#the only way to counter hostage taking is to fight to death to prevent mass hostage taken.

[the-foxes-fangs]

I Wish I was The Moon Part XII

Tagging the wonderful @louveau, @you-mass-effect-my-dragon-age and @otomediary

Warnings: Fiery speeches, angst

                         ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆　　 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

“I asked for information, ninja, not your opinion.” Mitsuhide said, drumming his fingers irritably on the butt of his matchlock, staring testily at Sasuke across the sputtering fire he had built in a slightly less burned out corner of the temple.  

“And I asked you to give me back my glasses, but here we are.” Sasuke replied wryly, the indignation in his usually impassive expression wasted on the tattered curtain that was receiving it. “I am absolutely never providing EMT services for any warlord going forward. You make lord Kenshin look incredibly polite.” He muttered to himself. 

“I don’t suppose I make anything look like much of anything to you at the moment.” Mitshude retorted acerbically. He had lost consciousness, and still felt damnably weak and unsteady despite his racing mind. 

“Taking a man’s glasses, that’s unconscionable. I don’t know what I expected from the Akechi Mitsuhide, but still, that’s a dirty trick.” 

“Oh, so my reputation precedes me, even into the future.” 

Mitsuhide banked the fire, waving away the smoke that flared up from the damp wood as it drifted into his face. 

“It’s not like I’d leave the man my bff– for reasons known only to herself and whichever star guides people toward terrible choices– loves.” 

“Your what now?” Mitsuhide asked, sharply, eyes narrowed at Sasuke as he considered the revelation of frequent ceiling and floor assisted visits. 

“Best friend forever.” Sasuke said reaching up to the blank space where his glasses normally sat as if to push them up the bridge of his nose disapprovingly. “And you have no cause for jealousy, she’s like a sister to me.”

“Yes, I suppose if you’d had designs you could’ve just gone back to your own time together.” Mitsuhide replied. “You said that the fissure would open again, so tell me where and when and I’ll just fetch her myself.” 

“I also just told you that that course of action is extremely ill advised, if it’s even possible at all. The potential distortion of space-time–” Sasuke replied, cutting himself off with a sigh. 

“Alright, so that’s the least feasible option. We’ll just put that aside for now. What other course of action can we take?” 

“I’m afraid I’m otherwise employed and must inform you that I have an extremely binding contractual obligation which regretfully prevents me from joining you in any ill-advised ventures likely to result in dismemberment, severe emotional trauma, beheading or otherwise unspecified bodily harm.” Sasuke countered flatly, reaching for his phantom glasses again and dropping his hand with a noise of displeasure. 

“Were you under the impression that you had a choice? I’m afraid not. Keeping you hostage is an absolute necessity.” 

“I could take you in a fight right now.” Sasuke said to a patch of white ash on a scorched pillar. 

“Oh I have no doubt, but you won’t. I might die, and you’re just ever so slightly more devoted to your bff than Kenshin.” Mitsuhide replied knowingly. 

“Dear god, it’s like someone desaturated Shingen and surgically removed his conscience.” Sasuke whispered in horrified awe. 

“And If you’re thinking ‘surely lord Kenshin will come for me!’ you should know that I know he doesn’t know you came here, and that I can keep you hidden for years.” Mitsuhide added. 

“You really just added a new and disturbing dimension to my relationship with Kenshin right off the cuff there, didn’t you?”

“Spare me the inane chatter, give me options. How do we get her to the wormhole at the right time?” He asked with a gesture that was wasted on Sasuke.  

“Leaving aside that we’re well beyond my known timeline, there’s no fail-safe way to ensure that any message you send will survive.” 

“If I could just get her back to Tanba…” Mitsuhide said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, thinking of the myriad hiding places he had built into the castle and the ways he could draw her attention to them without alerting five centuries worth of residents.

“You should know that Tanba was a ruin in our time, and my calculations suggest that an incredibly dramatic causal variance would be required to change that outcome.” 

They sat in contemplative silence for awhile, until Mitsuhide dropped his fist into the palm of his other hand triumphantly. “I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. It’s the people!” He said enthusiastically. 

“Are you feeling dizzy again, by any chance?” Sasuke asked with a note of alarm. 

“I feel like I’ve been trampled by several horses, but that’s not important.” He answered dismissively, his mind on fire with plans. 

He had been nearly paralyzed with leaden misery at his own helplessness, feeling only the overwhelming distance between them and the implacable rule of time around him like water closing over his head. 

