Recently the TSA announced that its security is expanding its presence into other areas of transportation – train stations.

And this is all in the name of counterterrorism.

Civil liberties and privacy have been hot topics of this summer after revelations of the National Security Agency’s data-gathering plan. Every issue has its pros and cons, and the issue of the TSA is no different. Even though the TSA’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads have been around since 2005, it seems like they’re more and more visible every day.

A recent article in the New York Times talks about how unhappy some people are with VIPR appearing in transportation hubs instead of local police. Instead of local policemen skulking around, it’s now TSA-badge clad men and women.

“VIPR teams work at the request of local law enforcement officials to supplement existing security resources by providing deterrent presence and detection capabilities, and an unpredictable layer of security,” a TSA official said.

The American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t seem to support this expansion. On its website, the ACLU has an entire section dedicated to complaints about the TSA, where travelers can describe their experiences and how they feel their rights have been violated.

ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley believes that not only does the TSA expansion abuse Americans’ civil liberties, it also doesn’t keep them any safer.

“Terrorism is very rare,” Stanley said in an interview. “We could spend billions and billions of dollars trying to set up security in every train and bus station and even then there’s no guarantee that it’ll work. It’s not a good trade off for the American people.”

Washington’s Union Station doubles as a mall and a place to go for lunch. It’s a type of place where people walk in and out of all the time. If people can’t shop without receiving a pat down, are Americans really free?

Stanley doesn’t think so. He said that Americans are unnecessarily sacrificing their right to privacy because acts of terrorism don’t occur very often.

“There’s a risk of terrorism everywhere,” Stanley said. “The question is how large is that risk, and how much do we reduce that risk by putting in place these measures?”

Stanley does agree with the need for TSA security in airports because air travel is vulnerable in ways that train travel isn’t. He believes that air travel should be an exception to the rule, but not other kinds of travel, especially trains.

“We don’t want a country where we need to go through TSA-like checks,” Stanley said.

If it turns out that Americans are safer by adding TSA to all public places, then so be it. But at the end of the day, will Americans be happy with that?

After the Cold War ended, the U.S. acted like world police – a country whose job it was to protect everyone from everyone else. David Tretler, dean of faculty at the National War College, said that the protective attitude of the U.S. hurts it more than helps it.

“Our effort to run the world generates resentment and resistance,” Tretler said. “It also is very expensive.”

The National War College is a school in the National Defense University.

In fiscal 2013 the U.S. spent around $23 billion on foreign aid, or a total of $37 billion if it includes aid to foreign militaries, according to the National Priorities Project, an American non-governmental organization that makes federal budgets transparent and accessible so citizens can better understand how their tax dollars are spent.

While this large number seems like a huge amount of money, it is only around 1 percent of the total budget. The U.S. is spending more money overseas and not enough at home. In fact, while the U.S. gives Egypt $1 billion a year, roads and schools in the U.S. are falling into disrepair.

After Hurricane Katrina, Egypt went 2 C-130 planes loaded with blankets, medical equipment, and canned food. The U.S. gives $1 billion a year and Egypt sent over two planes. It doesn’t equate.

The National Priorities Project has a budget calculator that allows people to find out how much money their town or county gives to the Department of Defense, and what that money could go to instead of foreign aid. When I put in my hometown and county, the calculator figured that we could give 5,000 veterans health care for 10 years and still have $1.8 billion left to spend.

So when it is put into perspective how much better our funds could be allocated, why does the U.S. insist on maintaining an unparalleled altruistic persona? For example, the U.S. insists on keeping Israel safe from the rest of the Middle East instead of spending money on itself.

Tretler lays out three reasons for why the U.S. protects Israel:

1)    Holocaust guilt

2)    Admiration for what was once a western European society

3)    Only middle eastern ally during the Cold War

After 9/11 many people would say national security was of the utmost importance. TSA ramped up security, cameras appeared on what seems like every traffic light and walking into any government building is like walking into the airport everyday. At the time, many welcomed it with wide-open arms because nothing was more important than keeping the U.S. safe. Twelve years later, one in four Americans opposes the full-body scanners, according to a Thomson Reuters-NPR health poll.

Tretler said that in the grand scheme of things, 9/11 was a blip, but to those not in the military who haven’t seen such “incidents” on a fairly regular basis, 9/11 was traumatic.

“We imagine there are dragons that will attack us,” Tretler said. “But there aren’t.”

I watched the Twin Towers fall from my school’s windows in real time, not on CNN’s loop. For all intents and purposes, that attack was the definition of dragons, but put into perspective, it really was small. The U.S. is in the Middle East trying to re-establish an effective government. To say that the mission might cause U.S. resentment would probably be putting it lightly, so an attack like 9/11 compared to what the U.S. has done abroad is small.

“There’s basically nothing that threatens us,” Tretler said.

Running the world doesn’t come cheap, though. Not only is it expensive to be the No. 1 super power, it also means that a lot of people are going to resent us.

“You can run the world for awhile,” Tretler said. “But not forever.”