Asymmetrical Information

As you said about Janet Reno, some jobs and responsibilities can make people see things differently. It's one thing for you or I to say that we shouldn't over-react to terrorism since it leads "merely to situations in which a relatively large number of people might be killed". But if you're the one responsible for protecting the lives of those people, it's easy to err on the side of safety.

The Bush administration has been faced with a new threat and has had to develop new responses. They've made mistakes, but who wouldn't? They may have erred on the side of protecting lives, but is that really so sinister? The Democrats have put politics above all by sniping at Bush over absolutely everything, rather than genuinely, constructively helping this administration work out new policies that strike the best balance.

How about humiliating someone by making them wear a ridiculous costume? Stripping them naked? Urinating on them?

Torture? Some people will pay very good money for that :))

Roving wiretaps are a liberty threat. Since we have criminalized so many activities (at the discretion of any cop, prosecutor, judge, clerk...) we can now bug any person on the grounds that an acquaintance (who we can say is a friend) might use their phone.
It's deniability. You get caught bugging their phone but you don't go to jail.
And the liberals are going to be back in political power again as the conservatives get more and more arrogant from their long monopoly on power, so it's going to be payback time for a generation.
Where is a Harding when you need him? He shut down Wilson's power grab police state and returned us to 'normalcy', much to the disgust of the state power freaks. Threw all the political criminals out of jail. Put his own interior secretary in jail for looting oil reserves. Must have had an attack of honesty you don't expect in a Republican.
Then he suddenly died. Pity.

Now for a serious comment. While I agree that terrorism is far from being an existential threat to the United States, there is a tendency among many people to inflate the threat to a ridiculous extent. For example, some radical mullah preaches about the Caliphate, and a fair number of Americans - including, most worrisomely, many government official who should know better - actually believe that Islam will Conquer the World.
It could be argued that this grotesque inflation of the Islamic threat is part of a grand scheme to eviscerate our civil liberties and start America down the road to dictatorship. I don't agree, however; as far as I'm concerned, this sheer dread of Islam is basically the Triple P Syndrome in action - Panty Piddling Paranoia. Some people are cowards, that's just basic human nature.

I'm almost positive that there is an rule on the internet that explicitly forbids rational thought and calm explanation. Heh, either I'm wrong or you're gonna be in trouble Jane; you're a serial offender.

"2) Unless they get a nuclear bomb, terrorism is not an existential threat to the United States. "

Even with a nuclear weapon, they are not existential threats. 100 wouldn't do it. The Soviet Union barely qualified, and it broke that country just trying to keep up.

At the same time, I am much less concerned about the actions the government is taking. I;m quite willing to give up some 'stuff' to able to go to the King of Prussia mall every day for lunch, like I do now, and sit in a food court with 300 other people and think, man, it's nice to know I can do his safely, not like in Israel...

As for inflating the threat, there is a line between hyperbole and respecting the threat. We have crossed it on occaision (and the opposition has disrespected the threat on occaision as well).

On the whole, though, I thik Jane is quite sane.

As for jobs people wouldn't want, I sure as hell am glad I don't have to make the decisions, judges, military commanders, police, doctors, and such have to. It must be sould crushing to have to make the kinds of decisions they have to make on a daily basis.

As for dictoatorship, I hardly think it is likely. For all the fun lefties make of the rightwing obsession with guns and the 2nd Amendment, it is among the greatest insurance policies against a despotic/mitliaty coup ala Thailand...100million guns is a lot of armament...

Im think it was Kevin Durm who posited that one way to decide if certain actions are torture is if we would consider it torture if it was done to an American captured by our enemies.

Whenever I read about the so-called "abuses" at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, I am always reminded of that Star Trek (TOS) episode where the Enterprise discovers a planet where the Roman Empire never fell.

There is a scene where the Roman proconsul sends his fetching slave-girl to entertain Kirk, who at first suspects a honey-trap. Finally, as he becomes convinced of the bona fides of the slave-girl (as she is snuggling up to him), he asks, "Perhaps this is considered a form of torture on your world?" Her response, right before they start smooching and we demurely cut to commercial, is "At the first sign of pain, you will let me know."

I would like to comment on your claim that, in essence, "what Bush is doing isn't so bad". You mentioned in particular that "I don't think that Bush is trying to make himself into a dictator", and also said:

I also think that a lot of people, especially libertarians, have an exceptionally naive idea about civil liberties slippery slopes. If Bush manages to enact some bad legislation, that doesn't mean that we're one more step down the road to an inevitable dystopian hell; it means that we should repeal the law.

One over-arching reason why I think we have reason to be very worried about this administration's actions since 9/11 is this: Bush hasn't sought to enact poor laws. He has sought to evade the law entirely.

Consider the network of secret CIA prisons. The whole point of their existence, and associated secrecy, is to ensure that operations there are beyond the reach of US law.

Consider the fact that the White House has been pushing for an elimination of the Habeas writ for terror detainees. The writ of Habeus Corpus is the premier mechanism for forcing the administration to prove, to a court, that its detention of someone is legal. The entire and express purpose of denying this mechanism to terror detainees is to place them beyond the reach of the judicial review.

Consider the White House's stance on wiretapping. Shortly after 9/11, Bush himself signed into law revisions to the FISA statute, and trumpeted them in public as giving his administration the tools it needs to fight terror. A few months later, he secretly ordered the NSA to disregard the law's clear requirements. After the matter was brought to light and court challenges filed, the administration's main tactic has been to cut off judicial review by arguing that the program cannot be examined at all by the judiciary because doing so may imperil state secrets. In the alternative, the administration has claimed that the President has intrinsic, unreviewable, unconstrainable authority to simply disregard federal law in this matter.

Each of these situations, and more besides, demonstrate a defining characteristic of this administration: a concerted effort to operate outside the law. On more than one occasion, the White House has literally argued that the law doesn't actually matter, that Congress and the judiciary are literally powerless to check its actions.

The essence of a dictatorship is the absence of a system of law that prevents the unfettered wielding of executive power. Saying that Bush is "trying to make himself into a dictator" is a dramatic, but IMO not unjustified, way of pointing to a real and disturbing trend: that this President has systematically attempted to place himself beyond the reach of our system of law.

Peter, that's excellent. "Now for a serious comment: people who disagree with me are cowards who wet themselves." I'm glad you let me know you were trying to be serious, I'd have no idea otherwise.

Mark . . . with the possible exceptions of Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, every president I can think of since FDR has tried to place himself beyond the law in some way that I really, really disapprove of. This is not an attempt to excuse the Bush administration: those who fight to keep politicians from going beyond the law are doing God's work, as far as I'm concerned. It's just that I don't think the Bush administration has discovered some special kind of evil that didn't inflict other administrations, and which justifies the belief that the Thousand Year Reich is but a few missteps away.

While I agree that terrorism is far from being an existential threat to the United States, there is a tendency among many people to inflate the threat to a ridiculous extent. For example, some radical mullah preaches about the Caliphate, and a fair number of Americans - including, most worrisomely, many government official who should know better - actually believe that Islam will Conquer the World.

The question is whether the problem will consistently worsen.

If so, it doesn't really matter how nonthreatening Islam is now, if we'll eventually have to forcibly transform it anyway, and the longer we wait the greater the risk of disaster. I know that if I were a terrorist, I would be salivating over advances in bio- and nanotechnology.

But perhaps it is vanishingly improbable for someone to have a terrorist mindset and simultaneously understand the state of the art well enough to engineer their way past whatever defenses we've set up. Maybe we can afford to leave them alone and attend to our own business, and they'll never be any more threatening than our homegrown Kaczynskis and McVeighs. Actual Islamic terrorists are more interested in airplanes and trains than self-replicators. A 9/11-type event every few decades really isn't a big deal, if that's the limit of their capabilities.

I honestly don't know.

Even with a nuclear weapon, they are not existential threats. 100 wouldn't do it. The Soviet Union barely qualified, and it broke that country just trying to keep up.

That is a bad comparison.

As Sting has said in a song in the Mid 80's, "the Russians loved their children too." The same can NOT be said for Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists. They have the urge to suicide, a pact with death. So Mutually Assued Destruction does not keep us safe from a single nuclear weapon in the hands of someone who doesn't care if he lives or dies.

"I used to think that Janet Reno was some sort of uniquely frightening figure...."

Actually, she is. Just ask Grant Snowden and Bobby Fijnje.