Even if she didn’t return to him, even if they never met again, he had to make certain that she knew that she had been loved, would be loved, always. He only needed a problem to solve to find his feet. 

“We have two issues– how to physically secure a message, and how to draw her attention to the correct place.” 

“In extremely simplified terms, yes.” 

“She won’t be too keen to look me up, if I know her. She’ll be trying to carry on and let go of me, which precludes some kind of monument. But the people– they can protect Tanba and convey my message all at the same time.” 

“I don’t follow…” Sasuke replied curiously. 

“Of course you don’t, but all you need to do is follow along.” 

He had driven himself to the brink of collapse the rest of that winter, exhausting every moment that he could conceivably be away from Azuchi without rousing more then the usual levels of suspicion. He returned on a soft spring day just in the nick of time for a war council. 

Hideyoshi strode toward him with a mixture of anger and concern, grabbing his collar to growl “where the the hell have you been?” 

“Starving himself half to death, by the look of it.” Ieyasu interjected dourly. 

“Are we sure he hasn’t got the plague or something? He has a look in his eyes– and where’s the lass? Why isn’t she with you?” Masamune added, studying him closely. 

Nobunaga studied him impassively, and waited for the tumult to die down. Only the inner circle was present, as Mitsuhide had requested. He strode forward, but did not sit. 

“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room.” He began, and explained her absence. 

Masamune offered a low whistle, with an amused look in his eye, while Hideyoshi stared blankly and Nobunaga tapped his fan on his knee thoughtfully. Ieyasu snorted derisively, and Mitsunari knit his brow in concentration. 

“That was several months ago. What have you been doing since then?” Hideyoshi asked, finally shifting out of his reverie. 

Mitsuhide smiled perhaps the first entirely honest smile he had ever offered them, knowing that it was probably ghastly on his gaunt face. “Why, scheming to bring her home, of course.” 

“You’ve finally lost that tangled excuse for a mind.” Ieyasu said harshly. 

“Oh quite possibly.” Mitushide answered, sweeping his gaze across the room as he made his great gamble. “But then again, none of you have ever known me when I truly wanted something.” 

Nobunaga narrowed his eyes with a taut smile. “And just how do you intend to accomplish such a feat?” He asked, coldly. 

Mitsuhide cocked his head and looked out the window at the soft blue sky, picturing her under the cherry blossoms for half a moment. “With the closing of this rotten age, my lords. The time for peace and unification has come, one way–” he dropped his hand to his gun, “or another.” 

“You crazy bastard.” Masamune said with a wild laugh. “I like this side of you.” 

The blood had drained from Hideyoshi’s face, and his voice shook as his hand drifted toward his sword, hissing “what have you done?” 

“I wouldn’t, Hideyoshi. If I don’t leave this council with my head on my shoulders all hell will break loose.” Mitsuhide answered, lightly. 

“Speak your piece.” Nobunaga said darkly. 

“With Kenshin and Shingen alive and dragging the last of the Imagawa in tow, we could be at war for who knows how long, and with unpredictable results. But I need a rough sequence of events to unfold, and it doesn’t include endless war. The remnants of monks of Heiei and the Mori are problems all their own, and then there’s your puppet Shogun.” He said, gesturing at Nobunaga. 

“We’re all aware of the current situation.” Hideyoshi spat through gritted teeth. “What’s your point?” 

“There are too many personal vendettas and ambitions at play for this to ever be settled under only our volition, unless it’s by battle royale with only one left alive. Given her affection for all of you, that’s not a particularly desirable outcome either.” 

“All this for a woman.”  Masamune said with amusement.

“Lord Mitsuhide…” Mitsunari cut in at last, with quiet dread in his voice, “you’re talking as if you’ve brought in an outside army.” 

The air was electric as Nobunaga leaned forward with a hard glitter in his eyes. 

“Not so much an outside army as evening the odds for the people we have no business trampling over on our way to glory. I’ve armed the women in every fief, and given the farmers instructions to stop working the fields if our demands for peace aren’t met. They may choose to rise up and kill me, of course, but as long as I’m a convenient mouthpiece, I’m reasonably safe.” 

Hideyoshi struck him hard across the face, leaving him with the taste of blood in his mouth. “You’re going to– no, you’ve already thrown the country into chaos and famine!” He thundered, red faced with fury. 

“It sounds quite peaceful outside to me. More peaceful than it has in my memory. No thundering cavalry, no armies marching at the pleasure of men who are, in the end, only men no better or worse than they.” Mitsuhide replied, dabbing the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. 

