Dear tonto...Are You Bush Defenders Just Blowing Smoke, or Do You Really Not Get It?
by Andrew Bard Schmookler
Three recent public statements by defenders of the Bush regime have reminded me that one of the enduring challenges for the student of human affairs is to discover where self-deception ends and the deliberate deception of others begins.
Take for example the recent performance of President Bush’s new press secretary, Tony Snow. In a recent press briefing, Snow was fielding questions about the NSA gathering of Americans’ phone records.
Snow happily cited a quick poll indicating that almost two-thirds of Americans don’t object to the government monitoring such records for the presumed purpose of catching terrorists. But when presented with other negative poll results, Snow declared that a president “cannot base national security on poll numbers.”
A reasonable statement, but, as the press should immediately have asked: Mr. Snow, can a president base on poll numbers his decision whether or not to obey the law? And would you be interested in seeing what the American people would say to pollsters if asked, “Can the president do whatever he wants, regardless of the law?”
Who are you kidding, yourself or us? Do you really not get that the issue here is neither opinion polls nor national security, but rather a president who refuses to respect any legal limits to his powers?
And then there’s Michael Hayden’s appearance last week at the Senate hearings regarding his confirmation to run the CIA. Hayden is the former head of the NSA, where he apparently conducted two surveillance programs, under orders from the Bush regime, that run afoul of a criminal statute governing surveillance on American soil, one of which is also in apparent violation of the 4th amendment to the Constitution.
At his hearing, however, General Hayden assured the Senators, and the nation: all this surveillance has been legal.
When you make this declaration, General Hayden, are you serious? Or are you just posturing in the hopes that the rest of us will take you seriously?
For one thing, General Hayden, how seriously should we take you as a legal authority after we’ve seen the video of you at the National Press Club? This is where, after declaring "if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth,” you went on repeatedly to maintain that the Fourth Amendment says nothing about a search warrant requiring “probable cause.”
If this amendment is the part of the Constitution with which you’re most familiar, and you seem to have overlooked the fact that two of the merely 54 words that comprise this amendment are the phrase “probable cause,” just how reassured should we be by your vouching for the legality of the surveillance programs you’ve been overseeing?
But perhaps you’re not relying on your own legal knowledge in concluding that your surveillance programs have broken no laws. If so, General Hayden, where did you find a source reliable enough to give you confidence in this judgment. Has this administration ever been willing to put this question of legality before anyone whom the president cannot fire at will?
It seems not, if the recent disclosures from the telephone company, Qwest, are to be believed. They reported that the minions of the NSA were willing to bluster and intimidate, but not to fulfill Qwest’s request that the legality of the surveillance proposal be cleared with the FISA Court. According to the report in USA Today, the NSA refused because it recognized that the Court might not approve.
Indeed, it has been well-documented by Glenn Greenwald, an attorney who writes the blog, Uncharted Territory, that this administration –while continually making claims about the legality of its conduct- has nonetheless repeatedly invoked “every possible maneuver to prevent judicial adjudication of the constitutionality and legality of its conduct.”
Are your words of reassurance, then, anything more than another round of this regime’s continual evocation of the “just trust us” approach to constitutional theory? “Just trust us” was the Bush regime’s defense of its refusal to bring detainees before a court to be charged with specific offenses, backed up by evidence. And “just trust us” is what this administration demands when it declares that no “innocent” and “ordinary” Americans, but only suspected terrorists and their connections, are being wiretapped.
Actually, while “probable cause” is in the Constitution, nowhere in that document is “trust us” to be found. Indeed, “trust us” runs contrary to the whole spirit of America’s supreme law. “If men were angels,” wrote the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, we’d have no need for a government to be put over the people, nor for a Constitution to govern those who govern. But as men are not angels, Madison set up a careful system of checks and balances as a bulwark against tyranny.
