Spying on Americans is Clearly Un-American

I wrote this today. Maybe I was inspired by the ridiculous responses by the right wingers. Comments, ideas, thoughts, constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.

Spying on Americans is Clearly Un-American
By Robert Poole, Jr.

With the revelation by the New York Times that President Bush has been authorizing the NSA to usurp the Federal International Surveillance Act, one has to take the time to understand why there is so much outrage.

During the Revolutionary War the British, at times, were very harsh in treatment of Americans. They sometimes chose to invade people’s homes, take their food and even went so far as to rape the women of the household all in the name of searching for American Rebels or information on such rebels. Now obviously the searches were not always genuine. The Revolution was a particularly long and brutal war and many of these British troops may have just been hungry or looking for a shelter. But the fact that search and seizure was so blatantly abused forced our forefathers to include it as one of the very first laws written into our Constitution.

Things have obviously changed in the 230 years since the beginning of that war, but the President ordering what amounts to illegally spying on American citizens goes against everything our country fought to write into law in its inception.

The attack of 9/11 has changed this country in one dramatic way. We live in a constant environment of fear. Many in the American public feel that another attack is imminent regardless of what evidence exists to the contrary. President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have been the guiltiest of continuing this atmosphere. They have invoked 9/11 in every speech, at every turn and for every cause. They have conveniently used terror alerts at politically opportune times including during the election year in 2004 to help booster support for Bush. They have used the fear of 9/11 to link a country which had nothing to do with the attack to it, specifically to manufacture a war of choice.

And in the immediate aftermath they used that fear and irrationality to push through The Patriot Act. In it, our rights as citizens are questioned and challenged. The main abuses stem from how the act is used. The Administration has detained individuals for months and sometimes years as enemy combatants and eliminating their constitutional right to have access to an attorney or even the basic charges they are facing. These individuals can be held endlessly without charges ever being filed against them. Thankfully the high courts are systematically striking these laws down as they face challenges.

The one law in the Patriot Act that seemed most useful was the law updating our abilities to conduct roving wire taps. In this day of cell phones and the ability to switch phones and service so quickly, having the power to switch taps onto new phones when the suspect switches seems a useful asset.

The problem is anytime you give this Administration an inch, they take a mile. They take a vote to use war as a last resort with Iraq as a rubber stamp to go to war whenever they felt they wanted to. They took a very close election won with the most votes ever cast against a winning incumbent President as some sort of mandate for all of his ideological views. And they took the attack of 9/11 and the Patriot Act as a way to abuse the powers they perceived themselves to have.

First they believed they were above the Geneva Conventions. Besides domestically locking up citizens they claimed to be suspects without proof, they were doing the same in Iraq and then authorizing torture. When they felt they had a prime target they would take that suspect and fly them to countries in Eastern Europe and sometimes even in Syria and would torture them in secret prisons there. Remember all the hoopla they made when Senator Dick Durbin likened the actions at Gitmo to Soviet Gulags? Well it turns out we’ve actually used a few of those.

Now they believe that they can go around the FISA courts and wiretap anybody they want and not use the court system to get authorization. The problem with this is that besides being completely un-American and intrusive, it is also highly illegal. Nowhere in the FISA laws or even in the Constitution does the law grant the President such expansive powers.

In fact using FISA has always been the route to go. The court has existed for 30 years and has faced nearly 19,000 requests for wiretaps. In that time only 5 have been denied. That’s pretty much a rubber stamp for any request you might have. Also FISA allows you to tap someone and come to the court afterwards to get an order that is retroactive to when you began to listen in on a suspect. That shoots down one of Bush’s biggest arguments, that they need to move quickly and going to FISA would prevent them from instantly listening in on a suspect.

Another very thin Republican argument is that Bush informed the members of the Congressional Intelligence committees including Democrat Jay Rockefeller at least a dozen times. This is their way to try to dispel the outrage many Democrats now feel. The problem with this argument is that while Rockefeller was informed and he followed up with a letter of serious concern on the issue with Dick Cheney on July 17, 2003, is that other Democrats have said they were not informed. The ones that were had been sworn to secrecy by the President because of the classified nature of the situation. If they had raised public protest or gone to the press to express concerns and inform their constituents they would have faced grand jury indictments for it.

