The endless war on Terror

This pretty much sums up my thoughts

No Clear Victory, or End, to U.S. 'War on Terror'
By ROGER COHEN
International Herald Tribune
NEW YORK Perhaps no new entrant into the world's political lexicon is more troubling than "the war on terror."
It's disturbing because, as used by President George W. Bush, it is often equated with past wars. In his radio address on Dec. 17, the president said: "Yet in this first war of the 21st century, one of the most critical battlefronts is the home front."
The subliminal message here is that after the wars of the 20th century, not a scarce commodity, along came a new one - another struggle Americans must fight and win to spread the beacon of liberty, this time in the Middle East.
But at the same time, the president has conceded there can be no clear moment of victory in this war; no act of surrender will be signed by Osama bin Laden (if he's alive) and it's inconceivable that the stateless terrorist movement called Al Qaeda will be vanquished in the same way as the German and Japanese armies in 1945.
To be engaged in a war without end is problematic. It requires patience. It also requires great caution in making claims of exceptional presidential war-making powers, because exceptional personal powers that last forever smack of the kinds of authoritarian regimes the United States has spent a lot of blood and treasure fighting.
On the international front, the president is showing patience. But on the domestic front, he's scarcely showing caution in arrogating wide domestic powers as a commander in chief in a period of potentially endless war.
Let's start with the patience. The remarkable election this month in Iraq - striking not least for the degree of Sunni participation - suggests that Bush's persistence in the name of a reformist Middle Eastern vision is bringing some rewards. Iraq is very fragile, but its thirst for some form of democratic government is unmistakable.
In a series of recent speeches, Bush has set out a coherent political, military and economic program for the country. His words have gained in credibility as a result of a new frankness.
He is conceding that "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," accepting for the first time that good-faith criticism of the Iraq war is desirable, taking personal responsibility for the conflict, and answering questions about Iraqi casualties without circumlocutions.
"I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," he said earlier this month. You can't get much more straightforward than that.
The president has also been clear and unwavering, despite increased political pressure, on the need to avoid setting timetables for a withdrawal of the more than 150,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq. He knows Iraq's fragile democratic experiment would probably collapse if unprotected by U.S. arms and the solemnity of a U.S. commitment.
"Victory will be achieved by meeting certain clear objectives," Bush said this month, "when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can protect their own people, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot attacks against our country. These objectives, not timetables set by politicians in Washington, will drive our force levels in Iraq."
The president might have put these reasonable aims a different way. He might have said that when the rule of law begins to have real meaning in Iraq, and a hold on the imaginations of its people, the time to consider a U.S. military withdrawal will be closer.
The rule of law is, of course, central to any functioning democracy, be it in the Middle East or the Middle West. Which brings us to the domestic ramifications of the war on terror, recently revealed by The New York Times to include warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens approved by Bush in the name of fighting terrorism.
The president has been adamant in defending this practice, insisting that it is "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution" and essential to save American lives in a time of war and in a world where terrorist plots may have devastating scope.
The administration seems to be arguing that a combination of Congress's authorization of the use of military force, passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the president's "plenary" war-making powers give him the right, in certain circumstances, to override the protection from "unreasonable searches and seizures" guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. As a general matter, the Constitution bars the government from spying on Americans without prior court approval.
A brief signed in 2002 by former Attorney General John Ashcroft sums up the administration's thinking: "The Constitution vests in the president inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."
In effect, if that suspected "agent" is a U.S. citizen, and this citizen calls overseas, Bush believes spies have the right to listen in on the call, or read e-mail, without first making the case there's probable cause to believe this American is up to no good.
That's tantamount to placing domestic security surveillance within the sole discretion of the executive branch - an upsetting of the balance of powers central to the success of American democracy and the preservation of American freedoms.
The policy is doubly disturbing because a special court, established under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, exists precisely so the president can in secret obtain a warrant for spying if convincing evidence is presented.
The president says he has reauthorized this program 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and will "do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from Al Qaeda and related groups."
That could be a very long time given the nature of the war on terror, so long that talk of the "exceptional" nature of such measures becomes meaningless. Infringements of Americans' essential freedoms then become permanent. That's not a good example for the nascent democracy being nurtured by the president's patience.