Long before she had the power and responsibility of USAG, Reno was one of the pioneers in the ritual-child-abuse witch-hunts of the 1980s. What was her excuse then?

one thing missing from your analysis of how bush is trying to evade the law: even if you're right in asserting that he's doing something anomalous by trying to stretch his powers -- and i agree with whoever said he's just doing what all other presidents have done -- the examples you provide affect the rights of predominantly non-citizens. on emotional and legal levels, there's a world of difference between violating the rights of american citizens and "violating" the asserted "rights" of (e.g.) afghan terrorists/insurgents/freedomfighters/etc..

all the histrionics about dictatorship and abuse of civil liberties ignore the most important fact -- life simply has not changed much in any way in the US itself. b/c this is readily apparent to anyone with a clue, people who rave about dictatorship and rampant abuse or loss of our freedom seem clueless. which is too bad, b/c it undermines otherwise credible grounds on which one can criticize the administration.

Jane:

I certainly wouldn't claim that it has never occurred to any previous President to try to skirt the law, but do you really think we're just seeing business as usual as far as the executive is concerned?

This administration, as we know from its admissions and court proceedings, has, under official policy, kidnapped foreign citizens off the street, drugged and beaten them and held them in secret, without representation, trial, or even contact with the outside world. The CIA has, also under official policy, used, or claimed the right to use, waterboarding, hypothermia, sleep deprivation, threats of violence against prisoners' families, mock executions, and "stress positions", like being forced to stand shackled in place for 40 hours at a time.

The administration asserts the untrammelled authority to do all of this. As a recent bonus development, the administration has also reserved the right to summarily bar US citizens from re-entering the country based only on suspicion of association with terrorists.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that history is not my strong suit. I grew up outside the US, so I probably have a poorer-than-average knowledge of US history in particular. So, you tell me: is it really the case that there are multiple examples of this level of executive authoritarianism and disregard for the rule of law in US history? To the extent that this behavior isn't even surprising? To the extent that it's not worth worrying about where our society will end up at this rate?

Paul quotes the lyrics of "Russians" and goes on to suggest the following:

"Mutually Assured Destruction does not keep us safe from a single nuclear weapon in the hands of someone who doesn't care if he lives or dies."

If he's dying for the 72 virgins, true. If he's dying for the someday Caliphate, false.

However, I'm at a loss to figure out to whom the U.S. would respond in kind if one of our downtowns ever was vaporized by an A-bomb.

superflat:

the examples you provide affect the rights of predominantly non-citizens

Setting aside the moral issues this raises, this is simply not true.

The administration has long maintained that it has the right to designate any citizen as an "enemy combatant", and treat them exactly as it treats any other terror detainee. All the measures I've mentioned have been, or, according to the administration, could be, used against citizens.

This isn't just theoretical, either: Yaser Hamdi was a US citizen captured by the military who rotted in solitary confinement in a military facility for two years. He was never charged with a crime. In the end the US agreed to free him if he "voluntarily" renounced his US citizenship.

Personally, I think that this war may be a bigger threat to the US than was WWII. Without our participation, Germany would have conquered Europe and much of Africa, and Japan would have conquered China, Southeast Asia, and Australia, but it is open to debate as to whether either would have wanted to, or been able to, attack us. Today, despite the size and power of the US military, a small group of fanatics with the connections and money to get their hands on a nuclear weapon can destroy a major US city. A small yacht delivers the weapon to a waiting small truck, which delivers it to any city in the continental US within 48 hours.

A sequel to 9/11 would not be an "existential threat to the United States" but I would allow for torture to be used if it offered a chance to prevent said sequel.

While opposed to both torture and prisoner abuse in general, I would be more inclined to allow the use of torture, defined here as the nasty kind~ not the being wrapped in an Israeli flag kind, if it were to be restricted to select trained individuals seeking specific information, not fishing expeditions, with a set of measured rules. (Such as: no lasting physical harm)

The issue at Abu Ghraib wasn't that they were trying to get useful information out of prisoners who otherwise wouldn't have given it up; it was that they were a bunch of jack-legged 95 Charlies looking for a way to amuse themselves by playing with the prisoners. That was prisoner abuse and should never be tolerated.

In regard to inflating the threat from terrorism, we should also be aware not to diminish it. The WTC had tens of thousands of people in them (perhaps as many as 50,000) the morning of September 11, 2001. Only through the courage, determination of the responders, along with some luck, that prevented the casualty figure from being truly horrendous, on a par with a "weapon of mass destruction". Think of it, fifty thousand people, almost as many as US combat deaths in the Korean and Viet Nam wars.

911 is definitely not something we could "withstand" every couple of decades, particularly if its effects were maximized. Also, consider the intended target of Filght 93, the White House? The Capitol? Would that be no big deal to have the government decapitated every few years?

Consider the 1993 WTC bombing, a larger payload in both buildings, toppled from the base undoubtedly the casualties would have been unimaginable. 100,000?

Dismissing the terrorist threat based on their current capabilities is a dangerous luxury we cannot afford.

A question for Peter: how dry would your pants have been if you were on the 105 floor of the south tower? My fears are for our country, not for my personal safety.

Mark,

The administration also asserts the authority to fly airplaines over foreign cities and drop bombs on foreigh citizens, shoot foreign citizens with automatic weeapons, it's called war.

You also try to make it seem that the administration is randoming kidnapping foreign citizens for no apparent reason. Hamdi was not just an average Joe six-pack grabbed by the feds cause Bush didn't like him.

Hamdi was not just an average Joe six-pack grabbed by the feds cause Bush didn't like him.

I don't see your point. Why does it matter what Hamdi was accused of? Your civil rights exist to protect you against executive injustices. They don't amount to much if the executive can just ignore them when it wants to.

911 is definitely not something we could "withstand" every couple of decades, particularly if its effects were maximized. Also, consider the intended target of Filght 93, the White House? The Capitol? Would that be no big deal to have the government decapitated every few years?

"particularly if its effects were maximized" kind of misses the point. The actual level of "success" of 9/11 was unusually high. The past five years suggest that terrorists will have a hard time duplicating that level of success in the near future, let alone achieving the worst-case scenario you describe.

The questions are (i) whether technological advances (and/or easy access to post-Soviet nuclear weapons) will make even a marginally successful attack in the future more dangerous than a highly successful attack is now, and (ii) whether Islamic terrorists are actually any more dangerous than homegrown ones.

Mark,

A lot (not all) of what you are against, e.g., kidnapping on foreign soil, was done by the Clinton administration in its War on Drugs. In similar vein, the Patriot Act merely included anti-terrorism with War on Drug provisions which were already law.

As for Hamdi, the give and take between the branches of governemnt are necessary to the administration of democracy in this country. The Executive Branch pushes, and sometimes succeeds, but other times, it is pushed back by the Judicial Branch or Legislative Branch. Other branches have similar give and takes with each other. I admit I was disappointed in the position that the administration initially took in Hamdi, but I was confident that the Judicial Branch would eventually prevail--due process, in this country, means (1) notice of charges against you and (2) opportunity to be heard. The administration contended that the hearings held in Gitmo were sufficient; the Supreme Court disagreed.

But I don't see the widespread assault on individual rights from the Bush Administration that others see. What scares me are the individual rights that previous administrations and Congress, who actually passes the laws abridging those rights, have forfeited as part of the doomed War on Drugs effort. Where was the outcry then?

Ann wrote:

The Bush administration has been faced with a new threat and has had to develop new responses. They've made mistakes, but who wouldn't? They may have erred on the side of protecting lives, but is that really so sinister? The Democrats have put politics above all by sniping at Bush over absolutely everything, rather than genuinely, constructively helping this administration work out new policies that strike the best balance.

On the contrary, it has been the Bush administration that has repeatedly politicised and exploited 9/11 and the war on terror. Here is what Dick Cheney said before 2004 election: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again". Does that sound constructive to you? Democrats have been repeatedly labeled as appeasers, weak on terrorism, or even in league with terrorists. It is the Bush administration that has gone out of its way to shut Democrats out of any policy decisions. In fact, Bush has made every effort to opperate outside Congresional and judicial oversight, as Mark said. It isnt that Bush has sought to protect lives and "made some mistakes". Wiretaps are the perfect example. Instead of seeking court approvals or changing a law to meet new circumstances he deliberately disregarded it. That isnt a "mistake". It isnt like it just slipped his mind or something to check with a Republican controlled Congress before doing something that might be illegal. And you don’t open up 14 clandestine prisons outside of the reach of US laws and say "oops". You say that Democrats have been sniping at Bush at absolutely everything (actually they have been very supportive of Bush after 9/11 and have become critical in the last 2 years or so). But if Bush has made "mistakes", isnt it their job to call him on it? I thought that was exactly what the party in opposition was supposed to do. Or should they "constructively" shut up and let Bush do whatever it wants?