“What hope could peasant women and farmers have against trained armies?” Nobunaga asked contemptuously. 

“Not much, it’s true, but how long do you think your foot soldiers would heed the order to attack their mothers, sisters, daughters and wives? You’d order them to destroy the future, and for what–” his voice rose, hoarse and strident, “to say that you ruled the world?” 

He made a sweeping gesture, hoping that his words, always his favorite weapon, would secure a bloodless victory. 

“Every throne casts the shadow of its own destruction, my lords. We clamber to the heavens and live in dread of those we leave below, driven to greater and greater cruelty to avoid being dragged to the hell that we ourselves have made.” 

He dropped his hands and and his voice, and looked each of them in the eye in turn. 

“Isn’t it better to dig graves for our pride than our people?” 

The silence was louder than any sound could ever have been. 

It was finally broken by a ringing, rolling laugh from Nobunaga, who finally sat back and cleared his throat with a wide, wild smile, and the tiniest flash of relief somewhere far, far back in his dark eyes. 

“I knew you were going to revolt eventually, but holding a gun to all of our heads, from the Imperial court to the local magistrates–” he shook his head and chuckled again, “and not even with the ambition to rule! Ingenious.”

“My lord–” Hideyoshi said, his expression tense. 

“Enough. We’ve been outplayed.” Nobunaga said with a wave of his fan. “It’s almost poetic– in the end, the people unified themselves.” 

…

How many years ago had that day been? His mind was still sharp, even as his body had begun to fail him, heart growing weaker by the day. He had wrung out every bit of his strength taking aim at the distant future.  

The years had been full of mountains of correspondence, leagues of riding from one end of the country to the other to keep the peace, to pluck out the seeds of war before they could be well and truly sown. 

And always in the dark, the memory of her, and the hope that every step forward and every day would build a shrine that could carry his heart to her. 

He whispered to her in the night, when the fear that it wasn’t enough chilled him, knowing that the odds were astronomically stacked against them, he whispered every sweet and longing word into quiet space where she should have been. Dreams of her carried him through, of the warmth of her body, the feel of her skin, every exquisite shudder and sigh, even the painful aching fire of unfulfilled lust he carried like a penitent barbarian in their horsehair shirt. 

He had spent the first half of his life trusting no-one, and spent the latter half holding his trust like a weapon– trust in her, in himself, in whatever capricious force had brought them together in the first place. 

The irony of dying in hopes of giving himself a second chance at life was never lost on him, who had never so much as believed in the immaterial soul. Time was an enemy and his dearest ally. 

With the final preparations made, with nothing left but to leave his faith in the children and grandchildren of his friends and one time enemies, he was helped into the saddle for one last ride. The old scar on his arm ached as the early winter snow drifted down. 

The ruins of Honno-ji had become an overgrown mass over the years, but he had built a small cozy hut there, the place where he had begun to live, the place where he intended to die. 

“Thank you, Kyubei.” He said as took the proffered cup of sake gratefully, watching the snowfall in the quiet night. 

“I’m Kyubei’s  grandson,” the young man said, and gave him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. 

“Ah. Forgive an old man for losing track of time.” He said, quietly. 

The quiet snowfall had lulled him into a deep, peaceful sleep, a dream where she was curled against him, so warm, a dream of a long ago kiss upon the back of his neck, of her cradled in his arms, of her beautiful body tangled with his, of her precious voice telling him 

You do not have to be good

but you are

Somewhere in the deep blue dawn he heard the calling. He struggled up, half staggering, half crawling, toward the door. 

“Wait– where are you going?” The boy cried out, trying to take hold of his sleeve, but he felt lighter than he had in years, felt as light as the flakes of falling snow. 

“The wild geese are calling me to my place by her side…” he said, bare feet in the soft snow, strangely warm as he walked toward the place where the balcony had been and folded his legs neatly beneath him, hands in his lap, heart in his hands to give to her as he closed his eyes. 

…

She had had one day and 7 hours to dispose as best she could of her life, but nothing had ever been easier. She had already been living as if she were dead, and dropped her letters of farewell into the post without a single regret. 

It felt as if she were floating a little above the ground as she carefully wrapped up four sets of glasses for Sasuke, and went to the monument to wait with one more poem on her lips like a prayer

A kiss on the forehead—erases misery. I kiss your forehead. A kiss on the eyes—lifts sleeplessness. I kiss your eyes. A kiss on the lips—is a drink of water. I kiss your lips. 

