Distrust vs. security, domestic and foreign: Part I
Richard Fernandez always has something interesting to say, and this post of his is no exception:
For much of history our ability to harm ourselves was fortunately limited by the crude nature of our means. But by the dawn of the 19th century it became obvious that the lack of technology alone could not forever protect us. Men were inventing more and more lethal devices…
Somehow [man has] found a way till now to put his creations under control. What he has not managed to achieve is to uninvent knowledge…
The deep dark secret of the disarmament movement is that it never relied on the control of arms. It has always relied on the control of men. And the control of men relied upon the acceptance of taboos; in the submission to a kind of accepted set of values, in the belief in the odiousness of betrayal. The key to controlling the nuclear bomb lay in governance. It lay in the accountability of the possessors of these things to the general public…
The problem of North Korea is not a problem of technology. It is a problem of legitimacy.
In recent weeks the world has become aware of yet another wonder weapon. The full power of information technology has been revealed by reports detailing their use to capture nearly every aspect of modern communications…And yet a moment’s reflection must reveal that we always knew that technology could do this. What we had not suspected was that the Obama administration would do this.
Fernandez puts it more gracefully than I would have, but that’s essentially what I’ve been thinking ever since the NSA leak story broke. It’s why I’ve said several times that the NSA revelations would seem less alarming to most people had it not been for the IRS revelations paving the way and showing how untrustworthy government institutions can be, how easy and tempting it is to abuse power.
Of course, we always knew that—“power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”—and the Founders certainly knew it (although the technology was hardly imagined by them). But there’s nothing like a demonstration, up close and personal, to make it seem more real and more urgent.
So as a result, people trust government less and less in recent days. In many ways that’s all to the good—at least, if it leads to the curbing of big government’s power to limit our liberty in order to assert its own power and/or punish its political rivals. But we still rely on government to protect us from terrorism and from predatory foreign powers—in fact, most of us pretty much expect and even demand it.
So these two impulses are in conflict in some basic way, and the disagreement is over how to balance them. Liberty is exceptionally important, but without security there can be no liberty if the outside threats become great enough. Remember that in the triad “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” “life” is listed first.
But if we’re going to sacrifice any of our very precious liberty, it better be for an excellent reason. The threat had better be real, and the benefit had better be real, and the sacrifice of liberty as minimal as possible.
How the NSA data collection program factors into that is an issue on which reasonable people can differ. I don’t know enough details yet to be absolutely certain, but my strong gut reaction is that we’re giving up too much for too little benefit. And of course the problem in learning more of those details of the program is that the enemies and potential enemies learn those details too.
This is not a new problem, it’s an old one, although of course the technology by which the loss of liberty can be accomplished is fairly new and far more encompassing than in the past. But we’ve faced the same basic dilemma before at many dramatic times in our history, especially during periods when the nation threatened to splinter.
For example, we had the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798:
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War…
Opposition to Federalists among Democratic-Republicans reached new heights at this time since the Democratic-Republicans had supported France. Some appeared to desire an event similar to the French Revolution to come to the United States to overthrow the government. When Democratic-Republicans in some states refused to enforce federal laws, such as the Whiskey tax, and threatened to rebel, Federalists threatened to send the army to force them to capitulate. As the unrest sweeping Europe was bleeding over into the United States, calls for secession reached unparalleled heights, and the fledgling nation seemed ready to rip itself apart.
The “Alien” portion of the law was mostly about activities by aliens thought to be undermining the stability of our government. It was the “Sedition” portion that was especially disturbing to people, then and now. Here’s an example, from Section 2:
And be it farther enacted, That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.
When Jefferson was elected he pardoned those who had been convicted under the Sedition Act (although apparently not until after he had used it to punish a few of his critics) and the Act died a natural death by expiration and non-renewal.
Students of American history also know that one of the big beefs with Lincoln’s behavior during the Civil War was his suspension of various civil liberties such as the writ of habeas corpus. It was a temporary wartime measure that Lincoln felt was necessary to preserve the union, but it was extremely controversial even in its time.
Now the current conflict has reached a head in a “war” that’s undeclared and far less straightforward than those earlier precedents. Growing distrust of government has heightened the fear and the dilemma.
