Debra Burlingame, the sister of the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 pilot Chuck Burlingame, has a strongly-worded piece in The Wall Street Journal on the issue of national security. With Harry Reid boasting of having “killed” the PATRIOT Act, and the NSA wiretapping story still being flogged, Burlingame speaks out strongly on behalf of taking strong measures to prevent future terrorist attacks:
NBC News aired an “exclusive” story in 2004 that dramatically recounted how al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, the San Diego terrorists who would later hijack American Airlines flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon, received more than a dozen calls from an al Qaeda “switchboard” inside Yemen where al-Mihdhar’s brother-in-law lived. The house received calls from Osama Bin Laden and relayed them to operatives around the world. Senior correspondent Lisa Myers told the shocking story of how, “The NSA had the actual phone number in the United States that the switchboard was calling, but didn’t deploy that equipment, fearing it would be accused of domestic spying.” Back then, the NBC script didn’t describe it as “spying on Americans.” Instead, it was called one of the “missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives.”
Of course, the NSA wiretapping program was designed to allow the NSA to collect just that kind of information. For years we’ve heard constant criticism about how the government failed us before September 11, 2001 – much of it warranted. Now that has been revealed that the Justice Department and the NSA did something to rectify those problems, many of the same people are crying foul.
We now have the ability to put remote control cameras on the surface of Mars. Why should we allow enemies to annihilate us simply because we lack the clarity or resolve to strike a reasonable balance between a healthy skepticism of government power and the need to take proactive measures to protect ourselves from such threats? The mantra of civil-liberties hard-liners is to “question authority”–even when it is coming to our rescue–then blame that same authority when, hamstrung by civil liberties laws, it fails to save us. The old laws that would prevent FBI agents from stopping the next al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were built on the bedrock of a 35-year history of dark, defeating mistrust. More Americans should not die because the peace-at-any-cost fringe and antigovernment paranoids still fighting the ghost of Nixon hate George Bush more than they fear al Qaeda. Ask the American people what they want. They will say that they want the commander in chief to use all reasonable means to catch the people who are trying to rain terror on our cities. Those who cite the soaring principle of individual liberty do not appear to appreciate that our enemies are not seeking to destroy individuals, but whole populations.
Ms. Burlingame is right – the American people will have their say on this issue, which is why the Democratic insistence on beating this particular dead horse will ultimately prove self-destructive. There’s a difference between a reasonable skepticism of government and succumbing to paranoia – and now we have the Democratic Party repeating the worst talking points of the radical militia movement they called “un-American” a decade ago. Ten years ago, someone with a bumper sticker that read “I love my country but fear my government” would have been treated as a Ted McVeigh-sympathizing radical right-wing kook – and not entirely without justification. Today, that seems to be the mantra of the left wing.
The notion that the Democrats still live in September 10 America is as good a way to put it as any. Many in the Democratic Party really do see George W. Bush as a greater threat to them than Osama bin Laden. So long as that attitude remains, the Democrats can never be a serious party on issues of national security. This NSA brouhaha is just a further example of the fundamental disconnect between the Democratic intelligentsia and the American people.
We live in a world where a group of shadowy and ruthless murderers are perfectly willing to blend in with our civilian population and launch mass-casualty attacks. They have the avowed goal of attacking us with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. They do not follow the rules of warfare, they do not provide us with clear warning, and they have struck us already. The threat is not exaggerated, it is not hypothetical, and it is far more prescient than some elaborate fantasy about American citizens being rounded up into camps. The paranoia of the left is quite obvious when one considers how many people are talking about some sinister conspiracy to silence dissent from TV news programs broadcasting nationwide while they hawk their books and movies. To people who have survived real totalitarianism, from Vietnamese boat people to Iraqi expatriates such rhetoric is not only idiotic, but insulting to their real suffering.
Burlingame is right to point out the utter hypocrisy and political grandstanding at play here. We need to realistically and firmly deal with the threat of terrorism – and that means giving law enforcement the tools necessary to find and disrupt terrorist cells in the United States. If the Democrats were truly serious about this program, they would be proposing realistic alternatives and systems that would allow the NSA to monitor al-Qaeda’s communications without sacrificing civil liberties – and the current FISA system has already been judged inadequate to that task by the 9/11 Commission However, this isn’t about terrorism, this is about politics, and once more the Democratic Party is playing games with our national security.
‘Ten years ago, someone with a bumper sticker that read “I love my country but fear my government†would have been treated as a Ted McVeigh-sympathizing radical right-wing kook – and not entirely without justification. Today, that seems to be the mantra of the left wing.’