How many lives were folded between the two of them like ink dropped into water, and why, she didn’t ask. Just one, even if it hurt sometimes, if it frightened them both, if it was struggle, just one would be so much more than enough. 

The pressure and the crackle in the air brought grateful tears to her eyes when they arrived, and she stood fearlessly and walked into the wormhole, eyes wide open. 

It was the same dark haze but she felt as if she were being dragged every which way, buffeted first toward one blurred landscape and then another, searching frantically for him. 

She saw the diverging paths of his life, the violent heartbreaking ends, the loneliness, and shards of incohate moments. 

Snow. He was there in the snow, seated as if in silent meditation, beauty still apparent under the marks of age. 

He didn’t stir as she cried out his name, again and again, telling him she had returned as the sight of his serene face faded. She felt a familiar cool hand brush her tears away with a touch so soft and light, felt guided toward a faint light, and began to run. 

…

“Are you ill?” Nobunaga asked as Mitsuhide pitched forward onto his knees, and clutched his head. 

“I– I just had the odd sensation of having… died.” He mumbled, faintly. 

Sasuke cocked his head thoughtfully, watching the storm as it descended. 

“You called these peace talks under threat of revolution you’re not allowed to die of a broken heart, you insufferable snake.” Hideyoshi said angrily.

The four of them had ridden up to Honno-ji as the storm came on, and he felt as if his head were full of intense flashes of something he couldn’t name– other selves, other lives. 

“I did warn you that the timeline reasserting itself might be unpleasant.” Sasuke said dryly, and adjusted his battered glasses. 

“Shouldn’t she be here by now?” Hideyoshi asked as he hoisted Mitsuhide to his feet. 

“There’s no guarantee–” Sasuke began, and was cut off by Nobunaga gesturing toward the balcony. 

He scrambled across the sleet slicked ground, feeling that same desperate fear and hope as he stumbled up the stairs, overcome with the sensation that it had been so much longer than a single year, weak in the knees as he slid down, straining to see into the twisting cloud. 

She toppled into him, snow in her hair and on her lashes, and they fell together onto the cold and sooty wood of the balcony. She was so warm in his trembling arms, her pounding heart pressed to his. 

***

WHEW, WE MADE IT THROUGH THE ANGST

This chapter’s poem is “A Kiss on the Forehead” by Marina Tsvetaeva

[buckybleeds]

Supplementary Reading Materials for Chapter 2 of Nothing Fades Like The Light.

The first page is the one-page history of the US that Nick Fury gives to Steve the day after he wakes up.

The next two pages are from the 10th grade history book Steve is given to read.

All of these pages are technically-factually-true (except the last paragraph of “the cost of freedom” section of the history textbook where mutants and asgardians are discussed) but have a strong bias in their presentation.

Fury’s presentation of US history is VERY US-positive; the textbook is slightly less US positive but still much, much, much more biased than, say, Wikipedia.

Anyway, here’s the text of these pages:

This is the one-page history provided to Steve by Fury. Please note that it is technically factual but VERY biased in its presentation of American Contemporary History.

For release to Cpt. Steven G. Rogers

Per Director Nicholas J. Fury

4/25/2011

        Vital points in US History from 3/5/1945 to Present

- April 12th 1945 Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of stroke, succeeded in office by VP Harry S. Truman.

- April 30th 1945 Adolph Hitler commits suicide, Germany surrenders 5/7/1945 Victory is declared in Europe.

- September 2nd 1945 Japan signs terms of surrender after Americans halted a possible invasion through the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

- June 24th 1948 Soviet Union blockades communist-controlled East Berlin, prompting American airdrops of food and fuel.

- June 27th 1950 American troops are sent to support South Korea against invading North Korean communists.

- September 24th 1957 Black/White school segregation is ended by presidential order

- August 2nd 1964 Vietnamese torpedo boats attack American Sailors

- November 22nd 1963 US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas,Tx.

- January-February 1968 North Vietnamese launch a coordinated offensive against American soldiers stationed in South Vietnam

- August 6th 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, to prevent racial discrimination from hindering democracy.

- July 20th 1969 American Astronauts become the first men to walk on the moon.

- May 3re 1970 US troops launch offensive in Cambodia to counter Vietnamese troops hiding past the Cambodian border.

- January 27th 1973 The US brokers a cease-fire with Vietnam and signs the cease-fire agreement in Paris.

- August 9th 1974 President Richard Nixon resigns and is succeeded and pardoned by VP Gerald Ford.

