If GWB authorized the NSA to monitor political opponents or anyone else for any purpose other than combatting terrorism, I will lead the call for his impeachment.
But there is a difference between alarmist conjecture and reality. Do you seriously think that monitoring of the type you referred to is actually happening? Federal agents aren’t listening to Howard Dean order pizza.
agreed, in part. however, we’re talking about domestic spying, and its efficacy. the only “evidence” of which comes from…the people doing the spying.
If we’re gonna spin “what if” scenarios, then all of 9/11 could have been averted if the Bush administration acted on the warnings and information given to it by the previous administration.
Please elaborate. I don’t want to put words in your mouth in a response.
Of course. The Clinton administration tried to warn them, but Bush and company were too busy forcing poor people to breed children for childless Halliburton executives.
My point in saying that was that it makes sense to try to do everything you can to stop terrorist attacks. We don’t know what the circumstances of the monitoring were. When we do find out, we’ll see if any laws were broken. If they were, people will pay. Until then, just for fun, let’s try to keep the terrorists from attacking.
Or perhaps we can ignore the fact that they exist while we cloak ourselves in a righteous glow of civil liberties-warrior satisfaction. And the best part is…if they kill you, you’ll still be able to invoke your right to remain silent to your hearts content.
Are you too young to remember the Committee to Re-Elect the President?
This is the attitude that bothers me. It’s the “do everything you can”, with no restrictions, no limitations. I was speaking to my father over the holidays, who espoused a similar viewpoint. When pressed, he admitted that he was actually advocating for total, universal surveillance of everyone, even going so far as to admit that he was all for eliminating The Constitution (he threw out the rapidly getting tired “The Constitution is not a suicide pact” talking point).
Now, I’m not saying that you, Evil One, are doing that. Far from it, as your previous posts have indicated the opposite. Nor am I saying that we (as in people in the US) should not attempt to identify and stop threats (terrorist or otherwise).
What I am saying is that what I hear from people espousing that point of view do not consider the cost/benefits, effectiveness of the policies, and tend to pooh-pooh or ignore any and all potential for abuse. And, IMO, the “When we do find out, we’ll see if any laws were broken. If they were, people will pay” attitude is unacceptable; it not only assumes that we will find out eventually, but also disregards the (potential) impact on targets of these policies. Which scares the crap out of me.
Sort of. I was 12 or 13 at the time.
I can analyze the aftermath with an adult perspective, however. Nixon did wrong and paid the price.
I assume by the tone of your question that you are absolutely certain that equal or greater crimes are taking place now. Am I correct?
As of today, we know that the president chose to bypass the legal mechanism of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That appears to be a crime. We don’t know why Mr. Bush chose to ignore the law. However, we do know that other presidents who broke laws have done so with criminal intent. That being the case, it’d be foolish of anyone to assume that president Bush’s motives are pure.
Since the passage of the first Alien and Sedition act, this country has harmed tens of thousands of people for doing nothing more than voicing opinions about the way the country was being run.
The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 got off to a slow start, “only” imprisoning 25 men for publishing editorials against the administration (although it also brought about the destruction of several of their newspaper businesses.)
The Espionage Act and the Sedition Act of the First World War led to over 1500 arrests, with hundreds of those persons being sent to prison for as long as ten years for the simple crime of suggesting that the government was following bad policy. The Palmer Raids then led to the arrests of over 16,000 people in two separate sweeps, the destruction of many of their homes, the holding without trial of several thousand of them, and the deportation on trumped up charges of hundreds more.
The internment of the ethnic Japanese citizens during World War II does not seem to have protected the country against a single attack, although it deprived thousands of citizens of their homes, thier jobs, and most of their property.
During the Red Hunts of the 1940s and 1950s, over 10,000 people were deprived of jobs for being suspected of having “red” connections or sympathies. In many cases, the firing was prompted by a person exercising his Constitutional right against self-incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. (And the history of that period, generally focusing on the Federal activities of Senator McCarthy and the HUAC, often miss the fact that many states set up their own “red squads” trampling the rights of many more people.)
In addition to the loss of speech, freedom, housing, and property, of course, there were also killings of people who were beaten while “resisting arrest.”
Such actions were quite successful in abridging the First Amendment rights of the people, as many people suppressed their opinions rather than go to jail on trumped up charges or lose their jobs based on secret informers’ information.
