Bush Fear Mongering Cowes Democrats – Old News
I suppose we should be grateful that the bill just passed by Congress to allow the Bush administration expanded authority, for unsupervised snooping on communications between suspected terrorists abroad that are routed through the United States, has a shelf life of only six months. Maybe that will be long enough for Congressional Democrats to grow a spine.
The new legislation is an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and while its intent is to allow electronic surveillance of communications between suspects outside of the US, with this administration’s track record we can rest assured they will go much further than that.
To their credit most Democrats in the House voted against the bill and they have promised a more comprehensive bill later that may not please the administration so much. Still, the fact that Democrats yet again were so easily cowed by the usual campaign of ugly, unscrupulous and irresponsible Republican charges of jeopardising the country is really disheartening.
There are big issues to be faced by the nation as we decide whether the Bush administration’s Big Brother authoritarianism, its assault on our civil liberties at home, and Soviet-style treatment of suspected terrorists abroad by utilizing secret prisons, torture and kangaroo courts, is an aberration or represents a permanent change to our values and principles – in short, to what it means to be an American.
The Democrats have the right instincts on these issues but the question is whether they have the courage of their convictions. They will face ferocious fear mongering from Bush, the GOP and the right wing hate machine that they are weak and cannot be trusted to wage the struggle against the terrorists. This is not new. There’s no question that it’s a tough issue for Democrats to make to a still fearful electorate; 30-second right-wing rants, no matter how mindless, are difficult to counter with an argument that requires nuance on the need to be smart as well as tough, and to protect what it is about America that has made our democracy the beacon for others it once was.
It’s a case Democrats must make, however, not simply for the sake of the nation but lest they be tagged as GOP-lite. When all’s said and done, why vote for the imitation when you can have the real thing?
