Victory in the War on Terror?

The war on terror is over, according to James Fallows.

In this month's the Atlantic, Fallows argues that the United States is winning the war on terror and the time has come to declare it over. Doing so, would enable the United States to begin a more effective military and diplomatic campaign in the Middle East.

Fallows makes a convincing argument that declaring a war with no clear end in sight or benchmarks for victory, cheapens the meaning of war. A standing state of war, he argues, has baited the United States into a lack of fiscal discipline and predisposes us to overreact. As Fallows put it, "the terrorists real destructive power 'lies in what they can provoke us to do.'"

Notably absent from the list of reasons why the United States is losing, perhaps lost, its moral authority in the world is that the terrorists have baited some into legitimizing the Bush Administration’s effort to circumvent FISA courts and test the constitutional limits of the 4 th amendment right "of people to be secure in their person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath of affirmation..." The Administration has defended the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and maintains that "no change in the law is needed because the president has the inherent constitutional authority to order wiretaps without warrants in defense of the country."

While confident in their constitutional authority to conduct warrantless wiretaps, the administration has worked with Senator Arlen Specter and put forth legislation that would revise FISA law. The Specter bill has been called by Patrick Radden Keefe of Slate Magazine "an act of abject congressional capitulation masquerading as a hard-won compromise." Unfortunately, that might be the most apt description for this bill.

To give a little background, warrants are supposed to be requested from the FISA courts to wiretap international calls and e-mails by American citizens. Warrants have not been hard to come by. In fact, of the 20,000 surveillance requests in the past 27 years, the FISA court has turned down fewer than .0005 of these requests. There is also an exception to emergencies that allows initial wiretapping to begin immediately so long as the administration later seeks a court order.

Specter's bill would exempt FISA's warrant requirement for any e-mail to or from an American to anyone oversees. This bill expands the e-mail dragnet by allowing monitoring of e-mails if the government doesn't know that all senders or recipients are in the U.S. This legislation would also enable them to monitor every international call by American residents and businesses in the U.S. without seeking a warrant.

Taking into account the ease of attaining a warrant through the FISA courts and the flexibility given to carry out emergency wiretaps this bill is an unwarranted expansion of surveillance power. To those that argue that the war on terror warrants further eroding our constitutional rights to keep our nation safe from another attack, I say, the terrorists have achieved a small, but significant victory. Terrorist have baited some into giving up those rights we cherish as Americans. The protection given from unreasonable searches and surveillance by the constitution was meant to prevent the abuse of government power by people like Jay Edgar Hoover, who used personal information acquired through unconstitutional means for political gain.

Whether the war on terror is over, as Fallow argues, or will continue indefinitely, we should not capitulate as Specter has done by willingly forfeiting the constitutional protections that have given our country the moral authority to speak out against injustices carried out by abusive governments around the world.