May 10, 2006

Here is an example of what is so desperately wrong with this country. Supposedly, we, the U.S., are fighting a “war on terror.” However, we can’t have an honest discussion about what this war entails. Virtually all inquiries into Bush’s response to 9/11 or the logistics of the war in Iraq are squelched as “unpatriotic” or “harming the troops.” Our government deserves and demands better. But I’m not sure that “better” is what the voters want.

Take Bush’s recent nomination of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to be the new director of the CIA. Hayden oversaw the White House’s use of warrantless wiretaps against U.S. citizens, in direct defiance of 1978’s Federal Intelligence Surveilance Act (FISA), which specifies that such wiretapping be done with court oversight. Bush’s nomination of Hayden was a thumb in the eye to his critics. Now, some Democrats want to use the nomination of Hayden as a means to explore Bush’s spy program. And some Republicans welcome this exploration as a way to paint the Democrats as “soft on terrorism” in the run-up to the November elections.

May 9’s Los Angeles Times quotes Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) as saying:

If the president’s opponents hope to argue that we [Republicans are] doing too much to prevent terrorism, that the intelligence agencies are fighting too hard against terrorists around the world, then we look forward to taking that debate to the American people.

This is a nauseating response to a legitimate issue. The Bush administration’s possible excesses in its conduct are misrepresented as “fighting too hard” against terrorism, and misrepresented for short-term political advantage. I would have had much more respect for Sen. Cornyn if he had honsetly said: “The administration needs to bypass FISA because...” And I would hope that his reasoning would include (1) why the very un-cumbersome FISA courts were too cumbersome to be dealt with, (2) why the Bush administration never asked Congress to change the FISA law before the wiretapping program was uncovered, and (3) how Bush’s circumventing FISA squares with an open government and the rule of law.

But this is not the kind of discussion that we’re getting. Simply asserting that warrantless wiretapping is a “necessary tool for the fight against terror” and impugning the patriotism of anyone who says otherwise doesn’t make it so.

In other news, White House staff secretary Brett M. Kavanaugh has been nominated by Bush for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He had previously been a part of Kenneth Starr’s investigation against President Clinton, including writing a draft of Starr’s report saying that Clinton must release mountains of documents for inspection. But Kavanaugh made a 180º turn when entering the Bush White House, arguing that President Bush’s records must be kept secret. This is clearly a double standard, one that conservatives will surely defend by saying that “9/11 changed everything.” If the American people are willing to accept this kind of ruined reasoning, then we deserve to have our constitutional rights eroded.