Interesting thoughts via Daniel Henninger on liberty and security:
Jim Woolsey, the former CIA director, agrees that American conspiracy law is a big tent and that "a balance needs to be struck." But he thinks it is a mistake to think about the terror threat in traditional, individual-liberty terms. "The tough case," he said "is what to do with groups that have as their explicit objective, as much of the Muslim Brotherhood does, an Islamic state governing North America? It's hard because it involves raising [security] questions around people who purport that these are their religious beliefs. Our constitutional structure has real problems with that."Posted by Alan at June 30, 2006 06:03 AMThose difficulties notwithstanding, Mr. Woolsey thinks it would make sense to attempt a legislative carve-out of special, defined status for this threat, similar to what we did for communism during the Cold War. I agree. We are damaging ourselves now by conflating traditional individual-liberty concerns with the reality of a global, anti-American movement. Sen. Arlen Specter is the leading example of trying to plug ancient square pegs into this new round hole in our security.
To clarify the new threat, Mr. Woolsey analogizes the McCarran Act, "which made the commies' lives here miserable, if not illegal." That's an interesting idea. The American left will go screaming into the streets at the word "McCarran," but I'd urge anyone else to look at the law's description of the enemy; pull out "communist movement" and drop in "Islamic jihad" and the current threat achieves defined status.
The tension between the Bush administration and its critics has much to do with the fact that the government's surveillance programs are justified to fight a blob called "terrorism." The conceit is we're all supposed to mumble, sotto voce, that it's really Islamic terrorism; but for reasons of delicacy the government won't quite say that and won't make it official. That gives the administration's critics at least a basis for arguing that its surveillance claims are too broad. In this way the Taliban on Guantanamo reach the status of Everyman, even in the minds of Supreme Court justices. Why not a congressional act defining the threat? So what if it failed? The purpose would now be plain and even the New York Times could no longer pretend it can't distinguish between wiretaps on revolutionary Islamic fanatics and Patrick Henry's descendants.