The BEAST: America’s Best Fiend — Read this rant, it’s quite good. Alarming, perhaps. True, maybe. But a good read, yes.
This little piece of clumsy marketing died off quickly, but it gave away what many already suspected: the War on Terror will never end, nor is it meant to end. It is designed to be perpetual. As with the War on Drugs, it outlines a goal that can never be fully attained—as long as there are pissed off people and explosives. The Long War will eternally justify what are ostensibly temporary measures: suspension of civil liberties, military expansion, domestic spying, massive deficit spending and the like. This short-lived moniker told us all, “get used to it. Things aren’t going to change any time soon.”
found by Christopher Sweet
(Please forgive me if I repeat any of my prior themes)
The Administration claims, and some of these NSA surveillance programs are based on that claim (authorized only by executive order), that they are not bound by FISA and that the President’s Article II role as Commander-in-Chief supercedes any act of Congress to check his powers in a time of war. Justice Alito has already said that certain of these Executive-Congress disputes may not even be justiciable by the Supreme Court.
As long as we accept that the “War on Terror” meets the constitutional meaning of war, then we are in for a period of expanded Executive power that lasts as long as there are terrorists. No president in our history has changed our country so fundamentally as Bush-43 has. And once this power is claimed for the office, what future president will relinquish it?
As I’ve said a number of times on here, “We have to give our President unquestioning support untill this perpetual war is over!”.
It is the flip side of the Nanny State and creeping paternalism. The Economist just had a cover story about it.
I love the comment about “High level whistle-blowers”:
Army Generals. Top-level CIA officials. NSA operatives. White House cabinet members.
These are the kind of people that Republicans fantasize about being, and whose judgment they usually respect.
But for some reason, when these people resign in protest and criticize the Bush administration en masse, they are cast as traitorous, anti-American publicity hounds.
Ridiculous. The fact is, when people who kill, spy and deceive for a living tell you that the White House has gone too far, you had damn well better pay attention.
that’s basically a quote from 1984, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less accurate. Orwell knew what he was talking about and his ideas seem to be coming true with each day. The Bush administration has been edging forward to an oppressive regime so subtlety that no one noticed they crossed the line years ago.