"However, I'm at a loss to figure out to whom the U.S. would respond in kind if one of our downtowns ever was vaporized by an A-bomb."

It's a fair bet that our response wouldn't be terribly proportional or reasoned. Islamic terrorism doesn't pose and existential threat to the US - it does pose an existential threat to the Islamic world. Our response to 9/11 will look like a stray cruise missle lobbed at a baby food factory compared to our response to the nuking of one of our cities. Will the real Andrew Jackson please stand up?

Most people over estimate the distruction an atomic bomb would do. If a bomb (10 KT) like we used in Japan, detonated at the White House, the Capital would only receive slight damage. Not only would America survive but so would congress. It would take a hydrogem bomb to vaporize a downtown area.
The purpose of terriorism is to cause terror. The frist step in defeating terrorism is not to be terrorized.

Joan,

Re; The first step is not to be terrorized.

I'm sure you're serious. But when a sniper is taking potshots at people, the police don't say, "no cause for alarm, just go about your business", but rather, "stay indoors while we go get this SOB". You believe these terrorists are akin to someone shouting scary insults. I happen to believe they really want to kill people - lots of people. You are probably right to assume that the odds of you yourself being killed are very slim. But then, you're not the one who will be responsible if these folks really do get a nuclear weapon into an American city.

If interrogation by a woman counts, then most every male in the West has been tortured already. Some of us severely. >ba-dump

On the contrary, it has been the Bush administration that has repeatedly politicised and exploited 9/11 and the war on terror. Here is what Dick Cheney said before 2004 election: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again". Does that sound constructive to you?

It might help if you had actually provided the full quote (click on my name for the link):

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again," the vice president said, "that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we are not really at war."

To answer the question, yes it is constructive indeed to point out that there is a sharp contrast in policies between a candidate who believes that we are at war and one who thinks that what we are dealing with is merely a criminal justice matter. That the candidate Vice President Cheney was referring to would later go on to sponsor legislation to pull American troops out of Iraq by an arbitrary deadline without regard to the completion of their mission or the situation on the ground only illustrates that Cheney’s point was correct.

"But if you're the one responsible for protecting the lives of those people, it's easy to err on the side of safety." Since in the last hundred years, governments killed some hundreds of millions of people, terrorists killed less than 10,000, and other criminals killed possibly as many as a few million, that sounds like a good reason to put some severe restraints on governments.

Randy: But when a sniper is taking potshots at people, the police don't say, "no cause for alarm, just go about your business", but rather, "stay indoors while we go get this SOB".

Considering how many were killed by the DC-area snipers compared to the annual murder rate that is taken for granted in that area, that's getting close to being another example of getting hysterical over a new threat while ignoring worse things that have been going on for a long time.

I offered to bet him $5,000 that the elections go off as scheduled.

... with auditable voting machines? I'll be happier when Diebold machines have a paper trail. There's no way to do a recount. And I'm really confused why they weren't made to have one from the beginning. Can anyone give a benign explanation for the lack of such a simple, obvious feature?

Iraq had elections. The Soviet Union had elections. Just because one party doesn't get 98% of the vote doesn't mean the elections are fair.
Most elections involve fraud at some level.

Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, the Palmer raids, the detention of the west coast Japanese in camps during World War II, the committment of anyone FDR or one of his minion's thought was especially dangerous to the war effort to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital during same, the McCarthy hearings-

Except for McCarthyism, all these other conflicts had forseeable ends. A "war on terrorism" does not. Would you bet one of your libertarian friends $5000 that the patriot act will be repealed within 5 years? How about 10?

Personally, I think the danger of things like the patriot act include, in part, monitoring those citizens with political aspirations. When you have (say it with me) "asymmetrical information" in politics then you allow the consolidation of power in the hands of the powerful.

Would that be no big deal to have the government decapitated every few years?

Well, Jane did want term limits...

However, I'm at a loss to figure out to whom the U.S. would respond in kind if one of our downtowns ever was vaporized by an A-bomb.

The next day's weather forecast for Mecca: clear skies, low humidity, temperature 5,000 degrees :)

The WTC had tens of thousands of people in them (perhaps as many as 50,000) the morning of September 11, 2001. Only through the courage, determination of the responders, along with some luck, that prevented the casualty figure from being truly horrendous, on a par with a "weapon of mass destruction".

Courage and determination of the responders was nearly irrelevant. There were very few actual rescues at the WTC. Almost all of the survivors got out on their own initiative.

In conclusion, if you think that the things the Bush administration is doing could, in the future, help less benign governments to seize horrifying power--well, I'll agree with you, but only if you also acknowlege that the same could be said for every president since Hoover, and that in fact FDR takes the gold prize for Doing Things That Could Be Used to Install a Dictator. Indeed, FDR is probably the closest thing this country ever came to having a dictator, and we can thank a lot of fast tap-dancing by the Supreme Court and the Senate for not getting us closer still. If FDR doesn't terrify you, then you will have a very stiff uphill battle explaining to me why Bush does.

I am against much of the Bush administration's recent War on Terror effort, and because I fear dictatorship. But this doesn't mean I think that Bush is intent on becoming an Evil Dictator, or even that he is evil. It means that I think even people with the best of motives can do very bad things inadvertently.

I'm afraid that your commentary above was entirely too sensible, level-headed, and well-informed. You leave me know choice but to report your behavior to the Political Blogging Society. I understand that an offense of this severity normally carries with it a three-month injunction against further educated remarks.

you're still ignoring the main point -- everything you identify has little effect of the lives of the average citizen, or even the far from average citizen. and the theoretical harm for an assertion that bush says he could do all this to citizens doesn't smart near as much as the actual harm from (e.g.) an actual dictator whose goons routinely imprison, beat, etc., any number of citizens. the sky may eventually fall from all this, but it doesn't appear to be falling yet (whether you're chicken little or cassandra is not what i'm debating).

The next day's weather forecast for Mecca: clear skies, low humidity, temperature 5,000 degrees :)

Ah yes, the mass murder of Muslims. Always good for belly laughs.

Honestly, what would posess you to post something like this?

"That the candidate Vice President Cheney was referring to would later go on to sponsor legislation to pull American troops out of Iraq by an arbitrary deadline without regard to the completion of their mission or the situation on the ground only illustrates that Cheney’s point was correct."

What mission is that?

"It isnt like it just slipped his mind or something to check with a Republican controlled Congress before doing something"

No, it clearly didn't just slip his mind, since he consulted with both the legislative and judicial branches before going ahead. He didn't announce it on the front page of the NY Times because he doesn't believe that we should notify the terrorists of everything we do, but he cleared it with top Democrat and Republican members of the House and Senate, as well as the presiding FISA judges. And the Democrats, who expressed no problems with the program when briefed, later did an abrupt turn-around when they saw the chance to score partisan points.

"But if Bush has made "mistakes", isnt it their job to call him on it?"

Yes, but they should also offer alternative solutions. That's what I feel has been lacking. If not Guantanamo, then what? They don't answer that type of question, they just attack everything.

you're still ignoring the main point -- everything you identify has little effect of the lives of the average citizen

So, we're supposed to wait until arbitrary imprisonments and abuse are the norm for most people, instead of just some people, before getting all worked up?

Ah yes, the mass murder of Muslims. Always good for belly laughs.

Honestly, what would posess you to post something like this?

Um, what do you think our actual response to losing all of New York City, or Washington DC, would be? You can keep telling yourself that it's "unspeakable", but that doesn't mean we won't actually do it if we really are hurt that badly.

What I don't know is whether there is any real risk of losing NYC or DC. Certainly there are no immediate threats.

Oops, the second line was also supposed to be italicized in my last post. Serves me right for not using the preview feature. :(

"theoretical harm for an assertion that bush says he could do all this to citizens"

I'm not sure what exactly this is referring to. If snooping into library records, all you have to do is be suspected of drug dealing, and now with the Patriot Act, be suspected of being involved with terrorism. If wiretapping, one has to be actually communicating OVERSEAS with known terrorists. Talking to terrorists within the US is still subject to a court order.