It’s the mantra of any party that is out of power. Honestly, what all conservatives should ask themselves about expansions of executive power is this: would I like it as much if said powers were in the hands of Hillary Clinton? John Kerry? Ted Kennedy? Al Gore?
Somehow, I doubt they would…
(Similiarly, I don’t think the GOP would have been too eager to support an invasion of Iraq under Al Gore… it’s not a matter of principles, it’s a matter of parties.)
The thing is, there’s no expansion of executive power involved. The President’s wartime powers are in the Constitution. Congress authorized the President to utilize those wartime powers. It’s not a huge stretch to imagine that giving the President the ability to disrupt terrorist cells that had already infiltrated the US would involve some kind of domestic surveillance.
All this highlights is the fact that it’s important to make sure responsible, reasonable people are elected to Congress and the White House – which really shouldn’t be a great shocker of a realization to anyone.
Bottom line: George Bush would not be evading the less-than-onerous NSA court’s warrant process if the wiretaps our government is engaging in didn’t extend beyond the guidelines of legal precedent. The warrants are so freaking easy to get, bypassing the legal procedures is indefensible if you don’t have anything to hide. So what does Bush have to hide?
Again, we have an argument that is completely contradictory to the truth.
FISA warrants are not easy to get. The 9/11 Commission Report stated quite clearly that the FISA application procedure was “still long and slow” and that the number of requests were “overwhelming the ability of the system to process them.”
As AG Gonzales states in his Georgetown speech:
The idea that an ongoing investigation should wait until that level of paperwork is completed is absolutely ridiculous. The FISA system is not “easy”. One of the reasons that 9/11 happened is that the FBI didn’t have enough evidence for a FISA warrant on Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop, which had it been searched would have blown the whole plot wide open before 3,000 Americans could be killed.
But again we have the usual suspects repeating the same tired, discredited old arguments, despite the fact that they don’t match the facts in the slightest.
Jay,
You are right about the suicidal and idiotic paranoia over security of some people, most of them Democrats who see it only as a partisan issue. But in a way, Bush has called down these airstrikes on himself.
He could and should have asked Congress for a declaration of war on Sept. 12, 2001 — even if it was, in effect, against “whoever the buggers were who did this” or “any and all terrorist organizations who pose a direct threat to the United States.” But he didn’t, and ever since then the so-called War on Terror has been in a legal and ethical twilight zone. When it serves Bush’s rhetorical purposes, it’s a war; but he won’t name an enemy, won’t ask anything of the American civilian population beyond being frisked at airports, and has turned the Iraq occupation into a quasi-religious quest to remake the whole Middle East along small-d democratic lines.
No wonder those who have a bottomless hatred of him are constantly finding ways to undercut the legitimacy of anti-terrorist efforts. He’s left the door wide open for them by his own lack of definition and commitment.
Actually, he did, it’s Public Law 107-40:
Jay, an authorization to use force is not a declaration of war. That’s poli sci 101. Must have slept in that day, huh?
“FISA warrants are not easy to get”
Liar! They can be attained in a matter of hours, they can be attained retroactively in emergencies, and they have granted more than 99.9% of the times they’ve been requested since the Court’s inception.
“One of the reasons that 9/11 happened is that the FBI didn’t have enough evidence for a FISA warrant on Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop,”
Nah. The reason 9-11 happened is because everyone in the Bush administration tossed aside PDB’s headlined “Bin Laden Determined to Attack the U.S.” because they were too distracted planning their invasion of Iraq. I mean c’mon, Jay. Blaming 9-11 on the FISA court? You’re really getting far-fetched in your efforts to deflect any and all criticism away from the Bush administration.
Yes, it is. And if you’re the international relations genius, care to elucidate what the key difference is? (Hint: the fact that the AUMF invokes the War Powers Act is a big honking clue…)
Again, you’re so full of shit that dung beetles weep for joy when they see you pass. Again, if I’m a liar, so is the 9/11 Commission as they said, and I quote again:
Yes, and I suppose you wouldn’t have breathed a word if Bush had started rounding up all Arab men in August of 2001 – given that would have been the only actionable intelligence in the August 6, 2001 PDB. Given that bin Laden declared a fatwa on the United States in 1998 the phrase “bin Ladin determined to strike in the United States” is as obvious as “the sky is blue”, “Ted Kennedy has been hitting the booze again” or “Mark needs read a book he can’t color in.”
Christ, even you can do better than regurgitating such stupid old talking points.
“Again, you’re so full of shit that dung beetles weep for joy when they see you pass”
Damn I wish I thought of that, I’m shamelessly plagerizing that as my own..
Jay’s rhetoric notwithstanding, the US has not declared war on any enemy relating to 9/11, and an authorization to use military force is plainly not a declaration of war.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Clause