting these nefarious evil-doers carry out their brazen acts of wanton destruction.

I want to make something very clear from here on out: I don't condone initiation of force against another person or group of people. Anyone who initiates force is at fault, and is responsible, morally and physical, for the damages they wreak on their victim or victims. Terrorists are no different than any other thugs. They're exemplars of what thuggery looks like.

That being said, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the FBI, the executive branch's most favored enforcers, has gone above and beyond trying to assess threats posed by terrorists into making them up out of whole cloth. There's no doubt that the guy who opened fire in Garland, TX was responsible for the harm he caused others, but the question is: would he have followed through without the encouragement and support of the FBI? We might never know, but if that is the case, then the FBI absolutely is culpable for its part in it. What's more, this is just another instance in a pattern of short-sighted policy endeavors on the part of the government. Remember Operation Fast and Furious? Sell the cartels guns, they said. It'll help us catch them and bring them to justice, they said.

This is nothing more than another instance of a central authority having no idea how to plan for the future and resulting in horrible consequences for everyone else. All it takes is one particularly zealous director or assistant director, and the rest of us are made to suffer violence that anyone with two brain cells to rub together could have seen coming. None of this deters the government, though. When it comes to justifying its own existence, government will create situations to terrorize the people it rules so it can keep its stranglehold on them.

Remember, kids: the government wants you scared and divided. It's easier to convince you all that you need them that way.

Andrei Chira is a vaper, voluntaryist, and all-around cool dude. Formerly a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, he now spends his time between working at VapEscape in Montgomery County, Alabama, contributing to Seeds of Liberty on Facebook and Steemit, and expanding his understanding of...well, everything, with an eye on obtaining a law degree in the future.