Aside from the Nisei internment, one notable aspect of these events has been that each has depended on the government doing more and more “security” work in secret. From imprisoning writers who published their work to imprisoning people on the charges of hired government agents to the employment of “private visits” by the FBI to employers and the creation of secret blacklists, each succeeding wave of “security” has depended more and more on the government acting outside the purview of the public.
And what were the words of the supporters of this adminstration when the first concerns were raised about the propriety of some of the actions purportedly taken to save the country from terrorists?
John Ashcroft: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends.”
I think the several tens of thousands of people who have been swept up in government actions that were purported to save us, in the past, might have a different view of “phantoms of lost liberty.”
(And we will pass, for the moment, the point that once the USA PATRIOT Act was passed “to fight terrorism,” the Justice Department immediately began to use its provisions that legalized previously forbidden tactics to wage the war on people who use drugs and on “pornography.” In other words, once the tool was created, its supporters were quick to use it in areas outside its claimed purpose.)
And if he was…how would you know -will you use your psychic abilities to determine when to charge the barricades?
Of course not - instead you have Federal agents listening to Howard Dean “engaging in terror-related program activities”. If they’re really lucky the delivery driver will have dusky skin, which, in my time delivering for Pizza Hut, I’ve seen is entirely likely.
-Joe
Thanks; now I know what you get when you cross a red herring with a strawman. I don’t believe that I mentioned the Clinton Administration’s reproductive policies. Please do not put words in other peoples’ mouths simply because you have no credible response. Such histrionics cheapen the debate and make you look like an uninformed buffoon.
As others have pointed out (much better than I could hope to), while it’s true that we don’t know what the circumstances of the monitoring are/were, we don’t have to travel any great distance or wait very long to determine if laws were broken. They were. A FISA request must, by law, be granted in order to initiate surveillance on a foreign national. Of course, the issue is surveillance of citizens. I have no problem with monitoring persons or organizations if a reasonable case can be made that they pose a threat or even a potential one. Make your case, request permission (before or after the fact), and I’m a happy camper. I’m not saying don’t look into possible threats, I’m saying don’t leave the decision as to who is a threat to an opaque, unaccountable entity.
This is just puerile. You are at more risk from your next-door neighbor or bus driver than you are from “They.” You might not hold your civil liberties terribly dear; it’s a freee country-believe what you want. However, don’t pay fast and loose with my civil liberties, thankyouverymuch.
Regardless of your personal opinion (and the conditional in which you embedded it), this is not appropriate to Great Debates.
Let’s leave personal observations out of this.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
You provided a well thought out and detailed response to my question. Thank you.
However…your examples stop with the “red scare” fifty years ago. Is it your contention that events that compare to that are just around the corner? If you are, do you really think something like that would fly in todays world?
So we’re much better as people now than we were then?
That’s funny.
-Joe
I don’t know and I hope not. However, the problems of the past were not continuous–they were responses to perceived threats separated by years. Given statements such as those by Ashcroft, (to say nothing of the rabble rousing by Limbaugh, Coulter, and others), I find the combination of apparent illegal activities, extreme secretiveness, and “enemies within” rhetoric to be very troubling.
I do not minimize the threat of terrorists, but one goal of terrorism has always been to entice governments to restrict freedoms in the name of security. The apparent actions of the current administration seems to me to play into the hands of such goals. I do not accuse the current administration of having already crossed the line (although I find warrantless wiretaps alarming), but I also do not like to see the very real possible loss of freedoms ignored or unduly minimized.
Here’s something to get you started shuffling to the front of the line, at least:
I was thinking about bringing that one up, thanks rjung. I also found it interesting that MSNBC censored its own transcripts about possible wiretapping of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Apparently Andrea Mitchell has some inside information that caused her to ask the question and the obedient corporate lapdogs at MSNBC decided to cover up the story. The police state is here.
Duly noted. My apologies to the Evil One for my lack of decorum.
You know, I’m reminded of a classic Gahan Wilson cartoon: A Casper Milquetoast character is answering the front door, where stands a big fellow wearing a trench coat, fedora, and self-satisfied smirk. He says, “Mr. Hodgkins, I’m Agent Prentiss from the FBI. I’d just like you to know that we’ve checked you out and you’re a good citizen.”
Gahan’s point presumably being that, as police-state tactics go, that kind of assurance (which is really a demonstration of the state’s power and reach) falls just short of arresting the guy.
If you want something more recent, google COINTELPRO.