(no subject)

[cnoocy]

This is a political entry, so please don't feel you have to read it.

I can understand the belief that the threat of terrorism is a new sort of challenge.

From that, I can fully comprehend the belief that new tools are needed to meet that challenge.

And it is not unreasonable to state that the chief executive needs to be able to react quickly to new threats.

Taken a little further, one could assert that the executive should be able to ignore laws as necessary.

And therefore that when he chooses to do so, that he should not be held accountable.

One could say that. But to say that is to say that terrorism is too strong an enemy for a free society to deal with.

I don't.

Comments

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

Not a good example, imho. Terrorism may not have proven effective as a tool for changing society in Israel, but it has been effective in blowing people the f___ up. I think that a society, free or otherwise, has to want to address terrorism in a way that prevents its members from being blown the f___ up.

[libskrat]

I don't know that I agree. I do not think that total safety from explosions is a feasible goal under any organization of society -- even the most totalitarian imaginable.

So the question becomes how to minimize explosions (to the extent possible, always with the understanding that zero is unattainable) while not casting away our bedrock freedoms.

Put another way, I accept a risk of being blown up, if the alternative is the Patriot Act. (Not just talking out my hat, either; I live in the DC area.)

[bookishfellow.livejournal.com]

I guess my point is that neither the Patriot Act nor Israel's rather hamfisted policies constitute reasonable strategies for dealing with terror. A better example, about which I don't really know enough to get too loquacious, might be Northern Ireland, where serious political engagement seems to have proven effective enough to push terror to the margins and eventually supplant it as the dissidents' mode of interaction.