The number of people who died is almost irrelevant as to the reason they died.
/shakes head
Actually that highlights his point even more as we could comparatively very easily actually accomplish something with regards to a lot of deaths. Fighting "terrorism" is like fighting the war on drugs, it's a completely farcical term and will not end as there will always be terror. The war on terror has actually only bolstered it and it straight up destabilized the entire world through both political and financial means (war on terror had a significant role in the economic crises).
This is pure exploitation. People could spend less money than they are now and make changes that would better their lives and more directly help prevent their deaths. To say nothing of what we could accomplish if we'd spent half of what we have fighting terrorism or drugs. We very likely could easily spend the money elsewhere and see better returns on fighting both things.
I don't think the Patriot Act and even the Iraq War began with malevolent intent. Politics is both reactionary and fear based. Americans wanted their government to do something to stop a perceived threat. They did something, and people felt safer because of it.
The problem was a lot of these plans were developed half cocked. Nobody read the fine print or had enough foresight examine potential consequences. Thus things got out of control.
Bureaucrats will always work towards their own ends. Not that of the state or of the people. The three branches of government and the constitution are supposed to check their power. This time they failed to. Which is why you have an NSA and FBI who feel they can do whatever they please. They basically can, and there's little political will to actually change that. I think because the majority of people are actually pretty okay with being spied on if it stops the "terrorists". Ben Franklin's famous line about trading liberty for security may be trite but it's certainly spot on.
You're misplacing credit for this stuff. It was the intelligence communities that pushed for this and basically managed to convince the politicians of doomsday in order to get a blank check and legal protection for their actions.
Fact is, they've done more to harm the US than anyone. I would even guess you could absolutely say that they've been directly responsible for more American deaths than the terror attacks they claim they're preventing. And that's without even laying blame at their feet for these acts of terrorism in the first place. They've had intelligence about almost every major terror attack and just plain fucked it up. They had information concerning 9/11 and did not act on it. They had information about the Boston bombers and fucked it up. They actually helped setup Al Queda in the first place. They had a role in Saddam Hussein's rise. And there's countless other situations (Bay of Pigs, various dictators they put into power, and who knows what all else they've done on smaller scales).
The bureaucrats didn't take this country into a war of choice and didn't create the Patriot Act. Politicians did and they knew exactly what they were doing. Then the voters promptly re-elected them. If the Patriot Act was not the intended will of the elected officials, it would have been amended or rescinded long ago.
It wasn't even the politicians either really, it was the intelligence community that convinced them of all of these things. They basically took advantage of the situation to finally get the politicians to buy into their fearmongering and let them be free of any real oversight while giving them money for whatever they want to do.
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