- April 25th 1980 American Servicemen are killed attempting to free US hostages in Iran

- January 20th 1981 President Ronald Regan is inaugurated and Iranian hostages freed.

- March 30th 1981 Failed assassination attempt on President Ronald Regan

- June 12th 1987 President Regan demands the Soviet Union tear down the Berlin Wall.

- November 9th 1989 Berlin Wall demolished.

- February 1st 1992 US President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin meet to sign an agreement declaring an end to the Cold War.

- June 26th 1993 President Bill Clinton launches an attack against Iraq after failed assassination of former President George Bush.

- September 11th 2001 Terrorists destroy the World Trade Center in New York by flying hijacked planes into the towers, killing over 3000 people

- January 29th 2002 President George W. Bush declares war on Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 terror attacks.

- June 28th 2004 the US returns sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government

- September 10th 2007 The US remains committed to training operations, counter-insurgency measures, and fighting terrorists in Iraq.

[Here’s the text of the Vietnam War page from the 10th-grade textbook given to Steve]

Perspective Shift – Photography

[included image of a US soldier burning a home during the My Lai Massacre]

In March of 1968 American Soldiers killed over 300 Vietnamese noncombatant civilians, including many women and children, in what became known as the My Lai massacre.

Testimony given by Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. described ditches full of bodies, homes being burnt, and unarmed civilians being executed by American soldiers.

While there were eyewhitnesses and many credible reports of unsanctioned American violence it is largely due to the greater portability and durability

of cameras that the American public gave up support for the Vietnam War.

Famous photos of Nguyễn Văn Lém (“Saigon Execution” 1968), Phan Thị Kim Phúc (“Napalm Girl” 1972), and even the deaths of American students protesting the

bombing of Cambodia at Kent State University in Ohio (“Kent State University Massacre” 1970) made the reality of war more obvious to people reading newspapers at home and watching reports on television.

While mass media has always been a part of modern warfare there had never before been such a stream of violent, full-color images making their way off of the battlefield and into people’s living rooms.

Previous wars had sent newsreels showing successful battles and strong soldiers back to the home front, frequently as a tactic for promoting the sale of war bonds or increasing recruitment, but the visibility of the cost of war has become more and more apparent as it became easier to show what was happening on the ground.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: How does the internet and social media shift the way that American civilians experience war today? What do you think would be different about war today without cellphone videos or livestreaming?

 US commanders were more grounded in offensive and aggressive warefare than defensive positions or missions. This, combined with the heretofore unusual challenge of fighting opponents who utilized guerilla techniques and could easily blend in with (or actually be) the civilian population made a unique challenge in terms of tactics and planning.

Additionally, after the initial surge US recruits were typically drafted and only recently trained and stationed overseas. They were unfamiliar with the local culture and languages, unfamiliar with the terrain and wildlife – even unfamiliar with the food. A recruit from Indianapolis would find himself in a very strange place standing on the bank of the Mekong river.

This led to engagements unlike any ever seen in American military campaigns – search and destroy operations were stymied on the ground by impenetrable jungles and the ability of the Viet Cong to disappear into the local population but bases were left poorly defended – the Viet Cong took advantage of these strategic inconsistencies and carefully provoked US offensive actions into Hill Fights in the Central Highlands as a diversonary tactic before launching the Tet Offensive.

The Tet Offensive (1/30/1968) was a major strategy launched at more than 100 cities, with focused attacks on government buildings, military installations, and the US Embassy in Saigon. During the first month of the offensive over 1,100 Americans and 14,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed.

The Tet Offensive marked the beginning of a collapse of morale among US soldiers and marked an end to majority support at home. Infantry units began to falsify or simply disobey orders or even turn around to attack their commanding officers, sometimes going so far as to kill those giving orders.

DEFINITION – FRAGGING

Fragging is the act of killing one’s own officer or teammates in war, named for fragmentation grenades because officers killed in grenade incidents were noted as accidental deaths. There were over 900 fragging incidents investigated in the later years of the war.

Questions were also being continually raised about the ethics and efficacy of US tactics. The use of Napalm was uncontroversial at the beginning of the campaign and justified as a way to protect US troops and eradicate cover for the Viet Cong, but after tens of thousands of civilians, many of them children, were killed or burned in napalm drops support for the war continued to drop as it became impossible to ignore that the American use of incendiaries on civilians was only causing increased support for the North Vietnamese forces.