The closest parallel I can think of (although it’s not even close to perfect by any means) was the reaction of the public at the end of the Vietnam War. Many events came together as the Vietnam War waged on and then wound down—such as, for example, the decline of trust in government engendered by the leak of the Pentagon Papers at the hands of that Snowden precursor, Daniel Ellsberg; the lengthy and frustrating prosecution of the Vietnam war itself (including shocking events such as the My Lai massacre); and the excesses of Watergate—causing trust in the government to erode precipitously, and motivating Congress and the public to try to protect itself against government and preserve civil liberties from the perceived threat.
[NOTE: Tune in soon for Part II, in which I plan to outline the ways that laws passed to limit government power in the aftermath of the Vietnam War helped lead to the famous firewall and hampered our ability to fight the war on terror effectively, and then tie that into what’s happening now.]
Intrusive spying should be reserved for periods of emergency. Are we in a state of permanent emergency? It cannot be or the term has no meaning. We should not have to suffer the risk of government abusing its powers (é¡ la IRS) in order to obtain security.
The list of countries that successfully dealt/deal with a long term risk of terrorism is not exactly short (in more or less decreasing order: Israel, UK, Spain, France, Italy, Germany). It seems sophisticated–and ruthless–profiling has a better track record than attempting omniscience.
At the very least, if the US wants never-ending emergency powers, they should deign to name the emergency instead of expunging all reference to it.
“Are we in a state of permanent emergency? It cannot be…..” Ah, but yes it can be.
“We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”
“In the landmark George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty Four, Eurasia, Oceania and Eastasia are in a perpetual state of war. The attacks are in the form of rocket attacks (similar to the V2 Attacks on London in WW2) although it is implied in the book that the attacks could be launched by the home Government against their own people in order to perpetuate fear and hatred of the enemy. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
Very nicely drawn, Neo.
I think this sums it up for me:
But if we’re going to sacrifice any of our very precious liberty, it better be for an excellent reason. The threat had better be real, and the benefit had better be real. . . my strong gut reaction is that we’re giving up too much for too little benefit.
Uh huh.
Obama set the bar very low for himself when Google and Facebook provided their user data to him during his campaign against Romney. It’s also quite likely that the Google and Facebook campaign staff actively sabotaged the Romney campaign’s “get-out-the-vote” database.
After that, using — and abusing — NSA data derived from Google, Facebook, and others is actually a step down in surveillance level. We should — as always — be praising the O.
What has been so depressing is to know that our ruling class hates us and wants to destroy us. Each scandal has been horrible, but put them all together and you get rule by traitors:
gun “control” (fast and furious), IRS destruction of tea party, love for muslims in government (CAIR, Ground Zero mosque), weakening and pussifying of military, open borders, destruction of medical system, nonsensical educational system, ridiculous pensions, out of control congress, bent supreme court . . .
We are entering an era of savagery.
The inimitable Richard Fernandez, whom I hold in the highest regard makes two questionable assertions;
“we always knew that technology could do this. What we had not suspected was that the Obama administration would do this.”
Well. I certainly suspected it and so did literally millions of others. And having read Mr. Fernandez’s blog for years, I have no doubt whatsoever that he knew this was well within Obama’s capabilities and entirely predictable. My guess is that he’s hoping to influence some liberals by that wording.
“Only one thing can stop the Destroyer of Words. Accountability has to be restored to the system. The principals responsible must go. If legitimacy is ever to be restored, those who have no more credibility can no longer lead it. That is inevitable.”
But is it inevitable? That is a questionable premise at best. The recent resistance of the administration and its supporters, both in Congress and in the media to criticism of the data mining, despite the unprecedented amount of criticism from liberals and others on the left is quite indicative of this administration’s determination to continue the data mining.
That the massive DOMESTIC data mining is of very limited use in actual counter terrorism operations, (see: Obama administration says NSA data helped make arrests in two important cases — but critics say that simply isn’t true) has to be known to the administration, so their motivation must be otherwise. There is only one other use for domestic surveillance; this administration finds it of value to be able to track all movement, establish all associations and peruse the communications of those who compose its political opposition.
And while the phone call metadata is not about collecting the content of phone calls, the collection of data on emails and other web-brokered information is about content, as well as about metadata. NSA is collecting content from our online correspondence using the PRISM and Boundless Informant programs. Nor is that likely to be the extent of it, thus the determination of the administration et al to resist transparency regardless of the political cost.
