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Opinion
Reece Terry, publisher
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Friday, June 21, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
Uncle Sam’s vast dragnet In 1929, Secretary of State Henry Stimson dismantled the department charged with breaking codes and learning other nations’ secrets. Asked why, he said: “Gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail.” Some sources quote him less elegantly as saying “each other’s mail,” but you get the gist. And boy, have we ever come a long way. We still pay lip service to our “right to privacy,” but in reality Donald we don’t have one. When you Kaul make a phone call, send email, buy something online, or arOther Words range for an automatic withdrawal from your bank, you open up your life to people who would seek to mine it for their own purposes, good and evil. Privacy? That’s so 20th century. The latest assault on our private lives was revealed the other day when an employee of a private contractor revealed that the National Security Agency is clocking all our calls and emails — where they’re coming from, where they’re going. The authorities say widespread snooping is a vital tool in our never-ending fight against terrorism. This dragnet has some people deeply upset. Others, not so much. It clearly falls short of the Orwellian nightmare of actual eavesdropping — so they tell us — but that dystopian nightmare is only a click away. It’s time to worry. The young man who gave away the game said he did it out of patriotism. “The public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong,” said Edward Snowden. President Barack Obama said he welcomed the debate. Then he sent his agents out hunting for Snowden, perhaps to give him the Medal of Freedom. Not. The situation is a real curveball for conservatives. They hate Obama and live to criticize him. But they also love national security above life itself and would never stand in its way, no matter what. They think Snowden is a traitor and should be hanged (if not dismembered). Liberals are also in a delicate spot. They’re very suspicious of the gigantic national security apparatus we’ve built and don’t like the idea of the government being able to snoop on their private conversations. Progressives wanted Obama to put an end to that sort of thing, not expand it. As a result, many liberals consider Snowden a hero, like Daniel Ellsberg, the fellow who spirited the Pentagon Papers to the newspapers that published them. Ellsberg himself has said Snowden’s leak was even more important than his own. He also likened the vast surveillance operations to the extremes seen in East Germany, declaring “the so-called intelligence community has become the United Stasi of America.” I feel very strongly both ways. On the one hand, I think the Constitution does grant us a right to privacy. The document may not do so explicitly, but this right is embedded in the right to free speech, freedom of assembly, religious freedom, and the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. We have a right to be left alone unless the government can give us a very good reason to the contrary. On the other hand, I have no desire to get blown up when I go to my neighborhood coffee shop. I’m willing to give the government a good deal of leeway to prevent that. It’s been nearly 12 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We haven’t had a truly major event like it since and that’s probably not an accident. I think our security forces are doing something right. All presidents face this balancing act between freedom and security. Pretty much all of them, regardless of ideology, come down on the side of playing it safe. I guess I’m OK with that, sort of. I just wonder where it’s all going to lead. One minute, the government is tracking your phone calls. The next minute, you’re living in East Germany. (Daily Corinthian and OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Mich. OtherWords.org)
Prayer for today Father, help us to read, retain and regard Your knowledge as our pattern for life. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
A verse to share “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” – Galatians 5:22-23
A reluctant warrior tiptoes to war Barack Obama has just taken his first baby steps into a war in Syria that may define and destroy his presidency. Thursday, while he was ringing in Gay Pride Month with LGBT revelers, a staffer, Ben Rhodes, informed the White House press that U.S. weapons will be going to the Syrian rebels. For two years Obama has stayed out of this sectariancivil war that has consumed 90,000 lives. Why is he going in now? The White House claims it now has proof Bashar Assad used sarin gas to kill 100-150 people, thus crossing a “red line” Obama had set down as a “game changer.” Defied, his credibility challenged, he had to do something. Yet Assad’s alleged use of sarin to justify U.S. intervention seems less like our reason for getting into this war than our excuse. What proof have we the rebels did not fabricate the use of sarin or use it themselves to get the gullible Americans to fight their war? Yet, why would President Obama, whose proud boast is that he will have extricated us from the Afghan and Iraq wars, as Dwight Eisenhower did from the Korean War, plunge us into a new war? He has been under severe political and foreign pressure to do something after
Assad and Hezbollah recaptured the strategic town of Qusair and began prePat paring to Buchanan r e c a p t u r e Aleppo, the Columnist largest city. Should Assad succeed, it would mean a decisive defeat for the rebels and their backers: the Turks, Saudis and Qataris. And it would mean a geostrategic victory for Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, who have proven themselves reliable allies. To prevent this defeat and humiliation, we are now going to ship arms and ammunition to keep the rebels going and in control of enough territory to negotiate a peace that will remove Assad. We are going to make this a fair fight. What is wrong with this strategy? It is the policy of an amateur. It treats war like a game. It ignores the lessons of history. And, as it continues a bloodbath with no prospect of an end to it, it is immoral. In every great civil war of modernity — the Russian civil war of 1919-1921, the Spanish civil war of 19361939, the Chinese civil war of 1945-49, one side triumphs and takes power. The other loses and lives with the consequences — defeat, death, exile.
