Incredibly busy day at work so I haven’t been able to read much of what’s going around the blogosphere. Fortunately I caught Glenn Greenwald’s post on right wing revisionism of the threats America has faced during the Cold War vis a vis the conditions which FISA was written. He refutes the popular Republican notion that FISA reflected peace-time conditions and thus isn’t capable of functioning in the condition of an unending war on terror.
This is an oft-overlooked point that is vitally important. The Soviet Union was an infinitely stronger, more formidable, more sophisticated enemy with far vaster resources than Al Qaeda could dream of possessing. And Communists, we were always told, employed their own deadly version of “sleeper cells” by systematically implanting foreign agents and even recruiting American citizens on U.S. soil to work on their behalf, including infiltrating the highest levels of the U.S. Government with their agents and sympathizers.
And yet, in the midst of all of these internal and external threats, the Congress enacted and the President signed into a law a statute permitting eavesdropping for foreign intelligence purposes only with judicial oversight. And more generally, during the four decades during which America fought the “Cold War” — a war which was always depicted by both parties as posing an existential threat to our country — no President ever seized, nor did Americans ever bequeath, the power to act contrary to Congressional laws and outside of the parameters of judicial “interference.”
The single greatest myth which this Administration has peddled – and which a vocal and frightened minority have ingested – is that we are at some sort of unique place in our history where we face a threat greater and more formidable than any we faced previously, such that the principles which have guided our republic can and should be tossed aside as obsolete relics of a more peaceful and less threatening era. That is exactly what Captain Ed just argued as to why FISA can be disregarded as a quaint relic of the past.
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But more important than all of those facts, what is far more fundamental is the defining American precept that a strong nation affirms its core principles most vigorously precisely when it faces external threats. We are a strong nation because we have adhered to the rule of law and our founding principles even as we defeated enemies far more formidable and threatening than a ragtag group of Islamic fanatics. Of all the radical changes which this Administration is attempting to bring about, the most threatening and corrupt is the notion that we need to fundamentally transform not just our system of government, but also our national character, all in the name of fighting Al Qaeda.
The two most important things that Greenwald draws out here are the fact that Al Qaeda’s brand of Islamic terrorism can in no way be considered as substantial a threat as the Soviet Union and the utter defeat George Bush continually admits by demanding America forget our past principles in the face of fear. Combine those two points and we see that Bush is asking America to abandon the virtues that made our democracy strong when threatened by a few box cutters and a pair of shoes. I’m glad Greenwald is around to call bullshit. I second his call.
