[IP] Disturbing: USA PATRIOT and 'Long War' tedium
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Disturbing: USA PATRIOT and 'Long War' tedium
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 09:24:02 -0500
From: Richard Forno <rforno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Blaster <rforno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
'Long war' is breaking down into tedium
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn051.html
March 5, 2006
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
I had to sign a tedious business contract the other day. They wanted my
corporation number -- fair enough -- plus my Social Security number -- well,
if you insist -- and also my driver's license number -- hang on, what's the
deal with that?
Well, we e-mailed over a query and they e-mailed back that it was a
requirement of the Patriot Act. So we asked where exactly in the Patriot Act
could this particular requirement be found and, after a bit of a delay, we
got an answer.
And on discovering that there was no mention of driver's licenses in that
particular subsection, I wrote back that we have a policy of reporting all
erroneous invocations of the Patriot Act to the Department of Homeland
Security on the grounds that such invocations weaken the rationale for the
act, and thereby undermine public support for genuine anti-terrorism
measures and thus constitute a threat to America's national security.
And about 10 minutes after that the guy sent back an e-mail saying he didn't
need the driver's license number after all.
I'd be interested to know how much of this bureaucratic opportunism is going
on. A couple of weeks earlier, I went to the bank to deposit a U.S. dollar
check drawn on a Canadian financial institution, and the clerk announced
that for security reasons checks drawn on Canadian banks now had to be sent
away for collection and I'd have access to the funds in a couple of weeks.
This was, she explained, a requirement of -- ta-da -- the Patriot Act. And,
amazingly, that turned out not to be anywhere in the act either.
Any day now, my little girl will wake up, look under the pillow and find a
note from the Tooth Fairy explaining that before processing of financial
remuneration for said tooth can commence, the Patriot Act requires the
petitioning child to supply a federal taxpayer identification number and
computer-readable photo card with retinal scan.
I don't have a problem with the Patriot Act per se, so much as the awesome
powers claimed on its behalf by everybody from car salesmen to the
agriculture official who demanded proof from my maple-sugaring neighbor that
his sap lines were secure against terrorism. Which is a hard thing to prove.
You may think you've secured them against terrorism, and one morning you
wake up to a loud explosion and the TV's showing breaking news of people
howling in agony as boiling syrup rains down from the skies. Apparently,
there's a big problem with al-Qaida putting anthrax in the maple supply. You
don't notice it on your pancake because it blends in with the confectioners'
sugar.
My worry is that on the home front the war is falling prey to
lack-of-mission creep -- that, in the absence of any real urgency and
direction, the "long war" (to use the administration's new and
unsatisfactory term) is degenerating into nothing but bureaucratic tedium,
media doom-mongering and erratic ad hoc oppositionism. To be sure, all these
have been present since Day One: The press have been insisting Iraq is
teetering on the brink of civil war for three years and yet, despite the
urgings of CNN and the BBC, those layabout Iraqis stubbornly refuse to get
on with it. They're happy to teeter for another three years, no matter how
many "experts" stamp their foot and pout their lips and say "I want my civil
war now." The New York Times ran a headline after the big bombing: "More
Clashes Shake Iraq; Political Talks Are In Ruins." The "political talks"
resumed the day after publication. The "ruins" were rebuilt after 48 hours.
The quagmire isn't in Iraq but at home. For five years, beginning with the
designation of "war on terror," the president's public presentation has been
consistent: Islam is a great religion, religion of peace, marvelous stuff,
White House Ramadan Banquet the highlight of the calendar, but, sadly, every
barrel has one or two bad apples, even Islam believe it or not, and once
we've hunted those down we'll join the newly liberated peace-loving Muslim
democracies in a global alliance of peace-loving peaceful persons. Most
sentient beings have been aware that there is, to put it mildly, a large
element of evasion about this basic narrative, but only now is it being
explicitly rejected by all sides. William F. Buckley and George Will have
more or less respectfully detached themselves from the insane idealism of
shoving liberty and democracy down people's throats whether they want it or
not. And, on the ports deal with Dubai, a number of other commentators I
respect plus a stampede of largely ignorant weathervane pols have denounced
the administration for endangering American security on the eastern
seaboard. I can't see that: The only change is that instead of being
American stevedores employed by a British company they'll now be American
stevedores employed by a United Arab Emirates company.
But what I find interesting is the underlying argument: At heart, what
Hillary Clinton and Co. are doing is dismissing as a Bush fiction the idea
of "friendly" Arab "allies" in the war of terror. They're not necessarily
wrong. Even the "friendliest" Arab regimes tend to be a bunch of duplicitous
shysters: King Hussein sided with Saddam in the Gulf war, Mubarak and the
House of Saud are the cause of much of our present woes. I would be
perfectly prepared to consider a raft of measures insisting that, for the
duration of the war, there'll be restrictions on access to the United States
by certain countries. As I've argued for some years, it's absurd that the
Saudis are allowed to continue with their financial and ideological
subversion of everything from American think-tanks to mosques to prison
chaplaincy programs (and, I'll bet, without providing driver's license
numbers).
However, I think we should do that as a conscious policy decision, rather
than as reflex piecemeal oppositionism. What Democrats seem to be doing with
Dubai Ports World, whether they realize it or not, is tapping in to a
general public skepticism (to put it politely) about the entire Muslim
world. In that sense, the ports deal is the American equivalent of the
Danish cartoon jihad: increasing numbers of Europeans -- if not yet their
political class -- are fed up with switching on the TV and seeing Muslim men
jumping up and down and threatening death followed by commentators patiently
explaining that the "vast majority" of Muslims are, of course, impeccably
"moderate." So what? There were millions of "moderate" Germans in the 1930s,
and a fat lot of good they did us or them.
Despite being portrayed as a swaggering arrogant neocon warmongering cowboy,
President Bush has, in fact, been circumspect to a fault for five years. But
the equivocal constrained rhetoric is insufficient to a "long war." And from
all sides, more and more people are calling its bluff.
©Mark Steyn, 2006
Copyright © Mark Steyn, 2006
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