A fish rots from the head and there is now so much rot within our government as for political corruption to now be the norm. Thus it has lost all credibility and increasingly demonstrates itself to be, in principle, an enemy of liberty. While clearly engaged in the gradual and deeper entrenchment of those conditions necessary to the establishment of tyranny.
We can see the chains of our oppression being forged daily before our very eyes. Only the willfully blind refuse to see the proverbial “handwriting on the wall”.
Geoffrey Britain:
You are very correct about that word “suspected.”
I “suspected” it even before November of 2008, as did many many others. Certainly before November of 2012 it was far more than a suspicion. I still don’t understand why most people didn’t see it, although of course I’ve heard all the reasons that have been given.
Neo writes:
“So these two impulses are in conflict in some basic way, and the disagreement is over how to balance them. Liberty is exceptionally important, but without security there can be no liberty if the outside threats become great enough. Remember that in the triad “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” “life” is listed first.”
And I comment:
-“Outside” threats?
-“Life” may be listed first, but that is no signal of its primacy. When one starts bargaining liberty against life, one must be aware of a certain slippery slope of incrementalism. Life is finite; liberty is infinite unless surrendered. “Better Red than Dead” comes to mind.
What Geoffrey said.
The government will do much worse than just spy on us.
Matthew M:
I think there’s no question that profiling works. And it may even be done to a certain extent, but kept quiet about. It probably isn’t done often enough to be really effective enough, though, because of PC considerations.
Geoffrey Britain said, “That the massive DOMESTIC data mining is of very limited use in actual counter terrorism operations,….”
Just so. Here’s a link to a good argument as to why by Barry Rubin:
http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/06/10/why-expanded-government-spying-doesnt-mean-better-security-against-terrorism/
If we can’t name the enemy because it isn’t politically correct, then who do you watch? Political correctness tells its believers that the “fair” thing is to watch everybody. Just as the TSA proceeds from the premise that everyone is a potential terrorist, so does the NSA. And we get precious little from it in the war on terror. What has been created though, is a nifty tool for government control of the citizens.
The electronic tools of spying could be much more useful and less threatening to the average citizen, if the NSA, CIA, and FBI were allowed to profile the enemy. That was, as I recall, the original idea. To look for calls from Muslim lands to numbers here in the U.S. and vice a versa. That would narrow the search down and when numbers of interest in the U.S. were delineated, they could get a FISC warrant for further collection of content. That doesn’t bother me as long as there is strong oversight. On the other hand, the massive collection of data on domestic calls, e-mails, videos, and other electronic communication just because they have the tools, creates something that is too subject to abuse – even with oversight. I think it is a bad idea.
Don Carlos:
By “outside,” I actually meant threats that come either from foreign sources, from people allied with foreign sources but within this country, or from anyone not in the government. I was contrasting those threats with threats that come from our own government limiting our own civil liberties. I know that wasn’t nearly clear enough, but that’s what I meant.
And of course some people lay down their lives for liberty. To defend liberty, that must be the case. But just as obviously (and this was my point about the primacy of “life”), we have always been willing to give up certain liberties in times of external threat—for example, war. The question is how much liberty, what type of liberty, for how long, and how great and imminent the threat has to be. One must be alive to have liberty, and the country must survive to have liberty—especially when fighting an enemy that would take away that liberty.
I’ve mentioned this in a few places, but I don’t remember whether I said it here before. If so, I apologize for the repetition.
What if the IRS and NSA information was deliberately made public by the regime for the specific purpose of demoralizing and paralyzing the right? It seems to have had that effect.
In that vein, I just saw this link in a comment at AoS: It’s Probably Much Worse Than You Think
Read the whole thing.
rickl:
Don’t think so, for the simple reason that I think rather than demoralizing the right it’s energizing the right.
Before the scandals broke the right was extremely demoralized (after November 2012). Why rock that boat? Things were going smoothly for the left and Obama. Benghazi was hardly being paid attention to. So far the effect of the IRS scandal (the timing of which, by the way, seems to have been determined by the release of the IG’s report, which had been in the works for a while) has been to increase criticism of the government and Obama rather than decrease it.
As for Snowden, I still don’t know who he works for or whether he’s a freelancer. But I think the same is true of the NSA scandal, as far as I can see. It certainly doesn’t seem to me to be demoralizing the right or stifling negative comment about the administration. Au contraire. Even Jay Leno has gotten into the act in a fairly hard-hitting manner, at least for him.
