However, I must say I watched Fog Of War and was struck by how different Vietnam and Iraq are in almost every particular. There are plenty of serious questions to be dealt with regarding Iraq and the more general war on terror (including the threat to our civil liberties), but I don’t think facile comparisons to Vietnam are helpful at all.

Compare the two cases on all merits you can obtain. They are not even slightly comparable. Anyone reading this, in love with his own intelligence, who concludes otherwise, needs to get
out in the frsh air and find a new lover.

The tragedy is that these breaches of the Constitution are wholly ineffective from a law enforcement point of view. Are the 14,000 unconstitutional violations of privacy reported in the aforementioned report worth two indictments? I don’t think so.

This is a good point about the “type of war.” You’re quite right that the nature of these “wars” varies. What unites them for these purposes is that a real or imagined threat to the security of the nation from an external military force generates a real or perceived “need” for national unity and a consequent hostility to dissent.

Geof Stone

Before I lodge my formal dissent, I think a few corrections are in order:

Thunt, What’s The Matter With Kansas is a fabrication. And there is nothing sinister in differing interpretations of the Interstate Commerce Clause, just as there is nothing sinister in differing interpretations of various other Constitutional clauses (First Amendment comes to mind). The definition of a free press has changed drastically since 1789, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a conspiracy afoot to give all the power to journalists.

Jardineiro, as a former bank teller, I can tell you that the number of “suspicious activity reports” is exaggerated. Any transaction involving over $10,000 in cash requires a “currency transaction report.” If a customer decides to restructure a transaction solely to get around filing the report, the teller is required to file the report, in an effort to catch “suspicious activity.” This report has been required for something like twenty years, now, and has been vetted by the Supreme Court. However, the number cited is a total of all transactions reported to the feds under the BSA, and therefore includes more than simply “suspicious activity.” For instance, I remember a particular customer that ran a check-cashing service, so he needed lots o’ cash on hand. Just about every day he came in we had to fill out a CTR (and we had his information on file to speed things up). However, there was nothing suspicious about his activity. In fact, I think the feds would have found it somewhat suspicious if he stopped filing the reports while staying in business.

So, regarding the actual questions asked, I believe we definitely must watch our civil liberties, especially since they grow more out of custom than out of actual statutes. OTOH, I think the threat to our liberties is very exaggerated. Federal law now relaxes some of the requirements to get various warrants (wiretaps, search warrants, etc.), but the Fourth Amendment still requires probable cause and specificity. Is that an infringement on civil liberties (or civil rights, for that matter)? Regarding the very well-known law that permits investigators to find out what people are reading, I personally doubt that it will stand up in court. If it does, then it can be undone with a federal law, and I’m sure some Democrat would be willing to propose such a law.

This is not a rant against the Bush administration. Although I think the administration has gone too far, I disagree emphatically with those who think we are “now living in the most repressive period in American history.” An understanding of our own history is essential to understanding both what we are doing right, and what we are doing wrong. On the positive side, imagine how unthinkable it would be if the government prosecuted Howard Dean or John Kerry for criticizing the War in Iraq. That seems unimaginable to us. But in 1798, 1863, and 1917, the government did exactly that. It is the rule, rather than exception, in our history for government in wartime to criminally punish national leaders who oppose the war. To that extent, we have made real progress. On the other hand, the dangers posed by the detentions after 9/11, the closing of deportation proceedings, the Patriot Act, and other measures adopted or suggested by the administration can be better understood if we consider them against the background of mistakes we’ve made in the past.

Geof Stone