Pathways Through American History: Chapter 21 – The Vietnam War

Hugh Thompson Junior, who is mentioned in the “perspective shift: photography” section of the history book Steve reads, is maybe the truest definition of an American hero - he was responsible for reporting and attempting to end the My Lai massacre, landing his helicopter between American soldiers and the Vietnamese civilians they were attempting to kill and evacuating survivors of the massacre. He faced tremendous criticism for his actions and was ostracized for testifying against American soldiers. He was eventually awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary bravery in flight. He threw it away.

You can read more about him being just the biggest swinging dick in the northern hemisphere here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson_Jr.

Additionally there was an opera written about his actions and dedicated to his bravery and to the survivors of the My Lai massacre, which includes music played on instruments made from artillery left in Vietnam after the war. You can see excerpts from that opera here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQu9lxaDsI8

[Here’s the text of a page from Steve’s history book - this one is about the Patriot Act]

Take Note

[includes image of a sign that says “The FBI has not been here – watch this sign carefully to see if that changes”]

Librarians strenuously objected to the USA PATRIOT act, specifically Section 215, which allows the FBI to request books, records, papers, and other documents that a suspected terrorist might have accessed, including what books had been checked out from a library. The American Library Association stated that library records are fundamentally different from ordinary business records and that the provision granting access to library records would have a chilling effect on free speech but discouraging the use of libraries or the free exploration of information therein.

The sign pictured in this section was posted in a library in 2005; while libraries were not permitted to announce that the FBI had requested records because of the gag order attached to the provision they were allowed to post a sign saying there had been no requests for information and then surreptitiously remove the signs if that changed.

DISCUSSION QUESTION: Is checking a book out from a library free speech? Do you think you would search different websites if you knew your parents or school were monitoring where you went? Do you think it’s worth it to be careful about what you search if it means someone else doesn’t get bullied or hurt because of search filtering?

 The Cost of Freedom

after 9/11 it became clear that our democracy was not prepared for the spectre of terrorism that had invaded our shores - but some of the responses have been criticized as worse than the cause.

The USA PATRIOT act continues to be controversial for many reasons, but most frequently cited are the normalization of mass state surveillance and erosion of personal privacy and the elimination of constitutional protections for certain classes of terrorist suspects.

Reauthorizations of the USA PATRIOT act have continually approved unwarranted wiretapping and gag orders on people (like librarians and internet service providers) who might otherwise warn people about data collection in the public interest. Some provisions have become more controversial as time has passed – for instance the “Lone Wolf” provision that allowed for the warrantless wire-tapping of individuals not connected to known terrorist groups has come under additional scrutiny as groups like the ACLU point out that the FBI’s definitions of “terrorist” are both expansive and opaque. Other sections are more and more accepted – nationwide service of search warrants for electronic evidence is wholly accepted now whereas the question of widening jurisdictions was seen as a threat to individual liberty when the act was signed into law in 2001.

Of greater concern are the changes made to criminal law in broadening the definitions of terrorism; it is now possible to be considered a terrorist for causing mass destruction as well as causing injury or death, and the definitions of “cyber terrorism” set down in 2001 might certainly give computer-users in 2008 some pause; accessing a ‘protected computer’ is a terrorist action, after all – or at least it can be.

The indefinite detention of non-US citizens is also of serious concern internationally, though American citizens are not subject to the indefinite holds that are possible for non-citizens. Constitutional scholars, civil liberties groups, and many activists contend that constitutional freedoms are guaranteed to all people on American soil, but that is a more and more difficult question to tackle when ‘aliens’ discussed in the law become literal Aliens, as the revealed Asgardians and their advanced technology prove. The protections that might be necessary for an accused immigrant don’t need to be enshrined the same way for beings we have no better description for than ‘demigod.’

Mutant activist groups have recently hopped into the fray in this conversation, as the USA PATRIOT act can also classify their genetic powers as terrorist weapons and the damage that is caused when an adolescent mutant matures into their talent has more than once been labeled a terrorist action.

 A Different Perspective

President George W. Bush, who signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law, has stood by his decision all this time and continues to insist that it is in the best interest of the American people.

The Department of Homeland Security, a new branch of the Department of Defense, was also formed under President Bush and has seen similar ups-and-downs. The most well-known face of the DHS is the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, who most of us know from long lines at the airport and taking off your shoes to get on a plane.

It’s true that these things are inconvenient, but security usually isn’t convenient - there have been no attempted shoe or liquid bombings on planes since the TSA changed their carry-on policies, so maybe the trade-off is worth the inconvenience.

 Pathways Through American History: Chapter 28 – The War on Terror