You can keep telling yourself that it's "unspeakable", but that doesn't mean we won't actually do it if we really are hurt that badly.

All off-point. My comment was that I saw nothing funny in the mass murder of Muslims. Do you?

Peter, if you think most people got out entirely on their own, you should google on Rick Rescorla, who was in charge of security for Morgan-Stanley/Dean Whitter. Or simply go to www.rickrescorla.com.

All off-point. My comment was that I saw nothing funny in the mass murder of Muslims. Do you?

Okay, point granted. That is why I would never make a post like the one you originally responded to.

That said, bad taste is a lesser sin than bad logic. I fear that imposing too many speech constraints on this subject will have the long-term effect of just letting the Arabs' fate be decided by more ruthless folk (e.g. Chinese Communist leaders) than us.

Is terrorism an existential threat to the US?

The consensus here seems to be no, but I think you are all discounting the tremendous economic disruption that successful terrorist attacks have had in the past. NYC's economy suffered post-9/11, right? Didn't the airline industry go into the toilet and get a federal bailout? Didn't the entire economy tank, with a majority of the responsibility for said tankage being assigned to 9/11?

Sure, life went on for the vast majority of Americans, but for a while there, it seemed as if nothing was normal. Imagine if, after 9/11, there had been a successful attack on a port or a water facility or a power plant. How many more areas of our lives would be affected?

How much worse would the crackdowns be, how many more restrictive laws would be passed, in the name of preserving the US? I think under these scenarios, the US as we know it now would cease to exist, as we hunkered down behind higher and higher walls and restrictions. Maybe not too many people would die, but the US as we know it would be gone -- and that's why terrorism is an existential threat to this country.

Also: it doesn't matter what we think of terrorism, because the Islamists who seek our destruction don't care one whit what we think. They'll keep coming for us until we destroy them all. Better to fight them in the M.E. than here.

Great essay.

Mark said that the administration has:
"kidnapped foreign citizens off the street, drugged and beaten them and held them in secret, without representation, trial, or even contact with the outside world"

This is what has routinely happened to spies throughout recorded human conflict. People who attack us without being in uniform are *not* protected under the Geneva convention. You do not have to give such a person a trial. We would not expect our own spies to be treated any better, not would they expect it if they were ever caught.

Mark - Could you at least acknowledge that there's some case for not treating this like a police action? Otherwise, we'll all just be talking past each other. If you can't even stipulate this, then the discussion seems to be pointless, since we probably all agree that policy prisoners should not be tortured.

Oops - I meant police prisoners

The administration has long maintained that it has the right to designate any citizen as an "enemy combatant", and treat them exactly as it treats any other terror detainee. All the measures I've mentioned have been, or, according to the administration, could be, used against citizens.

The administration arguably does have that power, thanks to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996. Behold the cunning evil of BusHitler, signing such a nasty piece of legislation into law four years before being elected...

In point of fact, most of the "Patriot Act" provisions that people object to really are ATA-96, Digital Telephony Act or other laws/decisions/Executive Orders from the 1990's. I recall telling liberals at the time they'd better join the EFF and other groups in resisting this stuff, or in a few years they'd be fretting while some Republican actually used it. With the augmentation/expansion of those powers that the Patriot Act really does contain, some future version of Janet Reno won't have any real problem tracking down all of some targeted group nationwide, in order to detain them for something or other, and the Left/liberal press won't raise any more of a protest than they did over Waco.

Thus, while I agree with Jane Galt that we are in no way a mere few steps from some Reich, it isn't hyperventilation to point out that all the pieces for a police state are pretty much in place, thanks to a series of decisions dating back to around 1986 or so. And both parties have been part of the problem, for all you partisans keeping score at home...

Finally, for those who see no existential threat to the United States in the jihad, reflect upon the condition of Amsterdam or Malmo or some other European cities where native Europeans are (or soon will be) a minority, while followers of Islam are or soon will be a majority. Then note that immigration from Moslem countries this year is higher than it was 5 years ago, and rising. There's 15,000 Saudi Arabians imported as students this year alone. The Saudi's fund a majority of mosques and private Moslem schools in the United States, and seem to have a hand in training the majority of Moslem prison chaplains....y'know, Sharia isn't going to be any more palatable if it is voted into effect vs. imposed by some Caliph. The Jihad is a multifaceted thing, and explicitly includes demographics...

Perhaps we might all tone down our comments a little? All this talk about them attacking things and being violent, riotous and generally short-tempered - if they read what we're saying they might start attacking things, being violent......

Imagine if, after 9/11, there had been a successful attack on a port or a water facility or a power plant. How many more areas of our lives would be affected?...How much worse would the crackdowns be, how many more restrictive laws would be passed, in the name of preserving the US? I think under these scenarios, the US as we know it now would cease to exist, as we hunkered down behind higher and higher walls and restrictions.

I doubt one additional post-911 attack on US soil would have had all that much more effect on America and her way of life than 911 alone had (which is to say, considerable). And anyway, existential means just that: of or having to do with existence. More rigorous security procedures at airports and train stations; tougher immigration laws and visa requirements; higher defense bills: these are modifications to our way of life -- but our way of life exists nonetheless (in many ways little changed from before 911).

That said, I think jihadist terrorism, while not really an existential threat, is still a sufficiently grave security risk to warrant tough measures and lots of spending, and there are some areas where the Bushies frankly have not been tough or thorough enough. But as long as we keep nukes out of the hands the jihadis, I reckon the danger we face is far less severe than during the Cold War, and truly does not justify a major reduction in civil liberties (though it may well warrant war with Iran).

Anyone who thinks this administration is going unusually far in power-stretching beyond the law is invited to look at the actions of the FBI against "subversives" under J. Edgar Hoover under the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Administrations. Bush isn't going a tenth as far outside the law.

And whatever his claims of power are, whatever his overreaches, he's always backed down when the courts have ruled otherwise. Look at Abraham Lincoln on habeas corpus if you want to see a genuinely dangerous precedent.

Many of us are still talking as if the jihadists were from a rational State that could be dealt with in a reasonable way.

If I were a suicidal jihadist, here's what I'd do:

I'd quietly get some nuclear bombs from a country that does not like the US (Iran, perhaps a rogue group of Pakistanis). They'd be happy to give them to me, since I'd give them deniability.
Then I'd smuggle nuclear bombs into several US cities and one into Tel Aviv and detonate them.
I'd then tell the US that there are several more hidden in other US cities, and I'd tell the Europeans that there were a couple hidden in their cities, but I wouldn't say which ones.

Presumably the US would hit back hard, but there would a be a lot of hand-wringing. After all, we get a lot of hand-wringing now and they haven't yet hit us hard enough to scare us. I suspect that a lot of the things we care about now would recede in importance when measured against our survival. Who cares about abortion, FEMA, Patriot Act, Social Security when you've just lost a few cities?

So, if they were planning something like this and we got wind of it, how squeamish would we be? Would we read their Miranda rights, or would we treat the information so important that we would interrogate them using all the tools at our disposal?

Perhaps a little far-fetched, but so was 9-11 before it happened. At the very least, we have to assume that these people are audacious and creative.

“While I agree that terrorism is far from being an existential threat to the United States, there is a tendency among many people to inflate the threat to a ridiculous extent. For example, some radical mullah preaches about the Caliphate, and a fair number of Americans - including, most worrisomely, many government official who should know better - actually believe that Islam will Conquer the World.”

Straw man, anyone?

Peter, I don’t think you’ll find many people who worry that “Islam will Conquer the World.” Rather, they worry about how much death and destruction can be inflicted as Islamic extremists try to bring the conquering about.

Of course, I may just be inflating something to a ridiculous extent…

“Most people over estimate the distruction (sic) an atomic bomb would do. If a bomb (10 KT) like we used in Japan, detonated at the White House, the Capital would only receive slight damage. Not only would America survive but so would congress. It would take a hydrogem (sic) bomb to vaporize a downtown area.

“The purpose of terriorism (sic) is to cause terror. The frist (sic) step in defeating terrorism is not to be terrorized.”

I dunno, joan… I can’t help but find the thought of two hundred thousand dead Americans—which is a rough estimate of the number killed in your Hiroshima example—to be a bit terror-inducing.

