patriotic pointer

These days there there is a question about whether bulk data collection of Americans' communications should be re-approved by Congress.

Who would have thought that the bedrock of what might be considered a national integrity in addressing 'terrorists' would be so sharply etched in the words of a man tasked with killing them?

Chris Kyle, a man whose blood might fairly be described as having run red-white-and-blue, was "the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history," according to the dust jacket on his lumpy autobiography entitled, "American Sniper." The book was made into a popular movie of the same name. Before he was shot dead on a Texas rifle range in Texas in 2013, Kyle was a man roundly referred to as a "hero" by those who see much of the Middle East as inimical to United States interests. "A patriot" was another descriptor.

Woven into the Chris Kyle saga, the United States -- and much of the rest of the world -- upped the ante in the perceptions of who was a 'terrorist.' Courts allowed increasing infringement on their citizenries ... anyone who might be thinking about or taking what appeared to be the initial steps 'terror'-related activities.

And yet here is Chris Kyle himself describing his motivation and mental processes when scoping out a potential target and deciding whether to pull the trigger:

My attitude was: if my justification is I thought my target would do something bad, then I wasn't justified. He had to be doing something bad.
-- Page 171; American Sniper; Harper

Countries could do worse than applying Chris Kyle's yardstick to the politically-manipulated ways of addressing threats to the nation.