We’ve been hearing about phone and internet records, but what about credit card data? I did some contract work about 15 years ago for a company called First Data Corp. that processed Visa, MC, Discovery etc. The only reason they were in the credit card business was to gather the data. They looked for and bought other companies…. didn’t matter what business it was… as long as they collected data in some way. Even back then the plans they had to organise, collate, cross reference and sell the data was kind of scary.
A caller on Rush’s show today had the opinion that Democrats are collecting the data not for security, but for their own political purposes. Targeting potential voters who are not registered and making voter drive efforts. Could this be part of the reason food stamps have risen so dramatically? The data collected is being used to target persons who qualify and they are being recruited as Democrat voters?
neo-neocon Says:
June 12th, 2013 at 8:21 pm
Not based on a lot of comments I’ve seen. The despair is almost palpable.
rickl:
I have no idea what you’re talking about, especially compared to the first few months after the 2012 election. The despair was extremely intense, then, worse than I’d ever seen it since I began reading blogs. People are quite energized now. And it’s the left that seems demoralized by this (although hardly demoralized enough).
We must read different blogs or something.
Demoralize and paralyze the Right, rickl? Make that ‘everyone’ and you’ve got it. The initial surge of opposition will go away, like Tahrir Square, but the State will endure. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear not.
Bureaucrats resemble zebra mussels-leave a few and eventually they take over the Great Lakes; that they do some good is perhaps incidental.
I fully agree with Neo. Yes, these scandals are deeply demoralizing to the right in that it seems that our country and its principles and the rule of law have been undermined just as deeply as we feared and predicted, perhaps fatally. And yet. The right is energized by righteous anger and by the new support from unexpected quarters on the principled left (no longer entirely an oxymoron?) while the unprincipled left is floundering, on the defense and with nothing credible to use in their defense. More energy than demoralization, more hope than formerly, so long as the harm done so far is not yet irreparable, as yet to be seen. On the whole, advantage to the right, so long as our country’s union survives.
Lord Acton got it wrong. It should be that power attracts the corrupt and corruptable.
Paul,
Everyone is corruptible. All you need to corrupt the most resistant is the proper leverage and the ruthlessness to use it. The difference between people is their willingness to embrace corruption.
I can’t speak for anyone else but the scandals have energized me. The more overt the evil, the easier to stand against it.
Neo: “I “suspected” it even before November of 2008, as did many many others. Certainly before November of 2012 it was far more than a suspicion. I still don’t understand why most people didn’t see it, although of course I’ve heard all the reasons that have been given.”
Generally, we respect the Office of the President. Specifically, after 9/11, we trusted Bush with the powers. Whatever missteps Bush made, we knew – and I suspect the Left knew – he was sincere about using the tools for national security and not for parochial partisan gamesmanship.
We’ve chastised Bush for refraining from hitting back against the low blows from the Democrats and the Left, but his restraint is one reason why we trusted his administration with extraordinary powers after 9/11. He valued doing his job over playing the game. And the Republicans paid a steep political price because President Bush did his best doing his duty.
Morever, that the Democrats and the Left, plus dogmatic libertarians like the Pauls, histrionically and hyperbolically accused Bush of everything and the kitchen only thickened our skins to the potential abuse of the powers because we trusted Bush and respected the Office of the President.
So when Obama took over as President, we gave him the benefit of the doubt based on both our respect for the Presidency and the personal trust we gave his precedecessor for this specific area, even if we opposed him on other policies. We were willing to overlook that since 9/11, the Democrats – Obama above all – have played a partisan ‘Game of Thrones’.
I agree with the themes of this post. The dogmatic libertarian position is valid as far as stating a valuable principle, but it’s not a realistic policy. By nature, I am an idealist. When I was a soldier, however, I learned to respect that ideals such as freedom and liberty are materially effective in the real world only to the extent that the community is secured.
The Constitutional question has not, nor has ever been in our history, as simple as dogmatic libertarians make it out to be. The Patriot Act powers are based on precedent. Like past war-time measures, it wasn’t designed to be permanent and requires periodic renewal. Indeed, the component laws were mostly drawn forward from Clinton’s counterterrorism.