Starting nuclear Aramgeddon may not be the appropriate response if Islamic terrorists use WMD's within the United States (a danger I believe is extremely remote), but should such an act of terrorism occur it would not surprise me in the least if the American response was hugely disproportionate. That's the climate we live in. America could well go ballistic ... literally.

Ellipsis - Muslims might be a majority is a few European cities (note how many American cities have been majority black or Hispanic for decades), but the Muslim population of the EU is only three to four percent. Scarcely a recipe for demographic takeover. Also note that many European Muslims are thoroughly secularized [example: illegitimacy is a huge taboo in Islam and just wouldn't happen among the devout; more than one-third of births to French "Muslim" women are out of wedlock]

Ricky Rescorla and the other Morgan Stanley security people urged the staff to leave the South Tower even as building security were urging occupants to remain inside. They probably saved some lives in the process (though MS's offices were below the impact point). When I said there were few rescues at the WTC I was referring to injured people being carried out, other people being directed to exits, etc. Not too much of that happened.

So, we're supposed to wait until arbitrary imprisonments and abuse are the norm for most people, instead of just some people, before getting all worked up?

Not necessarily. But you might want to wait until those things are the norm for "some people", rather than the norm for "virtually nobody in America" (the situation today) before lapsing into a completely panic over the state of American civil liberties.

For example, two Americans have been "arbitrarily imprisoned" without access to habeas corpus since 9/11. In the same five-year period, approximately two hundred times as many people were struck dead by lightning. When my chances of being thrown into prison without trial aren't even 1% of the risk I run by walking to my car in the rain it is hard for me to care.

Does it bother me that the NSA listens in, without a warrant, on my phone calls to foreign countries? It might, if I ever made any... but given that we're currently in a state of declared war, I'd have to say no, it wouldn't. That sort of thing doesn't even make the top one hundred list of "violations of my rights by the federal government that really bug me". The *gas tax* has a bigger effect on my freedom, for pete's sake.

The effects of a nuclear bomb vary with the terrain and altitude that the bomb is located when it goes off. Note that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were flattened by rather small bombs, detonated some thousands of feet above the city. However, the number of police officers, emergency workers, etc. who perished in the initial blast in Nagasaki was lower than in Hiroshima partly due to the hilly terrain that screened some areas from the thermal effects and mitigated blast, and due to "duck and cover" training the Japanese Empire gave out after Hiroshima. A police officer who dropped flat on the ground "at the flash" was much less likely to suffer injury from flying objects hurled by the blast wave that followed in a few seconds, just for a start. Of course, a big bright flash anywhere in America would catch all of us standing around, saying "What the heck was that?"...

A ground burst would generate much more fallout, but cause less damage depending on the topography of the area. The panic and terror would doubtless kill more, as would fires & other after effects. People downwind of a ground burst would have to evacuate, or hunker into a shelter for at least 2 weeks to allow the "hotter" radioactives to decay.

Everyone should read "Surviving Doomsday" IMO before discussing about nuclear topics. The book has recently been updated, with contributions by the ever amusing Boston T. Party...

Starting nuclear Aramgeddon may not be the appropriate response if Islamic terrorists use WMD's within the United States (a danger I believe is extremely remote), but should such an act of terrorism occur it would not surprise me in the least if the American response was hugely disproportionate. That's the climate we live in. America could well go ballistic ... literally.

The threat of a hugely disproportionate response by us is the only reason we haven't been nuked yet. If we get nuked and *don't* nuke back, we're finished as a country.

Dan,
I don't think that retaliation works here. I don't think the threat of retaliation works either.
Once someone has demonstrated that they intend to get nasty with you, you have to "get your retaliation in first".

Dan wrote:
Ellipsis - Muslims might be a majority is a few European cities (note how many American cities have been majority black or Hispanic for decades), but the Muslim population of the EU is only three to four percent. Scarcely a recipe for demographic takeover.

I have no idea why you wish to equate Moslems, who can be any color, with black or Hispanics, who can be any or no religion. It's apples and avocadoes...and black people have no history of forcing others to become black, nor do Hispanics have a history of forcing others to become Hispanic. But there is a history, some 1,300 or more years of it, of Moslems giving others the choice of converting to Islam, becoming dhimmis, or dying. Thus I don't see your point, not at all.

You might want to review the history of Islam, and the transitions from phase to phase, before being so sanguine. History shows that even as a small minority, aggressive Islam has affected a majority of people in a variety of ways. Moslems were once a minority in Egypt, in Persia, all across Africa...and now, one is hard pressed to find Jews or Christians in those places except in tiny ghettoes. Imposition of Sharia standards, reducing non-Moslems to a kind of second class citizenship, has effects in a lot of ways.

The problem is, one has to dig a bit to find out the effects in Europe of increasing Moslem populations. Parts of Malmo are now uninhabitable by native born Swedes, for example; robbery and other harassment just makes it not worth living there. Women in Norway are coloring their hair black to reduce the chances of being raped, especially in parts of Oslo, for another example. Islamization of custom and law continues in subtle forms, such as the Halal meat exclusively served to all inmates (Moslem or not) in some British jails, or the alignment of toilets in some English housing tracts, the clear double standard on public speech in all of Western Europe, and of course the birth rate. Whether Moslems are truly only 4% of the EU population or not I do not know, but they continue to have more than 2.1 children/woman/lifetime, and Europeans continue to have far less. Plus Europeans are emigrating out of their own cities, either to the countryside, or to other countries, for various reasons. This is true in Holland, Sweden and Great Britain for sure, maybe in other parts of EUrabia as well, I do not know. Between these two facts, by 2050, France, Holland and parts of Scandavia may well be majority Moslem, with all sorts of social, and political, implications.

Also note that many European Muslims are thoroughly secularized [example: illegitimacy is a huge taboo in Islam and just wouldn't happen among the devout; more than one-third of births to French "Muslim" women are out of wedlock]

The guy who murdered Theo van Gogh was a thoroughly secularized example, he spoke Dutch and drank beer with his buddies. Then his mother died, he "got religion", became a serious follower of Islam by any measure, and a year or so later shot, then nearly decapitated, then stabbed a film-maker because his movie "slandered Islam". There does not seem to be any reliable way to predict who will and who won't decide to do the same. Oh, and van Gogh's killer will get to vote from prison, should he choose to do so, under Dutch law. I dunno if he could run for office or not...

Bastardy in France merely provides the Salafi trained imams with more footsoldiers, eager to wash the stain of their birth away somehow. "Secular" or "moderate" Moslems seem to be really common, until it's time for one of them to step up and say that conversion by the sword isn't True Islam, then they tend to get scarce. If they aren't willing to even disagree in public with the hard corps types, what makes you believe they'll somehow stand up to real danger later on?

Ellipsis -
I think you've been reading too much LGF and Michelle Malkin. Why don't you do something more productive, you know, like get out into the world and stop reading neocon blogs?

It isn't at all clear how retaliation for a nuclear blast in a US city would work. Recall that nobody "took credit" for the WTC attack on 9/11, so it's likely that after a hypothetical nuclear detonation on Wall Street there'd be no "We Did It" announcement. So whom does the US retaliate against? Well, maybe analysis of the rubble & fallout reveals a pattern of fissionables that points to a particular country -- what if it was Soviet-enriched warhead that went off? Do we declare war on the CIS, or just on Russia, or do we try to figure out who toted a nuclear demolition mine built in the 1980's into New York? Do we bomb Riyadh, or Islamabad, or Qom? Or do we just bluster and threaten to do something "real soon now"? What if the fissionables seem to have come from North Korea? Then what?

It's all very well to huff and puff at a keyboard in a tough way, but if a real nuclear event occurs, a lot of people will have to make hard decisions that cannot be undone, in the face of "go-slow" and "let's not cause further trouble" counsels from the State Dept., various NGO's, the mainstream media, etc. The people making such decisions will know that any mistake on their part will never be forgotten. Taking care of the dead, dying and injured, while huffing and puffing on TV but not really doing anything is one course of action; remember the Cole, the bombing of the two embassies in Africa, the first attack on the WTC? Remember what we did in response?

Who's to say with certainty that won't happen again, even in response to attack by a smuggled in nuclear device?

Peter wrote:

Ellipsis - I think you've been reading too much LGF and Michelle Malkin.

Sorry, that's incorrect thinking. I never have read much of Malkin, nor of Little Green Footballs, and do not make the time to read either now. I don't even read this weblog on a regular basis anymore.

