Gutting the founding principles of the country, both literally and figuratively, in response to the deaths of 3000 people is bad tradecraft, too.
It feels like the US is consciously making the most suboptimal decisions possible in response to terrorist attacks, terrorist threats, terrorists themselves, leaks uncovering the US's poor judgement, or those reporting on such leaks. But, of course, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, right?
Everything from throwing people in Gitmo indefinitely with no trial, to surveilling the whole country, to throwing the US internet industry under a bus (with the whole "we only surveil foreign entities" nonsense), threatening individual journalists with prosecution, torturing people prior to trial for speaking up about war crimes, irradiating and sexually assaulting air passengers, assassinating citizens... all the way down to plastic silverware in airport restaurants.
We've executed, by the textbook, exactly the most destructive, demoralizing, wasteful, and ineffective responses to these threats that can possibly be conceived under the model. We've done exactly what hurts us most, inflicted MANY orders of magnitude more damage on the US voluntarily than any decade of sustained successfully executed terror attacks ever could or would.
Far more disheartening than the general public's apathy or the transgressions of our leadership is the gradual and stunning realization that This Is The Best America Can Do.
For fuck's sake.