Besides those technicalities it was not Democrats who authorized NSA to subvert the law. It was President Bush who authorized it. Republicans who try to assert that because he came to Democrats first forget that unless he did that and got a law passed changing current laws on how he can conduct domestic spying that's about the only way they could affect what he was doing. Thus the only person responsible for breaking the law is him.

Another claim they have been making predictably is that former President Bill Clinton did the same thing. Of course there has been no proof put forward that this is the case and Republicans are exceptionally guilty of blaming Mr. Clinton for all of the country’s current ills when it suits them to get out of a mess they created. The easiest deflection to that argument is to ask for proof of such a tactic. If so, Clinton should face similar investigation. But one must wonder this: When everything Bill Clinton did was put under a microscope by a Republican party as they tried everything they could to remove him from power, does any rational person think they wouldn’t have used this as a way to turn the public against him?

Clinton has always been easy fodder to rile the Republican voters who base their angry opinions on him on the fact that he was portrayed as a dirty sexual deviant. In his defense he tried to push through $1.1 Billion in anti-terrorism legislation in 1996 which Republicans voted against and in 1998 he passed legislation which stopped many al-Qaeda attacks across the world.

But playing devil’s advocate, doesn’t this accusation destroy their initial point? If Clinton was already using illegal wiretaps and that system was already in place, then it obviously did not work on 9/11 and thus proves that illegally spying on American citizens does not actually prevent terrorists from attacking us.

Back to the initial point, all arguments that protect Bush’s right to spy on US citizens have giant holes in them. They try to point out that this action as well as the intent of the Patriot Act is to catch terrorist suspects abroad. When this wiretap story broke it was discovered that a group of peaceful Quaker anti-war activists were on the list of those who were being listened to. They hardly represent Osama Bin Laden.

Prior to that the ACLU has documented instances where anti-war groups in Colorado and Michigan as well as Affirmative Action groups in Michigan had been targeted and harassed by the FBI under the Patriot Act. Michael Moore documented a peace group in Oregon whom the FBI used an agent to infiltrate in Fahrenheit 9/11 last year. The Justice Department used the Patriot Act to compile a large list of anti-war protesters and watch them using the guise that they may be terrorists.

The systematic abuses that the Bush Administration has used 9/11 to perpetuate always lead to similar responses.

He says they strike quick and we need to be able to do anything in our power on a whim to catch them. All intelligence gathered from 9/11 points to the contrary. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda planned the World Trade Center bombings from the time of the first attack in 1993 and it took 7 ½ years to pull off their biggest attack ever.

In the end it seems that the best point to be made isn't that spying on Americans is a good idea and could have prevented an attack, but rather that it throws away the very piece of paper and beliefs on which our country was founded. How can we morally equate to Iraqis the purpose of having a constitution of their own when we ourselves do not obey the laws written in that framework?

Maybe instead of finding new ways to spy on political foes and claim that it helps prevent terrorism, the Bush Administration should use the greatest tool it has to tip them off to terrorist activities. Specifically Presidential Daily Briefing memos sent a month in advance of an attack advising of the upcoming attack, possible targets and the perpetrator in question.

Instead of blaming Democrats and spying on political foes, maybe George W. Bush could take a broad look in the mirror. Just as he alone failed the country by ignoring the PDB in August 2001, he is the one guilty of breaking the law now. And maybe, for once, breaking the law and the consequences that follow should apply to him.

This is an easy read with good coverage of the Bush talking points. Cornyn was trying to lie hsi way through itlast night on The NewsHour, but Russ Feingold wouldn't let him get away with it.
Thank you!

especially those paragraphs about Bush violating the very laws he pushed through. And the fact that al Qaeda works slowly rather than quickly was another excellent point.

I really like your writting style.