Democratic rhetoric these days is far too heavy
on opposition, and way too light on loyalty.
LIBERTY, SECURITY & TERROR
NEW YORK POST
Editorial
December 19, 2005
Do Democrats and other critics of the way President Bush is leading the War on Terror genuinely understand how much America's security needs changed on 9/11? Or even care?
Witness the outrage that followed a New York Times story last week reporting that the president "secretly" authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without court-approved warrants.
Congressional Democrats were calling yesterday for hearings and investigations. On NBC's "Meet the Press," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) termed the practice "extremely dangerous." And Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)called for an investigation.
But no laws were broken.
Rather, the National Security Agency has conducted warrantless eavesdropping of international communications involving people here with links to suspected terrorists — and, under guidelines that long predate the Bush administration, the NSA is allowed to do just that.
And as the president noted in a live radio address Saturday,
two of the 9/11 hijackers "communicated while they were
in the United States to other members of Al Qaeda who
were overseas. But we didn't know they were here, until
it was too late."
Thus the eavesdropping, which Bush said represents "a
vital tool in our war against the terrorists."
For example, when the CIA found al Qaeda's computers, cell phones and phone directories in the early post-9/11 successes against the terrorists, it moved quickly — and, again, legally — to exploit this vital information.
Every indication is that the administration acted with sensitivity to civil liberties; at one point, the program was briefly suspended while new constitutional safeguards were implemented.
And all along, said Bush, the program has been re-evaluated every 45 days, based on "a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland."
President Bush, to his credit, neither apologized for the program nor said he would abandon it. Indeed, he said he has reauthorized the program some 30 times since 9/11, and intends to do so "as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups."
Frankly, a serious — good-faith — national debate on the conflict between the ACLU's notions of government's proper national-security responsibilities and post-9/11 reality is long overdue.
That's not likely to happen.
And stories like that in Times — and the uninformed hysteria with which it was greeted — largely explains why.
Sen. Reid, for example, was in full partisan throat — despite having been briefed on the program any number of times since it began.
We value the grand American tradition of the loyal opposition — even in times of grave national crisis.
But Democratic rhetoric these days is far too heavy on opposition, and way too light on loyalty.
That needs to stop. Now.
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