Fear, Itself

The Senate is debating FISA as we speak. It's certainly fortuitious of them to hold this debate and these votes during the two days leading in to Super Tuesday, where there is no oxygen for any other political story whatsoever. When you're scheming to remove Americans' fundamental civil liberties, better to do it under cover of darkness.

In the reality-based community, we understand that a rule by fear is no way to run a democracy, and is actually making us less safe.

Let me be clear: Our ability to track and monitor terrorists overseas would not cease should the Protect America Act expire. If this were true, the president would not threaten to terminate any temporary extension with his veto pen. All surveillance currently occurring would continue even after legislative provisions lapsed because authorizations issued under the act are in effect up to a full year.

Simply put, it was wrong for the president to suggest that warrants issued in compliance with FISA would suddenly evaporate with congressional inaction. Instead - even though Congress extended the Protect America Act by two weeks - he is using the existence of the sunset provision to cast his political opponents in a negative light.

For this president, fear is an easier political tactic than compromise. With FISA, he is attempting to rattle Congress into hastily expanding his own executive powers at the expense of civil liberties and constitutional protections [...]

In these still treacherous times, we can't afford to have a president who leads by manipulating emotions with fear, flaunting the law, or abusing the very inalienable rights endowed to us by the Constitution. Though 9/11 changed the prism through which we view surveillance and intelligence, it did not in any way change the effectiveness of FISA to allow us to track and monitor our enemies. FISA has and still works as the most valuable mechanism for monitoring our enemies.

In order to defeat the violent Islamist extremists who do not believe in human rights, we need not give up the civil liberties, constitutional rights and protections that generations of Americans fought to achieve. We do not need to create Big Brother. With the administration's attempts to erode FISA's legal standing as the exclusive means by which our government can conduct electronic surveillance of U.S. persons on U.S. soil, this is unfortunately the path the president is taking us down.

That's the sad legacy of this Administration; promoting fear as a way to bully a cowering group of Democrats into making key concessions on our Constitution and civil liberties. In doing so we move closer to a national security state, where the state secrets privilege keeps a veil of secrecy over executive branch abuses, where journalists who try to inform the public are threatened with subpoenas and jail time, where fear clouds reason and narrows the debate, where the war machine perpetuates in the name of fear and "keeping people safe," a fine conduit for continued imperialism that violates international law with incursions into sovereign nations.

American military forces in Iraq were authorized to pursue former members of Saddam Hussein’s government and terrorists across Iraq’s borders into Iran and Syria, according to a classified 2005 document that has been made public by an independent Web site.

The document, which was disclosed by the organization Wikileaks and which American officials said appeared authentic, outlined the rules of engagement for the American division that was based in Baghdad and central Iraq that year.

(Interestingly, that story also shows that Muqtada al-Sadr had his status as a hostile foe "suspended" and basically protected from attack. Considering that Shiite extremists are the most dangerous facet of the current war, you'd think they wouldn't placate him so much. Of course, Sadr is an example of the severe complications we have in Iraq.)

Ending a culture of fear is so crucial to the next Democratic President. We have lost so much because of fear.