(no subject)

[bzarcher]

Dear U.S. House of Representatives,

Wrong Move.

Love,

The American Citizens you supposedly represent.

Comments

[ls56.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they ever think, "You know, if we have to keep it a secret, then maybe we're doing something wrong."

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Sadly, there are many good things that should be kept secret, such as intelligence gathering by legal means. But the lines keep getting blurred.

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

The other thing is, it was publicly announced that they wanted to "follow the money" to find terrorist activity back in 2001.

And now they're all "no, it was sekrit!"

I am really on the verge of giving up. That's why I haven't bothered linking said article. I read it, shrugged and went, "Yeah, and look what difference it made that he said it then."

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

Well, following the money was public, but I'm sure they'd say that expanding spying on the domestic side of things was all the sekrits.

[flying-landon.livejournal.com]

Every day, I grow more dissapproving of our government.

I wonder what it's like to live in Canada or Australia.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

One is ruled by the majestic moose and the crafty beaver. The other is the tyrannical domain of the wallaby.

[spoonybardol.livejournal.com]

Canadia has been... meh lately. Ever since Harpy took over. He stressed over and over again in the election that he would not be basing his policy on the US's, etc etc. Yet he's pretty much been doing just that the whole time. Sometimes it's been a good move, others not so much. But his moves against the media especially just reek of GOP. I swear if Canada gets a Fox-equivilent I'll throw something at the TV.

Maybe I'm just being overly paranoid about Harpy, I don't know. But I just don't like him. Hell, rural Newfoundland is pretty right-leaning in general and even a lot of the people out here don't like him.

But I'm off on a tangent.

I've mostly stopped commenting on American politics lately, mostly because it's just been the same old stuff for the past four years, partly because it's not even my country to begin with, and also because I just got tired of going 'zomg Bush'. This particular event, though, I think was a long time coming. Does a president in war time have certain powers? Yes. But he still has to answer for his actions. He's still human, and lord knows he can make mistakes. You stop questioning your government, then democracy fades away.

[flying-landon.livejournal.com]

Well, I've been against the man since 2000. Well, it wasn't so much him. It was the fact that I constantly, and still do, get the feeling that he is a complete puppet for others, and doesn't have an original thought in his head.

Oh, well, Australia it is, then.

[flying-landon.livejournal.com]

Wallaby for life!

[disciplex.livejournal.com]

Sadly, there are many good things that should be kept secret...

An excellent implied point, too rarely made. There are several things the US government does that I disagree with. And certainly, I'm an advocate of people voicing their opposition to things they oppose (a remarkably simple idea often not undertaken). But at the same time, I rarely see people willing to agree that the government does some good things in the same breath as opposing others; for example, that there are things the government does that need to be kept secret for a variety of reasons.

So bravo. Cheers for being open-minded: it's a rare thing in an age of fundamentalism of all breeds, not just religious.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

If I didn't keep my mind open, I think Karen Taylor and Hayden Schilling would drive down here and take away my degree. :D

Pax Americana

[spartanfan.livejournal.com]

I hate midterm election season. It's only going to get worse as we get closer to November.

Every asshole thing that floats through the government (condemning gay marriage, shitting on the 1st Amendment with this flag-burning thing, riling people up against the Mexicans, etc) rises to the top like cream (or other substances), and we have to stare at the news covering it breathlessly so that the politicians don't have to confront the real issues in this country.

At the same time, this leaking shit is dangerous. All of these leaks are people trying to make political points. Was it really necessary for the American public to know right now how we were tracking down terrorist funding? Probably not. I'd rather find out years later after we've knocked down al-Quieda to a few dirt shacks out in Pakistan. What did leaking it accomplish? It made political points with some people. Political points are transient things.

Are people dead now because of that?

THAT we might never know. They can keep the lid on fatalities pretty well, mostly to maintain operational integrity. As a result, every time some intelligence program gets out into the media, we always focus on "blah blah administration" or "blah blah Democrats". We forget that there are people out there, neck-deep in shit, working for the interests of the United States in hostile places, willing to die for the faceless masses who draw pictures of George Bush as the Monkey King.

Are all of our intelligence programs morally right? Some of them are no doubt morally ambiguous or even outright morally wrong. But the Empire requires sacrifice to survive. The shining spires of the City on the Hill are kept clean and neat by the occasional bucket of blood used to scrub the floors. Our fragile illusions of safety are maintained by men and women who are willing to do horrible things.

