I suppose it’s no surprise that it is a Democratic administration in charge of a counterterrorism program that is the most lethal ever (outside of the Israelis), or that it is a Democratic administration overseeing a Justice Department that has prosecuted more leaks under the 1917 Espionage Act (a poor law passed by Congress as we geared up for World War I). For the past 70-odd years, Democrats have repeatedly been hammered by Republicans as soft on communism, soft on defense, soft on terrorism, and just plain soft. This has led to three of the past five Democratic presidents moving to the right of the Republicans when it came to these various issues. John F. Kennedy exploited a non-existent “missile gap” to beat Richard Nixon, followed through with the Bay of Pigs invasion, and began escalating our Vietnam involvement. LBJ turned Vietnam into a full-scale war from the advisory role we’d played, and now Barack Obama has created a semi-automatic killing machine through a fleet of drones constantly hovering over the Middle East.
A big part of this problem is the bipolar nature of American society. We have been easily led on our fears since the end of World War I. The Red Menace and the Palmer Raids, the HUAC hearings after 1947 that led to the blacklisting of some of the great screenwriters/actors of our time, McCarthyism, loyalty oaths, every little nation being part of a domino theory, Soviet military superiority, Cuba, Honduras, Angola, terrorists in every corner. It’s like a whole verse of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire.”
Yet, at the same time, we then scream loudly when government overreaches too far. McCarthy turning on the Army, the government lying about Vietnam, Nixon, the Plumbers and Watergate, the FBI at Waco, Bush in Iraq, and the IRS last week (although in the case of the IRS, the real sin was not targeting liberal and conservative groups, as both are outrageously taking advantage of a language loophole about 501(c)4 tax exemptions). We eagerly ask the government to protect us from the scary things and willingly give up a multitude of rights to do it, and then when they overstep, we act as if we’re not culpable in their behavior.
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Richard Nixon took office in 1968 with the mindset of the Eisenhower Administration’s actions in his head and driving his own actions, not knowing or understanding that the rules had changed and the public would no longer tolerate these civil liberties violations. Nixon’s paranoia drove him further than his beloved mentor would ever have gone, as his misuse of the IRS, the Plumbers, and Watergate demonstrated. It appeared that 55 years of fear-driven security policy would end after Nixon’s resignation, but between inflation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Iran taking our embassy hostage, we drove right back into easy acceptance of government overreach. In fact, we did it so much so that Iran-Contra, a HUGE scandal involving clear administration violation of multiple laws, ended with Oliver North being more popular than the president.
As a liberal, I am frankly ashamed of the fact that many liberals are unwilling to admit that we are giving President Obama a free pass on things we would (rightly) be chastising President Bush about. I am not in the loop enough to know whether he is ordering this or whether he is deferring too much to the judgments of his national security people, but in either case, he has the ability to stop it and he should.
There is no excuse for a subpoena of phone records and monitoring phone calls of Associated Press reporters who reported a story after being given the go-ahead to print it by John Brennan himself. There is no excuse for using the Espionage Act to prosecute James Rosen of Fox News for pursuing a story about North Korea and simply ASKING QUESTIONS to garner information, or prosecuting James Risen of the New York Times (who exposed Bush’s warrantless wiretapping) for refusing to name his source about the CIA dropping the ball in Iran.
I can tell you that I know a bunch of people who also have these thoughts have been derided as “emoprogs” or disloyal to the cause. I am a liberal, and a Democrat, but I am not reflexive, and it’s bad enough that the Republican Party has foresworn principle for expedience and power since Robert Taft let Joe McCarthy tear down good men and women in the Truman administration, but Democrats who loudly cried out that they believed in principle when George W. Bush was committing unconstitutional acts as President are now defending President Obama in largely the same language that Republicans defended Bush in. The irony cannot be lost on them.
Part of America’s schizophrenia about government comes from the fact that Democrats play the game on the Republicans’ turf all the time. When it comes to security matters, we’re right there to get in line behind the President, no matter how contradictory it is to our ideology and previously declared principles. But when it comes to Senate rules, budgets, health care reform, etc., we jump right onto their field and are all for principles, and do it so much that the Republicans run us right over and keep moving the yardsticks in their direction. Why are so many cherished liberal accomplishments under attack? Because we’re always playing defense, and the only place we play offense is in a place that helps achieve the ultimate end goal of Republicans. Yes, being uber-hawkish about counterterrorism and espionage prosecutions and drug stings may have protected the President’s flank for re-election, but it set a terrible precedent for the future, because it vindicated and EXPANDED Republican beliefs on these matters that we don’t hold to. Playing their game for the sake of keeping power makes us no better than them, and in some cases, it really just makes us worse.
By the same measure, this has been the hallmark of America after some scary event: we give up powers, accept right-wing notions of security willingly, no matter how much they threaten civil liberties, and the one time America truly fought back against it, we let the new scary things drive us right back to the corner to hide while we gave up our freedoms to the government so they could protect us. Benjamin Franklin wouldn’t even recognize the nation he helped form. He said that those who willing give up their liberty for temporary safety deserve neither, and despite handing over far too many liberties in the past 12 years, we still aren’t, nor will we ever, be “safe.” Boston proved this. In the most intrusive security state in American history, we are still vulnerable to lone wolf terrorists, and nothing will change that, so maybe it’s time we start thinking after these events and stop gleefully handing over our rights so we can pretend we’re safe. And the President, who on the whole I respect and admire and support, needs to stop playing security on the right-wing field, dismantle this “killing matrix,” stop prosecuting reporters for “espionage,” stop droning people based on general profiles, and start thinking about the legacy he’s leaving for America’s future on civil liberties.