Why don't you do something more productive, you know, like get out into the world and stop reading neocon blogs?

Thanks for the free and patronizing advice. I'm trying to get some work done in a corner of the real world, and thus don't read weblogs much anymore. But I am reading in the Koran, and working my way through the Hadith in fits and starts, and have a passing knowledge of the biography of Mohammed. That's where some of my knowledge of Islam comes from: primary and secondary sources. Can you say the same?

My knowledge, such as it is, of conditions in Europe comes from little known writers such as Fjordman, and from people I personally know.

So I'm reading primary and secondary sources about Islam, and getting first hand information from Europeans. What's your source of information?

ellipsis,

I don't think you should waste your time trying to defend yourself against ad hominem attacks that don't even try to address any of your points.

Two days ago Peter was spouting off incorrectly about the funding of executive pension plans (btw I happen to be an actuary that worked for years on executive pension plans).

I don't think you need to stack your expertise up against his. If that's all he can come up with, then simply ignore him (as I will, now that I know who he is)

Two days ago Peter was spouting off incorrectly about the funding of executive pension plans (btw I happen to be an actuary that worked for years on executive pension plans).

That wasn't me. "Peter" is not a terribly uncommon name.

Dan wrote: Ellipsis - Muslims might be a majority is a few European...

Um, I didn't write that. Peter did.

It isn't at all clear how retaliation for a nuclear blast in a US city would work. Recall that nobody "took credit" for the WTC attack on 9/11, so it's likely that after a hypothetical nuclear detonation on Wall Street there'd be no "We Did It" announcement

It is likely that we'd be able to figure out in short order who was responsible, though. In the event we can't, just treat all of the nations with illicit nukes and/or a history of funding anti-American terrorists as equally responsible. NYC gets nuked and we can't figure out who did it? Fine -- wipe out North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan, just to be safe.

Of course, that's the sort of policy we should let those nations know about ahead of time. Who knows, maybe we already have. That would give those nations ample opportunity to disarm and sever their terrorist ties.

The people making such decisions will know that any mistake on their part will never be forgotten.

The mistake that will never be forgotten will have already been made -- namely, letting any person or nation which advocates the destruction of America continue to exist. It won't matter if Iran was behind the attack. It will be enough that Iran favored that sort of thing. You know those people you see dancing in the streets when the US suffers a setback? If New York gets nuked, all those people are going to die.

Those countries, and those people, are only alive today because we don't take their threats and boasts seriously.

How would we respond to a nuclear attack? I suspect we would take the "Godfather" approach and settle all accounts.

Whether Moslems are truly only 4% of the EU population or not I do not know, but they continue to have more than 2.1 children/woman/lifetime, and Europeans continue to have far less. Plus Europeans are emigrating out of their own cities, either to the countryside, or to other countries, for various reasons. This is true in Holland, Sweden and Great Britain for sure, maybe in other parts of EUrabia as well, I do not know. Between these two facts, by 2050, France, Holland and parts of Scandavia may well be majority Moslem, with all sorts of social, and political, implications.

Here is a detailed demographic analysis of France, the EU member with the largest Muslim population in both absolute numbers and percentage terms. Quick summary - if current trends continue, a very big "if" for that matter, France is likely to be only about 20% Muslim by 2050. "Muslim" in this context means nominally Muslim. The linked article also mentions the extent of secularization among French Muslims.

And of course, muslims in 50 years may be nothing like the muslims of today. It is far more common in history for the culture to change the religion than for the religion to change the culture.

I believe we will see increasing government intrusion into our privacy as the years pass, for the simple reason that we have let our enemies in among us.

If we had kept our pre-1965 immigration laws, we would have no muslims in the country to speak of. We would have no resentful populations of non-whites for them to recruit from.

But it was decided that we were to let in people without regard to whether they were compatible with our civilization. Now we have millions of muslims and are letting in more each year. From among them will spring tomorrow's terrorists as they seek to take control of our civilization as their religion commands them.

We could have easily had the same level of security in our western countries that we always had, without any need of resorting to privacy invasion. Keep the barbarians outside the walls of the city, and you can have civilization inside. Allow the barbarians inside the gates, and you have to watch everyone because you no longer know who is a danger and who isn't.

Until we succeed in getting muslims and other peoples whose societies are hostile to our own to leave, we will suffer attacks and more attacks, each accompanied with further losses of privacy, until we are a police state, are subjugated by our enemies, or we rise up and throw them out.

JG,

You state: "5) While I stand foursquare against many of the administration's actions..."

Pray tell, would you care to enumerate and expound?

In response to this

"Liberties have been granted, and taken away, and granted again throughout the history of our country. Just off the top of my head: Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus......and so on...."

Because it has been done before, does not justify it now. A better historical analysis would have included analysis of the rightness and wrongness of each action, rather than excusing present encroachments by raising those of the past.

Uninspiring, unimpressive; business as usual for Jane Galt.

First off, there's now another "Mark" in the discussion. Please take care to distinguish us, as I want absolutely nothing to do with the opinions he just expressed.

More than one person has shrugged at violations of civil rights on the grounds that, to date, and that we know of, not many citizens have been affected. Frankly, I don't understand this point of view. Nor do I understand the "it's war, so treating people involved in the war differently is OK" point of view, either. Here’s why.

Our civil rights protect us against executive intrusions and injustices. If you believe the executive is generally well-intentioned, this means a large part of what our rights protect us against are executive mistakes: accusing the wrong person of a crime, accusing the wrong person of being a terrorist, wiretapping people who have done nothing wrong, etc. Our due process rights, in particular, exist to ensure that the executive has to convince an independent branch of government, and/or other citizens, before it can lock us up or wiretap us.

If you want to argue that civil rights aren't important because the executive never makes mistakes, fine. I think your position is demonstrably false, but hey, at least it's internally consistent.

But to those who like their own civil rights just fine, but say that civil rights violations are acceptable for people suspected of being involved in the "war", I would ask: Why do you not trust the executive to unilaterally identify and lock up, say, child molesters, without an impartial trial, but you do trust them never to make mistakes in identifying supposed terrorists? Particularly since the consequences of being suspected of terrorism can involve being dragged away, held incommunicado, and tortured?

Similarly, to those who shrug because these violations haven't affected a large number of people yet, I would ask why you value your civil rights in the first place. If you're confident the executive will always finger the right people, so your comfortable life will never be disturbed, then you don't need your civil rights at all. But if you harbor a healthy concern that the government might get things wrong and show up at your door one day, I don't understand why you think it's of no consequence that other citizens' rights are being ignored, so that your rights will offer you no protection if you ever need them.

The mindset that runs through all this is that somehow it's obvious who the Bad People are, and that they can just be thrown to the wolves. The rest of us can bask in the knowledge that nobody would ever mistake us for a Bad Person, so no harm can befall us. To say that this mindset is recklessly trusting of authority is to understate the matter.

I would like people who think along these lines to at least be honest about it and explain to the rest of us that there's simply no need for a functioning criminal judiciary, impartial trials, the Writ of Habeus Corpus, or any of the other expensive machinery of justice. Since the Righteous cannot possibly be confused with the Sinister, Those Who Have Done Nothing Wrong Have Nothing to Fear.

Right?

Mark,

You make some good points and I do think you are seeing "a" big picture. But you're missing "the" big picture. Remember that the folks who wrote the Constitution did imagine that the greatest threat they faced would be the return of a tyrant. The Constitution was written with that threat in mind. But there are bigger threats.

To make the case against the limitations on civil liberties imposed by Lincoln, FDR, or Bush, you must first make the case that the internal threat is greater than the external threat faced by each. If you believe that the threat of a terrorist group obtaining and using a nuclear weapon against an American city is less than the threat of the loss of a degree of privacy, then fine, make your case. But to casually dismiss the external threat in order to press your case against the internal threat is tunnel vision - you're not seeing the big picture.

Bobby Digital may be unimpressed and uninspired by JG, but I'm certainly unimpressed by his reading comprehension.
The reason for bringing up Lincoln, FDR etc was not to excuse what they did, but simply to say that BusHitler is not right off the chart, the way some of his most hysterical haters claim.

"Unless they get a nuclear bomb, terrorism is not an existential threat to the United States. We should not be willing to employ the full panoply of civil liberties violations that we brought to bear on World War II to the current battle against terrorists."