And indeed, the evidence suggests that the Bush regime has had good reasons for it’s systematic evasion of the constitutionally required scrutiny by the other branches of the government. A study group of the American Bar Association determined that the public record alone is sufficient to determine that the eavesdropping program uncovered last December is a clear criminal violation of the FISA statute. And Jonathan Turley, Professor of Constitutional Law at George Washington University, is just one of many legal experts who declare that the more recently disclosed surveillance program also violates federal law.
So, General Hayden, is there some reason we should take your assurances seriously? Do even you?
A third case that makes one wonder how seriously these Bush defenders takes their own arguments is found in a recent opinion piece in Reverend Moon’s newspaper, The Washington Times. Entitled “More than Revenge Needed,” this piece by Dan Thomasson castigates Democrats like John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi for their evident intention, if they gain power in November’s elections, to investigate the lawlessness of this Bushite regime.
The piece warns voters: “If you are one who believes returning control of the House to the Democrats this fall would bring some civility back to Capitol Hill, perhaps you should reassess your thinking.” These Democrats will not restore civility, Thomasson cries, because they are going to pursue a “vengeful strategy” that will only increase the “ferocity” of our “venomous partisanship.”
Tell me, Mr. Thomasson, do you really believe that investigating whether or not an elected official has usurped power and broken the law should be understood as partisan vengefulness, or are you just trying to blow smoke in the voters’ eyes?
If the call for investigation is just partisanship, Mr. Thomasson, then how do you account for the alarm being sounded by Bruce Fein, the prominent conservative jurist formerly of President Reagan’s Justice Department, when he writes: “Mr. Bush has adamantly refused to acknowledge any constitutional limitations on his power to wage war indefinitely against international terrorism, other than an unelaborated assertion he is not a dictator…Congress should undertake a national inquest into his conduct and claims to determine whether impeachable usurpations are at hand.”
Or the recent study from the conservative Cato Institute, which decries the “disdain for constitutional limits” manifested by this administration in what it characterizes as a “ceaseless push for power.” Or former Republican Representative Bob Barr’s declaring, about this president’s “power grab,” that: “The President has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will.”
What do you imagine, Mr. Thomasson, these principled conservative Republicans are trying to “avenge.”
When you so helpfully tell the Democrats that voters “don't want to hear about disruptive investigations into things that can't be changed,” does this reflect your general attitude about the investigation of crimes? After all, if one ought not investigate crimes that have already been committed, and therefore cannot be changed, just what crimes should be investigated?
Do you propose we investigate only crimes that are going to be committed in the future, or is it your position that we should ignore crime altogether? Or is it just crimes committed by the most powerful person in the country that should be ignored?
And Mr. Thomasson, when you say that Americans want the Democrats to “tell them how to solve their problems at home,” do you really think that saving our system of government from those who would subvert it doesn’t qualify?
Isn’t preserving our constitutional democracy what generations of American boys were sent off to kill and die for? Are you really unable to see fighting for that same purpose here at home can be something other than revenge? Or are you just hoping that your rhetorical sleight of hand will distract the public?
And to those Americans who are hungry for a government with values higher than partisan political advantage, can you really maintain with a straight face that they should vote for Republicans? It is the Republicans who, because they want to protect a president from their party, have systematically blocked every attempt to meaningfully investigate the possible abuses of power by this presidency—a presidency that millions of Americans and much of the rest of the world believe to be the most lawless in American history.
Or should Americans vote to turn the Congress over to the Democrats, so that those with the power to issue subpoenas and to question witnesses under oath will start using that power to provide us, the sovereign people of these United States, a clear and credible picture of what our rulers have been doing with the power with which we entrusted them?
All the members of Congress, of whatever party, take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution is the heart and soul of America, our highest national value, transcending party.
And so, while one might say that a partisan agenda can be served either by protecting or by investigating a lawless presidency, the difference between the two is fundamental.
Can you Bush defenders really not see the difference? Or do you just want to keep the American people from recognizing what is at stake?
commondreams.org |