What is the likely reaction to our escalation from humanitarian aid to military aid? Counter-escalation. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are likely to rush in more weapons and troops to accelerate the progress of Assad’s army before the American weapons arrive. And if they raise and call, what does Obama do? Already, a clamor is being heard from our clients in the Middle East and Congress to crater Syria’s runways with cruise missiles, to send heavy weapons to the rebels, to destroy Assad’s air force on the ground, to bomb his antiaircraft sites. All of these are acts of war. Yet under the Constitution, Congress alone authorizes war. When did Congress authorize Obama to take us to war in Syria? Where does our imperial president get his authority to draw red lines and attack countries that cross them? Have we ceased to be a republic? Has Congress become a mere spectator to presidential decisions on war and peace? As Vladimir Putin seems less the reluctant warrior, what do we do if Moscow answers the U.S. escalation by delivering on its contract to provide S-300 antiaircraft missiles to Damascus, which can cover half of Israel? Obama has put us on the escalator to a war already spilling over Syria’s borders
into Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan, a war that is now sundering the entire Middle East along Sunni and Shia lines. He is making us de facto allies of the Al-Qaida-like al-Nusra Front, of Hamas and jihadists from all across the region, and of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi just severed ties to Syria and is demanding a “no-fly zone,” which one imagines the United States, not the Egyptian air force, would have to enforce. Our elites shed tears over the 90,000 dead in Syria. But what we are about to do will not stop the killing, but simply lengthen the duration of the war and increase the numbers of dead and wounded. At the top of this escalator our country has begun to ascend is not just a proxy war with Iran in Syria, but a real war that would entail a disaster for the world economy. If the ouster of Assad is what the Sunni powers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt demand, why not let them do it? Anti-interventionists should demand a roll-call vote in Congress on whether Obama has the authority to take us into this Syrian war. (Daily Corinthian columnist Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”)
A scandal for each age group BY DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN President Obama is as thoroughly fenced him by his scandals as President Nixon ever was. The scandals that are engulfing him hurt him badly with both the younger voters who have been his political base and the older voters he has sought to woo. And, the media scandals are destroying his image with his political mainstay: His popularity with the press. The latest CNN poll affords ample evidence that Obama is hurting himself with young people. The survey reflects a 15-point drop in job approval among under 30 voters in just one month -- from 63 percent to 47 percent. More than half feel that the NSA scandal threatens our freedom. The very anti-war, procivil liberties attitudes that he ran on as he opposed the war in Iraq and demanded amendment of the Patriot Act are now coming back to bite him. But the use of the Internal Revenue Service to punish political foes also strikes deeply into the heart and soul of any taxpayer. The Nixonian effort to intimi-
Reece Terry
Mark Boehler
publisher rterry@dailycorinthian.com
editor editor@dailycorinthian.com
Willie Walker
Roger Delgado
circulation manager circdirector@dailycorinthian.com
press foreman
date conservatives hits everyone who has to deal with the IRS and suffer its arbitrariness. Obama’s assertion that he had nothing to do with the IRS audits is a claim that is doomed to failure. Already, a the CNN poll establishes that 47 percent of the voters believe that the IRS audits were based on instructions from above as opposed to agents acting alone. One month ago, only 37 percent believed that. But behind these scandals lie two fundamental facts about which Obama can do nothing: ■ The media has come to dislike him for his attacks on their privacy and his attempts to stop leaking; and ■ Obama has no major initiative around which to rally his forces and seize control of the agenda. Historically, the Obama administration’s decision to seize the Associated Press computers and the Justice Department’s harassing tactics against FoxNews’ James Rosen and, perhaps, CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson, constitute the same kind of blunder that arrogant presidents often make.
Just as Nixon ordered a cover-up, Franklin D. Roosevelt demanded court packing and a purge of southern democrats, Woodrow Wilson wanted the League of Nations approved without amendment, and Clinton grew arrogant and reckless, so Obama’s arrogance has proven his fatal flaw. Sensitive to criticism, crazed about leaks, he has turned the media decisively against him. The drip-drip-drip of scandal is not only the reality, it is a perception nurtured and fed by the media. It is payback. But as difficult is the lack of a second term agenda of any significance. Immigration reform, if it passes, will help him with Latino voters for a while until their basic instincts drive them toward Republicans. But the rest of the nation will remain largely unaffected and unimpressed. Meanwhile, Obamacare implementation will get more and more irritating and threatening to the average American. Obama cannot distract attention from Obamacare or from his scandals with the tools at hand. Using the presidency as theater in for-
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eign travels is no solution. History will ponder why Obama threw it all away on the vengeful pursuit of his enemies through the IRS and on a Nixonian desire to wiretap, pry and surveil. Why was he so eager to get in his enemies’ face that he resorted to tactics sure to blow up in his own face? Was it class envy? Or anger against the rich and powerful? Or taking the media for granted? Or an obsession with his prerogatives as president? What is the flaw in this Greek tragedy of a second term that is leading to his downfall? How have power and perks blinded him? Why and when did he lose that political sense that guided him so surely to the presidency in the most unlikely succession in our history? The Obama coming downfall will keep historians guessing for decades ... or centuries. (Daily Corinthian columnist Dick Morris, former advisor to the Clinton administration, is a commentator and writer. He is also a columnist for the New York Post and The Hill. His wife, Eileen McGann is an attorney and consultant.)
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