So, how would we know when they get said Nuclear bomb? They aren't going to willingly tell us, and Wiretapping or spying on them seems to be out (due to civil liberty violations).

So we won't know until after a Nuclear bomb goes off in the US; but then we can use more stringent measures to stop a second Nuke from going off? Is it really the case that you believe that just one Nuke would be ok, because we'd then step things up to stop others?

This is the sort of statement that seems dubious at best. "We can't spy on them; use severe interrogation, etc. until just before they use a Nucelar bomb." Is that really what you meant?

They aren't going to willingly tell us, and Wiretapping or spying on them seems to be out (due to civil liberty violations).

This is a common but gross misrepresentation of the position of those opposed to the President's wiretapping program: most, if not all, opponents do not propose that we stop wiretapping terror suspects. They merely propose that the administration obtain a warrant to do so, as required by federal law.

More than one person has shrugged at violations of civil rights on the grounds that, to date, and that we know of, not many citizens have been affected. Frankly, I don't understand this point of view. Nor do I understand the "it's war, so treating people involved in the war differently is OK" point of view, either.

I really don’t see why it’s so confusing. There are only so many issues that one can devote the time and energy to be outraged about and in deciding which ones concern you the most, it’s only natural to come up with some way of prioritizing them.

In this case we have the possibility that the federal government may be monitoring international phone calls without a warrant (my understanding is that they’re actually doing data-mining rather listening in on the content which I do not believe is actually addressed by FISA). Most people probably don’t make any international phone calls and if they do, there really isn’t a reasonable expectation of privacy in international communications. During WWII, FDR had international mail opened up without statutory authorization (IIRC it may have actually in defiance of a statute or a court order). In this case what the administration is accused of doing with TSP is more akin to checking the addresses on the outside of the envelope rather than opening it up for the content. And even if they did, my life and the lives of most other Americans isn’t going to be any different than it was before unless the TSP actually does succeed in stopping a terrorist attack which it may have already done.

On the other hand about 11.67 percent of every dollar I earn is confiscated from me and most of my fellow citizens in the form of FICA taxes to pay for a mandatory ponzi scheme that will at best be giving me and most of my generation a negative return when we hit retirement age. That’s something that actually does have a negative impact on my life and unlike the TSP, there’s no actual benefit provided to me in being able to fork over a chunk of my paycheck so that a politician can buy the votes of senior citizens who will then only demand even more generous benefits at the expense of the rest of us.

Until Social Security and Medicare are reformed which actually do have a negative effect on my life and liberty every day, I cannot honestly see why I should get worked up over the remote possibility that the federal government might do something as relatively benign as monitoring international communications in order to gain the intel necessary to stop a terrorist attack.

Mark,

That's an interesting point. So on what grounds would the FISA court ever deny a wiretap? That there is no real threat, perhaps? How would the court know one way or the other? Are you suggesting that all intel be reviewed by the FISA court? - or that the court, with or without intel, has authority to override the President's decision as to what constitutes a threat?

Requiring the President to brief the intelligence committees - great idea. Requiring a review by an uninformed judicial body - not so much.

Thorley,

Re; "Relatively benign".

Precisely.

Randy, I do not mean this cruelly, but your questions show a basic lack of understanding. The Fourth Amendment requires that the executive obtain a warrant before surveiling or arresting citizens. The FISA court was carefully tailored to comply with this requirement while protecting intelligence: its proceedings are secret, and the judges all have high security clearance. Federal law requires that the executive obtain a warrant from the court before collecting foreign intelligence on US soil.

Just a few years ago, there was widespread discussion of whether the FISA court was too deferential to the executive, since it almost never refuses wiretap requests, and its proceedings are secret.

Frankly, it's an indication of how much our society has changed in a short time that you would blithely claim that it's simply not a good idea to respect the Fourth Amendment, or describe the requirements of federal law as an "interesting idea". The idea that the executive must get a warrant before wiretapping people is not new or remarkable. What's new and remarkable is that a President, upon finding the law's requirements inconvenient, would simply ignore it.

Mark,

Re; "The idea that the executive must get a warrant before wiretapping people is not new or remarkable."

I disagree. FISA has only been in existance since 1978, and up until 2001 had never turned down or modified a request. What is new is the FISA court attempting to assume an executive role - and I think the President is right to challenge it.

Randy, I do not mean this cruelly, but your questions show a basic lack of understanding. The Fourth Amendment requires that the executive obtain a warrant before surveiling or arresting citizens.

Actually Randy’s quite correct. The Supreme Court has generally upheld warrantless searches conducted by customs agents, the border patrol, and airport screeners who open mail, search your luggage, and even your person as being “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment. I don’t honestly see why anyone would think that an international phone call or email would somehow be an exception to the general rule that there isn’t a reasonable expectation of privacy when you, your luggage, or your message crosses the border.

Randy, your understanding isn't improving.

FISA has only been in existance since 1978

FISA did not mark the beginning of the Forth Amendment requirement for the executive to seek warrants. FISA was designed to make it easier for the executive to act within its constitutional boundaries. Without it, regular warrants, such as are used in criminal investigations, would be required to surveil citizens.

What is new is the FISA court attempting to assume an executive role

I have no idea what this means. In what way is the FISA court acting any differently now than it has in the past?

The Supreme Court has generally upheld warrantless searches conducted by customs agents, the border patrol, and airport screeners who open mail, search your luggage, and even your person as being “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment.

Yes, but my understanding is that wiretapping the communications of US citizens is understood to always raise Fourth Amendment issues. So your intuition that the two are exactly the same is not borne out.

Mark,

You all are correct that I don't know all the details about the workings of FISA. To me its a simple matter of common sense. If FISA is restricting our ability to meet a threat, then it should be modified or eliminated. And if the Constitution is restricting our ability to meet a threat, then it should be modified or eliminated. It won't surprise me if you find this idea horrifying, but again, its because you're not seeing the big picture. You simply assume that the threat is either unreal or insignificant. I assume no such thing. Indeed, I would expect the President of the United States to assume that the threat is very real without clear evidence that it is not, and to act on that assumption. Is this potentially dangerous? Absolutely. These are dangerous times.

FISA did not mark the beginning of the Forth Amendment requirement for the executive to seek warrants.

That is correct -- the requirement that the executive seek warrants for wiretaps was invented by the Supreme Court in 1967.

Interestingly enough, no new amendments to the Constitution dealing with wiretapping had been added during the previous hundred-plus years in which the executive had been wiretapping people for national security reasons without the courts raising a fuss. Which makes you wonder -- given that the Constitution didn't forbid wiretapping until 1967, and the fourth amendment didn't change during all those years, what magical force was it that altered the Constitution to create warrant requirement for wiretaps?

After all, the fourth amendment protects only against searches and seizures. Eavesdropping is neither of those things.

You simply assume that the threat is either unreal or insignificant.

I assume no such thing. I have no idea how you can conclude this.

If FISA is restricting our ability to meet a threat, then it should be modified or eliminated.

I have no quarrel with this. But I fail to see how it justifies breaking the laws we have now.

Mark,

A sufficient threat can justify breaking any law. I'll deal with the consequences later, first I have to survive. The same goes for nations.

The world has changed. A small group of people with mental disorders and the right connections can now destroy entire cities. Its a new reality and we're going to have to deal with it - and we may have to modify our government in order to deal with it. I'm thinking that bypassing FISA and allowing coercive interrogations are really minor modifications. But if necessary, think KGB.

Interestingly enough, no new amendments to the Constitution dealing with wiretapping had been added [...] without the courts raising a fuss.

What does this mean? The courts have no role in amending the Constitution -- how exactly did they "raise a fuss"?

What does this mean? The courts have no role in amending the Constitution -- how exactly did they "raise a fuss"?

By ignoring the Constitution and inventing a spurious right to private phone conversations.

How do you plan to figure out if and when the terrorists have the bomb?

Will they mail us a 'ha ha' note before nuking us?

Mark,

I'm confident that most people here revere the constitution and appreciate that it has provided a framework that has allowed this country to prosper and to become a beacon for all.
And even when the courts rule a way that we might not like (eg on abortion, Bush vs Gore, 2nd amendment, prohibition, etc), our reverence for this consitution still stands.

I think the point that has been made (and that I have not seen you address satisfactorily) is that we may well be in times that could create a threat that could put the very constitution itself in jeopardy. Meanwhile, you are holding fast to a purity that would tie our hands not against ourselves but against the enemies that want to destroy us.