The issues are trust, calibration, weighing alternatives, our tolerance, and the nature of the exigency. Matthew M raised a question about the threat of terrorism that we need to revisit. The Patriot Act uses a martial law template. Martial law, with its relatievly draconian nature, is designed to be a temporary module that firewalls and preserves peace-time domestic law. Martial law is designed to be easily lifted as a module when the exigency is resolved. But if are now assuming the exigency of terrorism is effectively permanent, then the customary firewall between martial law and domestic law breaks down.
Bush tried for a permanent solution, but We the People rejected it. If we are now accepting that the problem is permanent and we need permanent laws to deal with it, then we need to come up with a new legal formula.
Should we tolerate profiling, which also brings fundamental Constitutional questions? Should we learn to tolerate the threat of terrorism, accept its permanence, and accept that a periodically bloody price is necessary to maintain a high standard of liberty?
There are always trade-offs when choosing among alternatives. Normally, we assign the parental responsibility for making hard decisions and weighing the trade-offs to our elected leaders. It’s immature of us to demand unconditional measures of security and liberty, and then blame them whenever we pay the price of one or the other when they conflict. I think it’s time to expand the discussion from judiciary, the executive, and the legislature, and hold a serious national discussion to decide what trade-offs We the People are willing to accept.
Neo – a thoughtful post on the subject of liberty vs security.
However….I think you’re falling into the trap that Obama is setting. This is precisely the debate that The Left are hoping will take place. As Geoffrey Britain alludes to — the ‘war’ doesn’t quite rise to the level of emergency that would warrant wholesale data mining of every citizen in the US. Instead, the explanations the administrations offer about dire consequences reek of the Obama/Emmanuel axiom of never letting a crisis got to waste; in this case, where there’s an absence of a crisis, declare one.
This in fact is a perfect crisis to declare — the details of the security threat we are facing can’t be disclosed or our enemies will ruin us. This is an invisible threat, but ” trust us, it’s real, and it’s lethal”. “and we can’t talk about it or the bad guys will elude or traps”. etc.
So scare the hell out of the low information voters and make them believe NOT allowing the government to monitor everything is to risk their lives and our children’s lives. And another trap you’ve fallen into is the Bill Kristol argument — “reasonable people” are defined as those who accept there are trade-offs (in our modern world) between security and liberty. The obvious implication is that unreasonable people are too extreme or dumb to see the threats we face from modern techology. It’s the new monster in the darkness, ready to kill us while we sleep. We’re told to be afraid, and we are.
If this were a tangible war, and a truthful, trustworthy administration that had shown an interest in national security on any other level, your balanced approach would certainly be something to give one pause, but I think we are being played.
Pardon my bluntness, but I think we all need to grow a pair and call their bluff.
Obama is a liar and the data mining isn’t about national security, it’s about identifying political enemies and studying citizens to further expand the left’s power base. If they are forced to stop, we aren’t going to be invaded by China or collapse. It’s not going to happen. This administration is the most insidious bunch in US history. The former heads of Lubyanka would be impressed with the finesse at which Obama’s administration has manipulated this debate.
“What is important is engendering a widespread fear that it can obtain such information and use it to harass, embarrass, blackmail, intimidate, arrest, or otherwise persecute anyone who says or does something the government does not like.”
There are maybe 60 million people in this country with conservative leanings. There aren’t enough prisons, courts, or law enforcement officers to subdue us, if we stick together. That’s why the internet, talk radio and Fox News are important. They shine sunlight into the dark corners where tyrants do their dirty work. We also have people in the Congress who share our values. They can’t shut us up and intimidate us, if we don’t let them. There are simply too many of us.
I do think the Islamist terrorists are laughing in glee to see us fighting amongst ourselves. They have been successful in disrupting our government and our society. All because political correctness won’t allow us to name the enemy and marshal our resources in defense of our nation. In addition, we have an administration that decided to use Chicago Way to make sure they win elections. Now that they have been outed, the mistrust of our government is understandably rising. That makes it even harder for us to defend ourselves from the Islamists. We need to be able to trust the Federal government. Their first obligation is the defense of the country. Without that trust we are much weaker.
I see BHO as the most dangerous president in history, even beyond Wilson, so I confess (to NSA, IRS, DOJ, etc.) that I have no trust in DC’s insatiable desire for ever more power.
“hold a serious national discussion to decide what trade-offs”
While I am reluctantly willing to consider trade-offs when we are under a declaration of war; I concede no trade-offs when we are in a state of denial. For example: Major Hasan’s murderous rage labeled as “work place violence” does not cut it with me. Trust once broken is rarely reclaimed. I trust not and suspect the worst. To convince me I should trust many people within the beltway need to fall upon swords. Tomorrow would be too late.
