Frank Rich's Sunday column in the New York Times rightly points out the folly of the Bush administration, investing billions in Gen. Perrez Musharraf's regime, especially in light of recent events.
But then he draws an analogy to the current state of affairs in Washington and takes aim at the rationale used by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Chuck Schumer in voting for Michael Mukasey for attorney general:
So what if America's chief law enforcement official won't say that waterboarding is illegal? A state of emergency is a state of emergency. You're either willing to sacrifice principles to head off the next ticking bomb, or you're with the terrorists.
Constitutional corners were cut in Washington in impressive synchronicity with Musharraf's crackdown in Islamabad.
update: I still don't see the link at http://www.nytimes.com
Although Frank doesn't say it in this column, I think the mainstream media deserve much criticism for the state of affairs he describes here.
Too many journalists were either intimidated by the right-wing noise machine, or part of it.
This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often-secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like Musharraf's.
How far we have fallen. How low we have set the bar.
The loyal opposition in the Senate has let us down, Frank says.
It kind of reminds me of the "joke" about how these days, "liberals" are for lethal injection and "conservatives" for the firing squad.
In the six years of compromising our principles since Sept. 11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we've propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We've become inured to democracy-lite. That's why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug.
The corrosive effects of this war on terrorism cannot be underestimated.
And Feinstein and Schumer gave us little confidence that clear lines are going to be drawn.
We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon.