You know, in a “real” war, like the ones we fought against Germany and Japan during the last century, or even during the Cold War, the conflict was always being fought on at least two levels. At the top, and most visible level was the kinetic campaign – ground troops on the march, in trenches, or locked in mortal embraces and the great clash of fleets, both aerial and naval. But always, always operations were driven by intelligence: Shadow warriors prowling in darkened alleys, diplomatic dinners and locked offices, signals intelligence technicians casting broad electronic nets to capture waveform strands to weave into coherent wholes, long range reconnaissance photographs from patrol airplanes, from U-2 jets, from satellites. Huge teams of dedicated, driven men and women wove together all of these separate strands of reporting to create actionable intelligence on their adversary’s dispositions and intentions, his tactics, techniques and procedures. Because knowledge is power.
The problem is that the world wide Islamist jihad doesn’t have that kind of capability. Oh, sure, if you just want to flay the girl next door’s skin off her bones for not wearing a headscarf, murder local policemen, saw the neck of possible neighborhood “collaborators,” or bust a few unaimed caps at any crusaders and Jews that happen to roll by, then, yeah: They’ve got that. And for offensive actions, how much intelligence does it take to, say, figure out peak hours to blow up bombs on subway trains? It’s when there’s people on them! Duh!
But getting the good stuff, the operational and strategic intelligence, that takes resources. Usually the resources of a modern nation state, and well, at least since the Taliban fell in 2001, the jihad has been rather short of those, and even when they had one, the Mullahs weren’t broadly known for their enthusiasm towards a domestic, space-based reconnaissance program. When those guys looked towards the heavens there were visions of sugarplums raisins dancing in their heads, not technology. And too, there’s only so many resources to ever go around, and you’ve got to save enough to blow up ancient Buddhist statues plus shoot the impious at the local soccer stadium.
Not to worry though, world-wide terrorist people! The New York Times editor-in-chief Bill Keller knows you don’t have the personnel or materiel resources to ferret out what your enemy is doing. And because he’s dedicated to keeping it fair, his paper has your back.
According to the NYT’s own reporting, the program is legal. The program is helping us catch terrorists. The administration has briefed the appropriate members of Congress. The program has built-in safeguards to prevent abuse. And yet, with nothing more than a vague appeal to the “public interest” (which apparently is not outweighed in this case by the public’s interest in apprehending terrorists), the NYT disregards all that and publishes intimate, classified details about the program. Keller and his team really do believe they are above the law. When it comes to national security, it isn’t the government that should decide when secrecy is essential to a program’s effectiveness. It is the New York Times.
Now, obviously the Gray Lady’s been taking some heat for this decision – I mean, there’s at least 40-50 per cent of the nation who believes we’re actually at war, and another 40 or 50 who don’t believe we are, but who want to bring the troops home anyway. And you could, if you were so disposed, come to the conclusion that the Times, by exposing what it admits is a perfectly legal exercise in overseas surveillance, is offering aid and comfort to the enemy.
That either does or does not exist, and if it does not exist, then bringing the troops home ASAP will stop this non-existent enemy from killing any more of them. Because the killing has to end at some point. Even though it isn’t actually real. Because if it were real, then the enemy would have uniforms and everything, and we’d be compelled to treat them in accordance with the Geneva Conventions instead as unlawful combattants, but let’s just let that go for now, because it’s not the point the Times’ editors are trying to make. It’s this:
It’s not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case… we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don’t know about it.
We weighed most heavily the Administration’s concern that describing this program would endanger it. The central argument we heard from officials at senior levels was that international bankers would stop cooperating, would resist, if this program saw the light of day. We don’t know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling.
So damn puzzling that they couldn’t figure it out. So they decided (along with others) to kick it out there in the sunlight, and see what the rest of us could make out of it. You and me and all those financiers of terror that haven’t yet been caught or prosecuted, and now are not going to because, hey: You want to get another Pulitzer make an omelete? You gotta break a few laws eggs.
So what if that re-routed money ends up carving out new smoking holes in New York or Washington, London or Madrid? So what if, terror being terror and doing what terror does – it can do no other – that money inevitably ends up costing tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of innocent people their lives?
Sure, the program itself was legal. Sure, we all sort of expected that our government would be doing something like this, although we didn’t know the details. Sure, whoever leaked the details to the Times not only broke the law, but his or her own personal oath to the country that gave him birth and now pays his bills. Sure, the innocents who have to die are dying in the name of a monstrous cause.
Just don’t question Bill Keller’s motivations or patriotism. And don’t try to put the blood of the innocents at his door, when the time comes.
And if you do? Just try to prove that sh!t in a court of law, pal.
–
More here, and here. Shorter version of Keller’s “How much I agonized about it before helping the terrorist cause” letter here.
Fair enough. Dead horse.
Capt Lex,
A right fair post and comment thread this is. Sir Winston would be proud. I, however, find that I am wearing out the pages of my dictionary. (who said nukes were smart? not me.)
I also find that fairness and free speech, as well as the pursuit of happiness, are all alive and well and living in the kingdom of Neptunus Lex.
Godspeed, good Capt.
Subsunk
From my study of history, I see that the power of the king can be used to stamp out liberty. In 1215, society took a huge step forward by limiting the power of the King.
From my study of law, I see that there is a way for military commanders to deal with issues pertaining to captured enemies. It is called the UCMJ. In the code is a fair way for the captured to protest the way they are being detained. It, and the various codes that came before it served us well for the 200 some years we were a nation.
When George Bush tries to limit the Great Writ he is tearing apart the foundation of the republic.
911 changed nothing. The cave dwelling nutjobs were out there in 1805, and our host has heard a little ditty which points out how we should handle them.
We need to bring our troops home, TONIGHT. Stop with the absurd, Pottery Barn, analogy. You break it, you bought it! We are the rouge nation! “Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?”
As the great liberal once said:
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct. And can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
Now my friend, you’re hyperventilating. Breathe into the paper bag. The troops aren’t coming home tonight. The cost of leaving is not just our shattered prestige, influence and future purchased death and degradation, but in an immediate blood debt that will run into the hundreds of thousands. Real people. Just like you. People without the luck to be born into the freedoms you inherited by virtue of previous generations who bled and died to ensure that you could stand upon your soap box and shriek that one or more of them might be threatened, keep this up. People who hope that will we be that which we have promised to be. This is the most “liberal” cause of the last 60 years, and you are on the wrong side of history.
Courage, man – the hurt cannot be much.
By the way, the UCMJ – as you must know – applies to members of the US military. It’s the Laws of Armed Conflict, and the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war you must have been thinking about. Which apply to signatory nation states and their armed forces, as identified by uniforms, badges or markings.
Which don’t apply to stateless terrorists.
Sometimes I wonder that I have to argue these points. It makes me despair of human nature.
Lex, don’t despair…people like this will eventually crawl back under the rock from which they came. And look at it this way – maybe, just maybe your eloquence will somehow educated the great unwashed. Just maybe…I’m hoping…
I posted a powerful quote from a JAG officer who also sits in the U.S. Senate on your other thread. I fully agree with the thought that how we treat the other side says more about us than them.
How do we know they are, “stateless terrorists?” Arn’t they just accused until we prove them to be terrorists? We have picked up innocent people and slapped them in jail for years. If Bush had his way they would be there still.
Here is what a hippie peacenic said about my theroy. “We have the UCMJ, which we know is the gold standard, that achieve the protection of fundamental rights,” said Brig. Gen. Kevin Sandkuhler, a staff judge advocate for the Marines.
The lit crit in us all know the importance of words. When you use the phrase, “stateless terrorists,” it does sound new. However, the real name for them is “pirate.” Naval officers know how to handle pirates.
Lex,
Terence at 68 is not cut and paste. He is one heavy mo-fo; a four-striper in the world of New York lawyers. He is a Christian Brothers Academy graduate (1964) who quit college to join the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. Left the military after being seriously wounded in combat during the Tet Offensive in 1968. He could be the best lawyer in New York!
You are attracting some heavy thinkers indeed.
Passer By – I’ll stipulate the CV you attribute to Terence, and reserve the right to disagree with him comprehensively.
And, point out, ironically enough, that the whole text of his comment was cut and pasted from another website – his own writing.
It must have been so… perfect!
Ima – de minimis non curat lex
Whoa. Getting all pre-medieval on the man.
1. I?
1. I’m not the man, you are the man.
2. A trifle! A man seized or imprisoned, homo capiatur vel imprisonetur, is not a trifle.
Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur, aut disseisiatur, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terrae. Chapter 39 of the Charter of 1215.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/McKechnie0323/0032_Bk.html#hd_lf032.head.035
[...] You can’t argue with their fundamental truthiness. Not to mention their even-handedness! _uacct = “UA-510306-1″; urchinTracker(); [...]