Can you name names of those on the Left who feel that Al Qaeda is not a threat?
Everyone I know or read thinks that Al Qaeda is a threat...the debate is over whether we can deal with this threat without destroying our republic in the process.
Really? Who on the left thinks so, really? They sure don't act like it. Any discussion of security needs vs civil rights depends on first assessing the nature of the threat. The greater the threat, the more compromises are justified. If there really are Al Qaeda cells trying to blow up Boston, then stopping them to preserve my right to life sure outweighs my rights to privacy.
I would think that the experience of 9/11, plus Madrid and London and all the various plots which have been stopped, would lead most people to believe that there is a unknowably small but not insignificant chance that Al Qaeda will destroy an American city with radiation or nerve gas.
Now, maybe this is just me, but when I consider the real chances of this happening, my first urge is not to insist that the NSA hang up the phone whenever any Al Qaeda honcho they are surveilling happens to call the US, or even route the cell call through the US.
Yet somehow, it doesn't seem to bother most of the left at all. Their working assumption is George Bush is acting in bad faith, and that he set up this program because he's a crypto-fascist making a power grab, not because he's worried about losing a city. This is repeated over and over. Who on left thinks that serious tradeoffs must be discussed? Maybe Sen. Specter, but he hardly represents the left.
Instead the left repeats empty 'but' phrases "Al Qaeda is bad BUT it's America's fault" or "Al Qaeda is a threat BUT it doesn't justify anything the Bush administration has ever done."
Well, what would be justified? How do they assess the threat? Show me one serious discussion from anywhere that can be called the left - and no, I don't mean Dem candidates trying to sound a bit hawkish on campaign.
The left doesn't take the threat of Al Qaeda seriously. Not compared to the threat of George Bush. |
