Posted on 06/15/2013 10:15:34 AM PDT by kristinn
The jihad rages on, but the War on Terror is over.
There is no longer a national-security consensus — no longer the political support for wartime defense measures, much less offensive combat operations. While the enemy continues to fight, our will to break the enemy’s will has vanished. After a contentious week, that much is clear. The controversy swirling around shadowy intelligence programs hasn’t gotten to the bottom of those programs, but it tells us everything we need to know about . . . us.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dog that did not bark is a metaphor worn out by journalists. This week, though, the lack of a bark was loud and clear: The bark of the national-security Right defending the wartime powers of the presidency. For a variety of reasons, many of the protagonists have developed amnesia about how we came to have the programs now provoking all the cavil: the debates over the PATRIOT Act and FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act).
After a series of attacks through the Nineties, the 9/11 atrocities destroyed the World Trade Center, struck the Pentagon, and killed nearly 3,000 Americans. In the savage clarity, our nation finally realized that what I’ve called “kinetic Islam” — a combination of militant jihadists and their sharia-supremacist enablers — was at war with the United States. The PATRIOT Act was a product of our vigorous and persuasive contention, on the national-security right, that the challenge was an enemy force, not a criminal-justice problem. That challenge demanded a national war-footing, not judicial due process.
It was precisely this contention, moreover, that beat back the Left’s effort to intrude the judiciary into the collection of foreign intelligence — constitutionally, a paradigm executive function — when FISA was overhauled in 2008.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Whatever our decision is from this point forward, to wage war or not, it must be seen as something we decided to do, not because of fatigue, but because of success and realizing it was simply time to move on.
Our resolve is of primary importance, rather the perception of it overseas.
We must make it clear, any more nonsense and we’ll be right back in bigger numbers and causing much more havoc.
Paper tigers invite their enemies to attack. Stern, determined tigers are feared and avoided.
(1) Obama/Jarrett/Axelrod/Emanuel's communiques making lucrative deals with enemies of the US in exchange for foreign aid.
(2) The Gang of Eight colluding---getting their marching orders from Third World hellholes WRT immigration reform--- the gang exchanging aye votes for insider deals.
(3) Eric Holder and Obama deciding which "troublesome" news organizations and reporters to surveil.
(4) Hillary Clinton reading to Susan Rice what to say on TV talk WRT Benghazi.
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Memo to NSA, please copy the Join Chiefs of Staff w/ all communiques.
Oh, I dunno. Think it might have something to do with the allegiances of the Current pResident?
Indeed. Arming Al Quaeda isn't exactly most citizens idea of American military might or right. He may be CiC but he has zero moral authority or credibility to me.
As we have bent over backwards to absorb the foreigner peasants who have invaded our homeland, American citizens are forced to foot the bills to pay for the invaders' welfare benefits. And as we avoid offending Muslim pressure groups by profiling our actual enemies, we are turning America into a police state for its own citizens - while our visitors enjoy the freedoms that were once our birthright.
Arguing against excessive government secrecy, JFK warned that it wouldn't matter if our nation survived if its traditions of freedom and independence did not survive with it. How right he was!
I loath big government, have contempt for statism, and quite libertarian save sovereignty and social. I also refuse to condemn the NSA and fully support its efforts to track threats. While Snowden’s allegations demand hearings, I am definitely not “silent” on natsec as a consequence of his revelations — the subtext of McCarthy’s article.
The Country’s greatest obstacle to security and liberty is the body of elected officials that claim to represent the Citizens and Constitution.
There, I fixed it that sentence.
The PATRIOT Act was a product of our vigorous and persuasive contention, on the national-security right, that the challenge was an enemy force, not a criminal-justice problem.
The PATRIOT Act was a hysterical, Tyrannical abomination, Orwellian in both name and (as we have now seen) in practice...
When the left controls national security, it is the right that is targeted, not foreign threats. That is why the concern, Andy.
I, did not support FISA when it was overhauled nor the Patriot ACT and PA II.
I knew that they would be used by those who don’t see the Constitution as a barrier to their self serving nefarious ambitions.
Sure enough, that is what we have going on here.
A trawling net for any information under the rubik of National Security and then making it available across a wide swath of agencies.
It’s wrong.
Further, here is where I have always parted ways on the issue of access to my records:
“Records of subscriber usage maintained by service providers such as telephone companies — called “third-party” records because they are the property of the provider, not the subscriber — enjoy no Fourth Amendment protection”
That always been so much BS to me as the records, in fact, belong to the service provider and to the subscriber. You don’t get to bifurcated because you found a way to do so and no one challenged you on this.
