The Need for Offense

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, the terrorist attacks in Mumbai show us that the world is still a very dangerous place with lots of people who want to cause panic in general and kill Americans in particular. That's a fact that we forget at our own peril.

Nearly 50 years ago in his book The Conscience of a Conservative Barry Goldwater explained the rationale for an aggressive approach toward combatting the Soviet Union. He wrote that if one side was playing offense and the other side was only playing defense, the group on the offensive would always win eventually. This makes a pretty good amount of sense if you think about it.

And so here we are in the fight against terrorism. We just received another reminder that we need to be on the offensive to find and kill these terrorists before they do the same to us.

That is not to say that we should immediately embark on a mission of military adventurism in all corners of the globe. We can't go around invading and occupying every country that may now or in the past have had a terrorist. What it does mean is that we need to have a lean, focused military with a lean, focused mission: find the terrorists and eliminate them.

Despite the posturing, this is something that George Bush has not done. Now we're poised to have a new president. Let's see if he understands things any better.

Liberty, Shmiberty

Taking another page from the book Who Cares What Congress or the Constitution Say?, the Bush admininstration continues in it's efforts to show that Big Brother is alive and well.

An article in today's Wall Street Journal spells out an NSA program of domestic spying. While the program technically is focused on international information, it's hard to draw the line in the digital age. As such, there's a lot of domestic spying going on apparently. For those paying attention, this is substantially the same program that Congress killed when it was the Pentagon doing it. That's right. Congress said no, but the administration is doing it anyway. I know. Stop the presses, right?

For those of you out there who might worry that a domestic spying program seems awfully Big Brother-ish, don't worry. Kit Bond, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee says, "that's not what is happening today." Really? Because when I read the quote below, it makes me wonder.

"If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city -- for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans -- the government's spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city."

WHAT?!?! If there's a suspected terrorist somewhere in a city, any electronic communication into and out of the city can be monitored by the government? I'd be curious to hear when Senator Bond thinks that a Big Brother program begins. If being able to monitor every electronic communication in a city isn't Big Brother, what is? Where does that line get drawn?

Essentially, this program gives the federal government power to monitor electronic communications from anyone in the country. I mean, what city doesn't have someone who could be a suspected terrorist? I certainly doubt that the government is actually monitoring every communication I send, but the fact that they could is troubling to me.

What I really don't understand is why this isn't equally troubling to everyone. I get that we're fighting terrorism and that we have to take an aggressive stance to defend our liberties. But, in the end, should we have some liberties left to defend?

In Case You Missed It

Just in case you missed it over the weekend, President Bush vetoed the bill that would limit CIA interrogation tactics to those that are allowed to military and law enforcement officials. Senator Ted Kennedy is quoted saying that this is one of the most shameful acts of Bush's presidency. And that's saying something.

The point of the bill is that it would say that U.S. officials aren't allowed to torture people. In other words, it's just reaffirming the Constitution and the international Geneva Accords. But sometimes you need to remind this president of things like that.

The lead in the New York Times story about the veto said that Bush "further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers" through his actions. That's one way of putting it. Another way might be that he further cemented his legacy of wrong-headed, unconstitutional, arrogance. But I guess the Times wanted to go with a more positive approach to keep all those media-are-liberal accusations to a minimum.

Bush and his allies on this issue (I'm assuming there are some) say that CIA interrogators need to have every tool available to them in order to combat terrorism. While I agree that we need to work to be kept safe, this is crossing the line. It's simply ridiculous.

In the first place, torture like waterboarding is of dubious effectiveness. Even Gen. David Petraeus (patron saint of surges) says that it's a bad idea because it doesn't work and increases the risk for our soldiers. Experts say that torture increases the likelihood that suspects will say what they think their interrogators want to hear, not necessarily what the actual truth is. So with torture the tactics don't work, you aren't getting the truth, and you're putting our soldiers at greater risk. Tell me again how this is helping us?

Oh yeah, and there's the Constitution. Surely Bush has heard of it at least. The eighth amendment bans cruel and unusual punishment. That's even for after someone has been convicted and found guilty. For torturing suspects there's not even a guarantee that the victim has done anything wrong.

Don't get me wrong. I think that the War on Terror is incredibly serious and needs to be fought in a focused, intense way. But this is not focus. Nor was the War in Iraq. Both of these endeavors have been wrong from the start. They require a dangerous ends justify the means philosophy just to start with. Even if we assume that this is a valid philosophy, let's look at exactly what we've accomplished to make us safer and to win the War on Terror. Osama bin Laden is still at large. Al Queda is still out there. Iraq is destablized and apparently totally dependent on us. If we were to leave there's a chance that the whole region would be destabilized.

So far, I'm not convinced that the ends are doing much justifying at all.

The bottom line on all this is that what makes America a great country is that we don't go around doing things like torturing people. At least for me, I'd like to win the War on Terror, not become a part of it.

You Can't Say That on Television

Washington Post writer David Ignatius drew attention in his column yesterday to a new book by a former CIA officer named Marc Sageman. The book (Leaderless Jihad) apparently argues that the current threat posed by terrorism is being vastly overstated. Based on his experience running spies in Pakistan and as a forensic pschologist who has studied information on over 500 terrorists, Sageman concludes the terrorists we have these days are not your father's terrorists. He argues that the first generation terrorists (like Osama bin Laden) are greatly reduced in number and hiding out. The second generation of terrorists (those who trained in Al Queda camps in the 1990s) have suffered a similar fate. That leaves the third generation who are drawn to terrorism more the way urban youth are drawn to street gangs than the way fanatics are drawn waging Jihad against the west.

Undeniably, it's an intriguing argument. Let's even assume for a moment that Sageman's research is impeccable, that his logic is sound, and that his argument is substantively correct. Even then, you're not going to hear anyone talking about it this campaign.

For obvious reasons, Republican John McCain is not going to come on TV and say that the whole War on Terror is overblown. He's essentially running his campaign on the premise that he's ready to be commander in chief in a dangerous world at war. What good is military background, years of experience on foreign policy issues, and being correct about the surge if there's no war to command? (For an interesting take on the surge, read Michael Kinsley's Slate column from a few days ago.) Undermining the war on terror undermines the rationale for McCain's campaign as it currently stands. So don't look for him to be opening his mouth on the issue.

Likewise, you can't expect either Democrat to say anything about it either. They're already being portrayed as barely one step above white-flag-waving surrender monkeys. What Democrat is going to come up on the stage and say, "You know, I don't think this whole terror thing is that big of a deal after all." The mind boggles at what a Republican campaign would do with that. So don't look for the Democrats to raise the issue either.

What we're stuck with - at least for the time being - is a situation where neither political party can blink on the issue for fear of being called weak, while the essential reality of the threat we're fighting may have changed.