If they are forced to stop, we aren’t going to be invaded by China or collapse. It’s not going to happen.
Who the heck’s afraid of either of those alternatives? It’s more Boston bombings or another 9/11 we don’t want. Or were those not “tangible” enough for you?
Add to the trade-off questions of profiling and tolerating terrorism as a cost of liberty a third trade-off question:
Should we appease the terrorists and endorse their legitimacy?
Ann,
Yep. I can’t tell whether southpaw is guilty of conflation or whether he’s claiming international espionage should be eliminated, too.
parker,
We did declare war. It was a different kind of war against a different kind of opponent, but there was at least an attempt under Bush to draw legal and policy lines that would preserve a martial distinction. Obama has blurred the lines.
parker @ 10:48 nails it.
“I see BHO as the most dangerous president in history, even beyond Wilson, so I confess (to NSA, IRS, DOJ, etc.) that I have no trust in DC’s insatiable desire for ever more power.
“hold a serious national discussion to decide what trade-offs”…….” etc.
We’re having a rational discussion here about trade-offs, etc. while the federal government has conducted a coup against the American people.
Obama, the IRS, the open borders people, the money-printers, etc. are our enemies. We do not live in the same republic that we lived in before the Obama regime took power.
Who is behind Obama? We’ve discussed this many times on neo-neocon’s site. There are so many buzzwords and buzz-names: Soros, Maurice Strong, Cloward-Piven, the Transnational Progressives, the Chinese, the Saudis, Carlos Slim, etc.
Someone should write a novel in the style of Barry Eisler, Alex Berenson, or Lee Child, and show how these multiple monsters can be taken down. I would do it if I could. I’ve been thinking about various plot lines.
The Fast and Furious, Benghazi, and IRS scandals show the vicious killer natures of our enemies. How did Roberts and Rubio get turned? Why aren’t there more than two or three Republicans who stand up to these devils? The phone call collecting is the least of our problems.
John Kerry is our Secretary of State? Susan Rice is our National Security advisor? Seriously, folks? Do we live in cartoonland?
Ann, Eric,
They were not looking for Boston bombers and could not ID them when handed to them on a silver platter.
They are using the program for political gain. Bush may have used it for securty (im still not going on board), but Obama could give a.rats ass about Islamic terrorism. Benghazi response? Nadal Hussein? Recruiters murdered by muslims?
Sorry you’re in denial. HE DOESNT BELIEVE IN MUSLIM TERRORISM.
Eric,
You are obviously a very thoughtful person; but no, we did not declare war against jihad/islam. Yes, it is a different kind of enemy spread across the globe, but we did not declare war. Bush yapped about the “hijacking of islam” and “islam means peace” but that is rubbish and yesterday’s papers. Islam means submission and surrender. Islam has not been hijacked, it is continuing to wage a 1400 year long war for the establishment of a caliphate to rule the world.
Obama has stressed ‘outreach’ and given many teleprompter speeches about the glories of islam and its contributions to the arts and sciences. We (our ‘leaders’) are obviously in a state of denial. They are at war with the kafirs. We kafirs refuse to acknowledge their true intent and instead target old ladies and children for intrusive searches instead of profiling.
Furthermore (give me a break) DC sucks up massive amounts of data but can not put the crosshairs on the T-brothers or Hasan before they commit their atrocities. These terrorists, on our soil no less, should have raised multiple red flags long before their murderous acts, if the federal government was conducting a broad sweep of private information supposedly under the stated purpose that it was zeroed in on providing security in exchange for liberty.
So excuse me if I do no trust DC to be focused like a laser beam on security while simultaneously data mining my telephone signals. FUBAR comes to mind.
Well worth reading the link below. Make sure the comments go from the Oldest to the Newest.
FWIW, I believe that some anti-America malefactor took over Pajamas Media and made it much less user friendly. Marxists and Muslims play the Long Game better than earnest and well meaning Americans. Just saying . . .
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/06/12/the-flow-of-mistrust/#more-29550
southpaw,
Bush believed in opposing Islamic terrorism. The Obama way isn’t the only way.
