The recent brouhaha about the Patriot act and related domestic spying by the National Security agency (NSa) is indicative of just how lackadaisical the liberal mentality in the United States has become. It's almost as if they are seeking to invite another terrorist attack on the magnitude of 9/11 or worse.
To put this into perspective, let's take a little history lesson. On December 7, 1941, a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States naval base in Hawaii, resulted in the death of some 2,600 americans, as well as the loss of a number of naval assets in the Pacific Fleet. as a result, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order interning all individuals of Japanese descent living on american territory. While no americans were particularly proud of this precaution, most agreed that it was necessary in the name of national security. Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures up to an including the loss and/or curtailment of certain civil liberties.
The events of September 11, 2001 took more american lives than were lost at Pearl Harbor and the cost in dollars was incalculably higher. Some six weeks after the hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center and well before the smell of death had cleared from the rubble, the 107th Congress of the United States passed into law, the so-called "Patriot act". Broadly speaking, the act provides the federal government with certain expanded powers to assist in the prosecution of the war on terror.
at the time the act was passed, all members of the Congress seemed to understand the meaning of the act and the significance of the extraordinary provisions, despite what some members may now be claiming. a majority of the Congress and the Senate voted in favor of the act. Prior to the act being passed, and immediately following 9/11, the NSa took the initiative to expand its domestic and international surveillance programs in an effort to thwart further attacks. Now the Democrats and their associated brain trust, including the New York Times, are challenging the legality of the NSa's actions, as well as the usefulness of the Patriot act itself.
Let's first deal with the NSa's quick and decisive actions immediately following the 9/11 outrage. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader and den mother to the liberals, had expressed concern about the NSa's activities and whether or not the agency had "specific presidential authorization" to conduct its operations. The answer to your question, Nancy, is that the NSa did have the legal authority to conduct its extraordinary surveillance through Executive Order #12333, an intelligence directive signed by the Reagan White House. as an aside, I would personally prefer an intelligence organization that is proactive in investigating suspected terrorists and eliminating any threat they might pose, than to have to answer questions about why they did not discover the terrorists cell after another attack in the same way that the Clintonistas were held responsible for missing Mohammad atta and his flying circus. after all, it was Clinton's assistant attorney General, Jamie Gorelick who insisted on erecting a solid wall between the government agencies charged with foreign surveillance and those charged with domestic surveillance. That's how they missed atta and his merry band of semi-pilots, who didn't miss the World Trade Center.
With a recent New York Times story excoriating the NSa for acting "on its own authority, without a formal directive from President Bush, to expand its domestic surveillance operations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks", the Democrats' Greek chorus has joined in the chanting about how bad defending one's self is. In a recent snitbit by arianna Huffington, she wrote that President Bush "reminded us for the 1,365,729th time" about September 11, 2001". Maybe that's not such a bad thing arianna, seeing how you can't seem to understand the significance of that attack. She also huffed about Bush "exuding the macho, Protector-in-chief swagger that got him re-elected". For my money, I prefer a macho dude on the order of a George W. Bush to one of those metrosexual Nancy boys the Democrats keep running for president.
In his popular new book Life Expectancy, Dean Koontz wrote: "In a world where rogue states ruled by madmen are seeking nuclear weapons, look at how many people fear a tad too much fat in their diets and one part per ten million of pesticide in their apple juice to a greater degree than they fear suitcase bombs." That pretty well encapsulates the Democrats' position on the Patriot act and domestic spying.
Here's the bottom line: we are at war. The enemy isn't going to quietly go away because you think he thinks you're a nice person. and before this war is won, there may have to be a whole lot more unpleasantness to endure. September 11, 2001 forever changed the world. Get used to it.
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