Clarke on Fear

Via Adam Blickstein, Richard Clarke (who was worrying about al-Qaeda long before George W. Bush) has a great op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer eviscerating the president's arguments on FISA:

For this president, fear is an easier political tactic than compromise. With FISA, he is attempting to rattle Congress into hastily expanding his own executive powers at the expense of civil liberties and constitutional protections. [...]

In order to defeat the violent Islamist extremists who do not believe in human rights, we need not give up the civil liberties, constitutional rights and protections that generations of Americans fought to achieve. We do not need to create Big Brother. With the administration's attempts to erode FISA's legal standing as the exclusive means by which our government can conduct electronic surveillance of U.S. persons on U.S. soil, this is unfortunately the path the president is taking us down.

It's striking that at the same time Bush thinks we need to ditch the constitution and basic principles of good government in order to fight al-Qaeda, he remains totally uninterested in orienting our foreign policy toward this goal. Instead today, just as it's been throughout his administration, the bulk of our policies reflects an unwillingness and inability to set priorities. We need to be mired in Iraq indefinitely, says Bush. We need to pick new fights with Iran, says Bush. We need missile defense and Virginia Class submarines and F-22. Nothing shall be compromised in order to better position ourselves against al-Qaeda. Nothing but the rule of law and our civil liberties.

Comments

It's funny, the GOP and the Democrats are operating from a five-year old playbook.

The GOP acts like fearmongering and maximalism are to its electoral advantage (because Lord knows this FISA posturing doesn't have anything to do with effectively fighting al Qaeda, as Matt points out). And the Democrats act like you've got to be supine to be serious, in the right measure.

But public opinion says otherwise.

It's darn strange to behold. I guess there's really something to that whole "Village" critique.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | February 1, 2008 4:04 PM

Can any of you brilliant posters tell us what happened to the New Hampshire recount paid for by Dennis Kucinich? It was in the news that they started it, and then nothing....can't find a thing about it....

HELP!

Posted by HELP! | February 1, 2008 4:08 PM

Apparently Kucinich paid $40,000 for the recount, which only funded about 40% of the count. Another GOP candidate funded some more, I guess.

This page here says they found discrepancies, but the overall results have not changed as of this guy's post, January 24th:

"Further human tallies being compared to the computerized tallies from Diebold optical scanners are finding a variety of substantial changes, in one ward in one instance over 10% of the tally changed, although election officials at first were claiming just "one or two votes, easily explained by clerical error". So far the overall "winners" of the primary haven't changed, but results so far are enough for Kucinich to demand a full recount. In addition they apparently have still not found the "lost" memory cards with some of the results, in violation of state law there that says all relevant information must be retained for 22 months. And if that isn't enough, activists following ballot chain of custody have discovered a lot of peculiarities, like so called 'sealed boxes" that are just used cardboard boxes with large slits in them large enough to insert a hand, and "official seals" that are like peel and stick removable post-it notes."

This article has a more complete discussion:

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080128/NEWS08/480564814

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 1, 2008 4:33 PM

Unlike you cowardly surrendercrat ComSymp liberals, Bush Jr. actually tackles Al Qa'ida's threat to Our Commander's Homeland quite directly: He said they hated us for our freedoms, so he's taking away their targets -- our freedoms. Q.E.D.

Posted by El Cid | February 1, 2008 5:14 PM

In order to defeat the violent Islamist extremists who do not believe in human rights...

The remarks which follow assume that this is the actual goal of Bush administration policy. It may be that Mr. Clarke knows better, but cannot say what he really thinks because it isn't PC to do that. The public would rather see their leaders as idiots (even if they have to become idiots themselves to do it) than entertain the notion that they are in pursuit of a rational self-interest (by brutal methods), and of course this places sharp constraints on what one can say in public. This preference for idiocy is a feature of the left* as well as the right, so Mr. Clarke would earn no friends for 'telling it like it is' in any event.

The public statements of officialdom are of course meaningless. Either they are genuinely concerned about terrorism (or have genuinely convinced themselves that they are), or it is a cynical cover for something else. Either way, we are not going to hear anything else come out of their mouths.

*If you doubt this, I refer you to Ezra Klein's hilarious assertion that, although Ezra cannot imagine why, Mr. Bush must have invaded Iraq because of the anthrax scare. After all, no sane member of the 'left' can imagine that Mr. Bush's decision might have been influenced by anything so abstract and esoterical as the trillions of dollars worth of sweet crude that sit under Iraq.

Posted by Rlaing | February 1, 2008 7:35 PM

Re Clarke on Fear: Bravo!

Posted by Bengt Larsson | February 3, 2008 12:00 AM