Who cares if the Patriot Act get’s renewed. Want to abuse our civil liberties-Just do it! Who cares about the Geneva conventions? Want to torture prisoners-Just do it! Who cares about rules concerning the identity of CIA agents. Want to reveal the name of a covert operative? Just do it! Who cares about whether the intelligence concerning WMD’s is accurate. You want to invade Iraq? Just do it. Who cares about qualifications to serve on the nation’s highest court. Want to nominate a personal friend with no qualifications? Just do it. And the latest outrage, which I read about in “The New York Times” this morning, who cares about needing a court order to eavesdrop on American citizens. Want to wiretap their phones conversations? Just do it…. What a joke. A very cruel, very sad joke.
I’ve never expected to support Our Glorious Leader. I’ve never expected anything but the worst from the man. After all, what else could a reasonable person expect from a man willing to do whatever it takes to steal a Presidential election? With that as a backdrop, then, I don’t suppose I should claim to be surprised that Our Glorious Leader would see his way clear to willfully break the law in the name of the war on terrorism.
One of the notable things that separates the US from, say, Iran or Tajikistan is a little thing called the rule of law. Virtually every success that Americans have achieved of the past 229 years can be related back to the rule of law. Because of our respect for law and the manner in which it governs our relations with other people and institutions, Americans can do business and take risks safe in the knowledge that the rule of law is their to protect them.
When our own President, a man who acknowledges that he has sworn to uphold the law, willingly breaks the law because it is inconvenient, it sends the message that the rule of law is all well and good, but it should never be allowed to get in the way of what you are trying to accomplish. Frankly, this would be a reprehensible attitude from anyone, and it helps to explain things like Tyco, Enron, and MCI. That this attitude is openly and unapologetically displayer by the leader of the most powerful nation in the world is simply unforgivable.
The moral of this sad tale? Our Glorious Leader knows best, and if it takes breaking the law to accomplish his ends, then that is exactly what will take place. Good and decent people should be outraged by this egregious disregard for the rule of law, one of the bedrocks of the American system. If this is allowed to stand, then we have no right to complain when this eventually becomes more the rule than the exception…because it WILL happen.
[T]he Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires that national security wiretaps be authorized by the secretive FISA court. “A person is guilty of an offense,” the law reads, “if he intentionally … engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute” — which appears, at least on its face, to be precisely what the president has authorized.
Indeed, it is exactly what the President authorized. The problem is that he has no legal right or authority to do so, despite his protestations to the contrary. To make matters worse, Our Glorious Leader is trying to deflect attention by decrying the “shameful act” committed by the person who leaked the existence of the NSA’s extracurricular activities.
Mr. Bush…defended his action, chastised the media for revealing it, and suggested both that Congress had justified this step by authorizing force against al Qaeda and that such spying was consistent with the “constitutional authority vested in me as commander in chief.”
The hole in Bush’s reasoning is that Congress never authorized him to go outside the FISA court system. Yes, indeed, the man who will happily point out that he has sworn to uphold the law has no problem with authorizing the NSA to break. Apparently, post-9.11, following the letter of the law is just simply too damned inconvenient. So this is what the exploitation of 9.11 has brought us to…the willingness to break a law whenever the government deems it expedient to do so. Apparently, the rule of law applies post-9.11 only insofar as it’s convenient.
Americans interact with their own government through the enforcement of law. And in those limited instances in which Americans become intelligence targets, FISA exists to make sure that the agencies are not targeting people for improper reasons but have sufficient evidence that Americans are actually operating as foreign agents. Warrantless intelligence surveillance by an executive branch unaccountable to any judicial officer — and apparently on a large scale - is gravely dangerous.
Bush’s argument that the FISA system is too slow and insufficiently responsive is a red herring…but let’s say for the sake of argument that Our Glorious Leader has a legitimate argument. Rather than doing an end run around the law, why did the Administration not do what would normally being de riguer in a situation such as this? Why not go to Congress and lobby them to change the law? If the law doesn’t work in today’s circumstances, work to have the law changed- don’t simply ignore the law. All that does is expose you as the criminal you are.
And why in any event should the NSA — rather than the FBI, the intelligence component responsible for domestic matters — be doing whatever domestic surveillance needs be done?
As with its infamous torture memorandum, the administration appears to have taken the position that the president is entitled to ignore a clearly worded criminal law when it proves inconvenient in the war on terrorism. That argument is not as outlandish in the case of FISA as it is with respect to the torture laws, since administrations of both parties have always insisted on the executive’s inherent power to conduct national security surveillance. Still, FISA has been the law of the land for 2 1/2 decades. To disrupt it so fundamentally, in total secret and without seeking legislative authorization, shows a profound disregard for Congress and the laws it passes.
This is a President who repeats at every opportunity that he has sworn to uphold the law of the land. What he apparently forgot to add was, “…unless it’s too incovenient, in which case, we’ll do whatever the hell we think is necessary.”
I realize that Bush’s policy is aimed toward preventing terrorism, but how are we to know that the eavesdropping on Americans only takes place when legitimately necessary? Without the oversight of FISA, how are we to know beyond a reasonable doubt that our government is not gradually extending the eavesdropping? It’s not as if this is an Administration famed for it’s truthfulness or respect for individual liberties.
Mr. Bush’s general assurances that the program is legal offer no indication of what legal authority, if any, permits this surveillance of what he described as “the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.” In the torture context, the administration abandoned the argument that the president could simply disregard laws prohibiting brutal interrogations and moved on to other legal theories. There is reason to think something similar has happened here. Does the administration now claim that warrantless surveillance of hundreds of people by an agency generally barred from domestic spying is consistent with FISA? Does it claim that the congressional authorization to use military force against al Qaeda somehow unties the president’s hands? Other than claiming it has done nothing illegal, the administration is not saying.
It is far beyond time that Our Glorious Leader and his corrupt, venal Administration be held accountable for their willingness to flout the law in the name of expediency or whatever their rationale of the moment seems to be, seeing as how it changes depending on the severity of the political storm and the political winds produced by it.
No one wants to protect or enable terrorists, least of all myself. Yes, we live in a much different and much more dangerous world post-9.11. What I fail to understand, however, is how the wholesale and egregious flouting of the law makes us a safer, better-protected, more secure society. When the rule of law becomes a casualty of the war against terrorism, we all lose…and perhaps the terrorists really have won.