Dogmatic libertarians are pushing an either/or choice under the flag of partisanship. Granted, that flag was sewn by Leftist-following Democrats in their partisan campaign against Bush.
But national security remains a legitimate state interest that’s bigger than Obama. The risk of abuse is more worrisome because national security is a real need.
Trade-offs aren’t about giving blind trust and carte blanche to Obama or any President who doesn’t earn our trust. They’re about setting lines so the powers are used to do the job intended. If we can’t trust the person to do his job, perhaps we can program trust via limits into the law and policy.
If we trusted Bush, then we can use his record on national security as a jumping off point and as the first corrective, hold (restrict) Obama to the Bush standard. Then improve our calibration from there.
Eric Says:
June 12th, 2013 at 11:23 pm
We did? Against whom?
” We did declare war.
We did? Against whom?”
Under Barry Soetoro (and McCainiacs) we, you and me and tens of millions of others, are the enemies of the state. Stay cocked and locked 24/365. FUBAR.
parker,
I agree profiling is one of the trade-off questions that ought to be revisited. The bar on profiling is a reason, perhaps the fundamental reason, for the dragnet and other illogically overbroad practices. It’s a gaping hole we must compensate for. As you point out with the Hassan and Tsarnaev cases, which shouted out for profiling, we have yet to figure out a sufficient patch.
It’s not an easy question, though, because it is a Constitutional question. American civil liberties protect Muslim Americans, too.
rickl,
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ40/pdf/PLAW-107publ40.pdf
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html
“Dogmatic libertarians are pushing…”
Libertarians do not warrant so much intense focus as they are a completely marginalized group on the national scheme of all things political. I see little in your comments aimed at ‘progressives’ or RINOS; the real problem. Curiously, your focus is elsewhere. Camel, nose, tent flap?
Oops, add: http://www.justice.gov/olc/warpowers925.htm
“It’s not an easy question..”
In individual cases this may well be true. That is why we have protections such as the 4th & 5th. But overall it is a rather simple question. A very large percentage of muslims are perfectly content to either support or remain passive when it come to violent jihad and the destruction of (classical) liberal civilization. Camel, nose, tent flap? The questions do not go away.
Eric, civil liberties for American citizens who are criminals are much different than providing civil liberties for agents of a foreign ideology that has declared war on us. Yes, it is hard for us to get our heads around this because it is so different. We cannot provide the presumption of innocence to American Muslims until they prove their allegiance to this country by shunning and identifying for arrest the Islamists who intend us harm. Until that occurs, the best way forward is to profile those who commit 99% of the terror acts.
There are Islamist imams preaching hate and destruction in mosques in this country. And we are tolerating it in the name of religious tolerance. They are spreading the cult of Wahabbism with money from the oil sheikdoms in the Gulf. Their aim is to disrupt and disarm our society using political correctness, religious tolerance, and occasional acts of terror. They are a Fifth Column and we won’t recognize it. Because it would be “bigoted” or anti-Arab, or isn’t in accordance with the liberal vision of multi-culturalism or ???
The thing that irritates me is that we are playing right into their hands. As Promethea says, ” Marxists and Muslims play the Long Game better than earnest and well meaning Americans.”
They don’t expect us to fall apart next year or even ten years from now. They’re content as long as they are wearing us down. Drip, drip, drip like water eroding granite. Now we don’t trust each other. IMO, it’s just what they want. It does occur to me occasionally (in my most paranoid moments) that the erosion of trust has been Obama’s aim. Or has he just been too aggressive and clumsy in applying the Chicago Way?
parker,
The position is articulated by dogmatic libertarians, then picked up and multiplied by opportunists of different stripes. Dogmatic libertarians and leftists share significant common ground regarding our foreign affairs and national security. Their motivations differ, but ideological differences don’t matter for dedicated anti-American activists who care about practical effect. For them, ideological consistency is second to using any means useful for winning the competition for the world order. The dogmatic libertarians provide them with useful source material.
Nonetheless, I believe the libertarian view is valid and must be part of the equation. It’s just not the only consideration.
JJ,
It’s the guerilla playbook.
The thing is, we killed Anwar al-Awlaki. We know what to profile in the War on Terror. But that lens is removed in Homeland Security.
I have yet to hear this mentioned before.
Which is that part of why journalists are the gatekeepers of propaganda information is how their sources cannot be checked via open source or background analysis.
However, that’s not the case with Snowden or Manning.