Why not make the argument the bank owns my house and all you have to do is go to them for permission to search it?
Or my car. Just ask the leasing company for permission.
Hey, why stop there? What about all those computers and multi-function printers? They’re leased a good many times.
Why, just ask the leasing company for permission to peruse “their” equipment and ask the landlord for permission to enter the premises?
That argument never made sense to me that the service provider is the holder of the records.
They are also the responsible organization(resporg) for managing my phone numbers and toll free numbers. Does that make them the owners? No, the numbers belong to me. They are only responsible for maintaining service and routing traffic “As I direct”.
They cannot use those lines or numbers for their own. They belong to me.
That argument still does not hold water today.
But if American terrorists account for maybe .00000001% of the population, why do they need %100 of our phone records?
Now, I know that one terrorist can potential kill and sicken tens of thousands of people but aren't the security personel in our government smart enough to stop terrorists without intruding into our innermost private matters, where the government can make any of us absolutely vulnerable to its power even if we didn't do anything wrong?
Mr. McCarthy, the constitution isn’t optional.
All this government spying isn’t about making us safe from terrorists. It’s about making the elites safe from us.
Seems like I’m seeing lots of defense of the NSA surveillance in the press—NY Post and Wall Street Journal anyway. Of the amnesty bill too. Am I reading this right? So where do we go for constitutional defense, besides FR and the left-wing press?
Liberty Valance: “Arming Al Quaeda isn’t exactly most citizens idea of American military might or right.”
We are providing aid to our enemies. It’s a simple as that. It’s been going on for a long time, at least since Operation Allied Force when we waged war against the Serbians on behalf of the Muslim Kosovar Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998.
Excellent argument.
Too bad Common Sense no longer exists in the majority of this people that have made government their god.
They don’t care, as long as they are provided for.
The rest - simply shrug their shoulders and say “What can we do about it?”
And truly - what can we?
Leadership has sold our liberties out from under us. We’ve done nothing in the face of overt subjugation of our rights. The Oligarchy tells us that we have no Rights, and that they do not apply to us in this or that circumstance.
How long before they rule that our rights do not apply to us because of our faith or our political affiliations?
History teaches that this is indeed what always happens in Leftist totalitarian dictatorships.
OK, here’s my retort to yahoos like Excitable Andy:
We’re not and, with the exception of overthrowing the Taliban in ‘02, haven’t been engaged in a real “war on terror.”
We’ve been engaged in this idiotic, twisted pretzel logic of “Islam is a religion of peace” one the one hand, while acting surprised when it isn’t on the other. In between, we’ve done seriously stupid things like allowing terrorists to escape our grasp while we worry about “building coalitions” and “respecting our partners.”
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
If there were a real “war on terror,” we’d see the same level of activity as we saw in ‘02: B-52’s dropping very large munitions on the enemy.
My new litmus test of whether or not we’re truly making “war” on something is “Are there B-52’s involved? No? Then it’s a ‘war’ only in the minds and mouths of politicians.”
“War on drugs?” Not a war, unless we’re talking about the shredding of the Constitution.
“War on terror?” Not a war, and again, we’re talking of shredding the Constitution.
“War on poverty?” Yea, that’s a huge grifting off of future generations of Americans.
When I hear or use the noun “war,” I’m referring to a situation where we don’t give a rat’s ass about being nice to people. In my version of the word “war,” we kill people, stack their bodies into trenches and wreck real estate by the square mile.
Somewhere, these weasel lawyers who now run everything have ruined our ability to make real war. Oh, we want to “pursue” terrorists, and “bring them to justice.”
Bullcrap. We need to simply kill them, not bring them into court. There’s no point in “bringing them to justice” in Gitmo. We’re just building a more complicated problem. We should simply kill them in the field.
The lesson to be learned from the Bush/Obama era is this: Never send a lawyer to do the job of the US military. That’s what these “wars” have now become: public policy debates by Ivy Leaguers, enforced by our military. When the “enforcement” goes wrong, the lawyers never suffer. Our people in the military suffer.
This is bullcrap. Want to talk about “war?” Then cry havoc and turn loose the dogs of war. Watch the funeral pyres’ smoke rise into the sky, drive the enemy into a corner and kill him. That’s war.
If we want to win the war against Islam (and that’s what we’re fighting - not some “radical strain of Islam”) then it is high time we tell the lawyers from the Ivy League to go powder their noses and play their intellectual word game onanism with each other while hard men go forth to kill people and break things.
We need to wage war on “waging war”.
I suggest GOD through prayer. Washington thought so too.
LLS
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