To taked an extreme example, if you were faced with a threat that would destroy this nation and many of its people, would you be prepared to bend a little on things like wiretapping?

If so, then could you tell us how you weigh one against the other? Because it appears as though you are reluctant to do any weighing.

(Apologies if I've misread you here, but I think I've captured your mindset)

If "most people here revere the constitution", I would expect them to accept violations of it only as a last resort.

I am simply not prepared to accept this administration's self-serving and unsubstantiated proclamations that it's necessary to shred the constitution to keep us safe. I believe we're being offered a false choice: from where I'm sitting, we so far have little reason to believe that we couldn't effectively defend the country and preserve the civil rights that make it worth living here in the first place.

Considering the gross incompetence and blatant falsehoods this White House has foisted on us, I'm frankly amazed that anyone who "reveres the constitution" would be willing to just bend over when told to.

"shredding the constitution"

That's what you think they're doing?

How do you plan to figure out if and when the terrorists have the bomb? Will they mail us a 'ha ha' note before nuking us?

Yes, the only possible way we every learn anything about our enemies' plans is if they specifically mail us a letter telling us about them. Bravo for catching on. :)

Off the top of my head, three ways we might learn of an imminent nuclear attack, without automatically learning who has the bomb and where it is:

(1): A blanket electronic surveillance program identifies keywords being used in a cellphone conversation between two Arab visitors to the United States; human analysis determines the two men are discussing the arrangements for the attack, but failed to mention where the bomb was kept.
(2): Pakistan informs us that one of the many Islamist-allied power cliques within its military has slipped a nuclear weapon to a Saudi al Qaeda contact; we then capture the contact, but he won't say who, if anybody, he transferred the bomb to.
(3): One of the terrorists' allies gets cold feet and/or moral qualms about the upcoming murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and spills the beans to the feds; we grab the conspirators we can find, but they refuse to talk.

Those are but three of the uncountable number of possible scenarios whereby we might learn of a pending nuclear attack before it actually happened.

The world has changed. A small group of people with mental disorders and the right connections can now destroy entire cities.

It's been that way since the invention of nuclear weapons. What makes the current situation any different?

"The world has changed. A small group of people with mental disorders and the right connections can now destroy entire cities."

It's been that way since the invention of nuclear weapons. What makes the current situation any different?

The fact that it is now actually possible for the aforementioned small group of crazies to GET nuclear weapons. Now North Korea and the Taliban's bestest buddy in the whole world, Pakistan, have them, and Iran will be getting them in a couple of years barring American military action that is unlikely to be forthcoming.

For all their flaws, China, the USSR, France, Israel, et al were basically rational nuclear powers. The North Korean leadership is clearly nuts, Iran is either nuts or doing a good job of faking being nuts, and Pakistan is one successful assassination attempt away from a possible Islamist takeover.

In short, what's changed is that nowadays crazies actually HAVE nuclear weapons. Ten years ago they didn't.

While I think it's fair to argue that terrorism doesn't amount to an existential threat, I think civil liberties advocates need to take a long hard look at maximizing civil liberties over time. My thinking is fairly straightforward. Ultimately the issue comes down to one of the probability of another 9/11 or worse under a strong civil liberties regime. If you think it's low, then by all means curtailment of civil liberties in the name of the War on Terror is a bad bet. On the other hand, if we assume that the likelihood of a catastrophic attack under such a regime is fair or higher, then civil liberties advocates need to make a trade-off. Put bluntly, if we loose a city, rendition of terror suspects or tapping international calls is going to be minor league. The public would largely demand it, even more so if they perceived a loyalty to legalistic pretense as having contributed to the failure. Please bear in mind, I'm not applauding this. I'm acknowledging it. But, how much civil liberties are you willing to put at risk tomorrow to protect a little today?

Bill,

Well said.

So what would we have done differently a decade ago had we understood the possibility of 9/11?

And what will we do differently if we understand the possibility of a nuclear attack a decade from now?

Dan, at the time the Soviet leadership and the Chicoms were thought of in much the csame terms as are now being applied to the people you describe as "crazies".

Randy,

Thanks for the positive feedback. Historically, I don't think it makes much sense to go over what we could have done. Given that we didn't know, didn't see it, I don't think much would have been politically palatable. Going forward, perhaps we might want to set the Cold War as a standard. We can fiddle around with the level a little bit (maybe be a little better in some areas or not as stringent in others, etc.), but we should set some standard, rather than perpetual striving for ever-increasing civil liberties standards via the courts.

Purple,
I'm not sure if you are a lot older than me or significantly younger than me, but I grew up during the latter part of the era you and Dan are talking about. While the Soviets were viewed as the bad guys, no one from what I remember, viewed them as...looney. Evil, yes, but calculatingly so.

Dan, at the time the Soviet leadership and the Chicoms were thought of in much the csame terms as are now being applied to the people you describe as "crazies".

You might have thought of the Soviet and Chinese leadership as "crazies", but I didn't and neither did the people behind US military and nuclear policy.

Indeed, our entire Cold War strategy was based around the idea that the Communists were rational, if expansionist, actors in international politicals. The Mutually Assured Destruction policy, for example, makes sense only if the parties involved are rational actors.

Stalin was indeed viewed as dangerously unhinged, as was Mao. If you don't remember that, then either you weren't there or you have successfully rewritten your memories.

On the other hand, if we assume that the likelihood of a catastrophic attack under such a regime is fair or higher, then civil liberties advocates need to make a trade-off.

Only if you believe that confronting terrorism requires the dismantling of our civil liberties. Why believe such a thing? It seems far from obvious.

Besides, our system of government and way of life is what defines us. Saying that proponents of civil liberties need to "make a trade-off" is a false burden within a false choice. From where I'm sitting, it's those who want to abandon our values that have the burden of explaining why there is no other choice.

Stalin was indeed viewed as dangerously unhinged, as was Mao.

Certainly Stalin was viewed as unhinged, but he died before the USSR had the capacity to attack the United States with nuclear weapons.

Mao, however, was not generally viewed as crazy.

If you don't remember that, then either you weren't there or you have successfully rewritten your memories

Oh, please. You "weren't there" for Stalin, either. The main died 53 years ago.

Mark,

Re; "From where I'm sitting, it's those who want to abandon our values that have the burden of explaining why there is no other choice."

I'd say its both. Whether or not modifications of our rights are necessary in the interest of security is totally dependant on the assessment of the threat. For example, when the Income Tax and Social Security were introduced, both of which were huge impositions on our rights, it was because we faced what we believed were significant threats to our security.

Those who feel threatened by terrorism have a right to make their case. Those who feel threatened by a loss of civil liberties have a right to make their case. But both cases must be based on an assessment of the threat.

From where I'm sitting, it's those who want to abandon our values that have the burden of explaining why there is no other choice.

Except, of course, that the people who advocate making a rights/security trade-off are the ones currently in power. So they don't actually have any need to explain anything to you, because they already have enough support to do what they want to do. If you want them to STOP doing it, it falls to you to convince their supporters to stop supporting them.

Also, when you find yourself claiming that great masses of people are apparently abandoning "our" values, you should probably pause to consider that maybe they were only ever *your* values. Typical US citizens have always had a narrower view of rights than those guaranteed by the Constitution -- and a MUCH narrower view than the modern "Constitutional rights plus a bunch of new rights invented by the courts" situation we find ourselves in today.

you should probably pause to consider that maybe they were only ever *your* values.

Nonsense. To cite a recent example, a Pew poll showed that, by 50% to 43%, Americans agreed that it is not "necessary to give up civil liberties to curb terrorism". As in not at all. And, of course, healthy majorities disapprove of this administration alltogether and believe that thanks to Bush, the country is on the wrong track.

they already have enough support to do what they want to do

If your position has devolved to "Oh yeah? Why don't you make me", I think we're done here.

Re; "Why don't you make me..."

Well, that is what it comes down to. Many would drop out of Social Security if allowed - either because they believe the threat is overblown, or because they don't believe the threat will be to them personally. So they are forced to participate by the majority.

If humiliation is illegal torture, most political activists should be incarcerated.

For example, some radical mullah preaches about the Caliphate, and a fair number of Americans - including, most worrisomely, many government official who should know better - actually believe that Islam will Conquer the World.

Islam can conquer the world - or at least the west. If Eur