I love the Empire. It may teeter, it may have holes in its hull, but this is the greatest civilization in the history of humanity. For all the bad that happens, the good outweighs the bad.

Where else are you going to go? Australia? Did somebody in this thread seriously say "Australia"? Do you know how THEIR internal politics work? You'll /miss/ Donald Rumsfeld after a month of that. Canada? Canada is full of nice people, but living in Canada is like living in the US -- except you can't vote on what the US does any more. We're the dominant partner in that shared relationship. Stay with the money.

We're the Empire. We fuck up some times. But at least in the Empire, you can't be beheaded, stoned or burned at the stake for talking badly about us.

Re: Pax Americana

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

We disagree on a very thin point here.

At the same time, this leaking shit is dangerous. All of these leaks are people trying to make political points. Was it really necessary for the American public to know right now how we were tracking down terrorist funding? Probably not. I'd rather find out years later after we've knocked down al-Quieda to a few dirt shacks out in Pakistan. What did leaking it accomplish? It made political points with some people. Political points are transient things.

Are people dead now because of that?

THAT we might never know. They can keep the lid on fatalities pretty well, mostly to maintain operational integrity. As a result, every time some intelligence program gets out into the media, we always focus on "blah blah administration" or "blah blah Democrats". We forget that there are people out there, neck-deep in shit, working for the interests of the United States in hostile places, willing to die for the faceless masses who draw pictures of George Bush as the Monkey King.

Are all of our intelligence programs morally right? Some of them are no doubt morally ambiguous or even outright morally wrong. But the Empire requires sacrifice to survive. The shining spires of the City on the Hill are kept clean and neat by the occasional bucket of blood used to scrub the floors. Our fragile illusions of safety are maintained by men and women who are willing to do horrible things.

Much of what we have to do is terrible, and should NEVER see the light of day. It usually has drastic consquences when it does, including death or worse. (Valerie Plame is VERY LUCKY her husband is a Senator, or she'd probably be dead.)

But, at the same time, when those people in the dark places, working inbetween the weeds start to do things against the rules we have set down for them to operate by (Note - Not laws. Rules. Most intelligence operatives should not be goverened by United States Law when operating abroad...), particularly when they turn against the people who they are supposed to be protecting, I think that the media has a right and a duty to tell as many people about it as possible.

Following the money on Terrorists is a great idea.

Invading the phone, bank, and computer records of private citizens who have no connections to terrorist organizations is wrong, especially when we can probably learn a lot more on the financials side by tracing funds through places like the BBCI bank and international funds that have been traditional money clearinghouses for legitimate and illegitimate groups first.

I'll even go so far as to say that if the House had issued a statement asking the media to "show concern for American intelligence assets who could be put in extreme danger", I wouldn't have said a thing on this issue, but deliberately targeting this issue and the New York Times seems silly, if not just plain counterproductive.

Re: Pax Americana

[spartanfan.livejournal.com]

The Plame thing was the essence of why politicians need to not tinker around with the intelligence world without really thinking about what they're doing. However that name got out, the press was of course going to be irresponsible with it and publish it all around. Nobody was in the right there: not Rove and co., not the Times, nobody. That showed a failure of responsibility at every step. SOMEBODY in that chain of events could have said at any time "Is what we're doing responsible? Does this help the American people?" but didn't. The source (Rove or otherwise), the reporter, any of the editors, somebody could have said "no, this sets a bad precedent, let's not do this, or let's do this differently".

The House is being assholtacular with their resolution. The wording of the thing doesn't actually call anyone out by name, but it's clearly targeted at the Times. Again, it's election season, and this kind of stuff mobilizes the base. I hate election season.

Intelligence gathering is a difficult business. Is it necessarily a good thing that the government is digging around in large databases to find things? That's a legitimate point of argument. I think from what I know about the program that it is a responsible thing to do. They're trying to balance individual privacy against finding people who want to cause great harm to the public good. That program doesn't actually monitor communications, just logs of where traffic is going. That's impersonal enough not to tweak me, but other people feel differently.

I'm sure that there's all kinds of things being deployed to find terrorists. We only know about things that people are leaking to us. I'm sure that for every program that raises hackles, there's ten others that would probably piss everyone off more. However, I think we've generally done the right kinds of things to this point.