I Think Obama Doesn't Want A 911 On His Watch...

[thucythucy]

102. If another 9-11 happens

the authoritarian state will inevitably follow.

Look what happened after the last 9-11: the Patriot Act, warrant-less wire-tapping, water boarding, "watch what you say and do," not to mention the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the exponential growth of the national security apparatus. A successful attack on the scale of 9-11 on Obama's watch would be the end of progressive Democratic hopes for at least a generation. "They let the terrorists win" would be the GOP slogan from now into the 2050s, trumpeted by the corporate media, repeated unto death by talk radio.

It's a dilemma: we absolutely need to thwart another major terrorist attack as a way of defending our civil liberties (not to mention the lives of potential victims), and yet in order to do so we seem invariably to compromise those very same liberties.

Of course, if we had a genuine opposition party interested in having a rational debate--instead of a right wing cabal desperate for any advantage in its quest for absolute power--we might be able as a society to think this through and arrive at some sort of adequate protection of both our national security AND our civil liberties. But as things stand now, it ain't gonna happen any time soon.

President Obama is definitely between a rock and a hard place on this one. Diminish the national security state by one iota, and if there IS a successful attack he'll get the blame--even if what he cuts has nothing to do with keeping us safe. In which case the outright and up front authoritarians take total charge, as they did under Bush/Cheney. Or leave the mechanisms of potential authoritarianism intact, and risk their further development as instruments of repression anyway.

In some ways this is analogous to what Democrats faced in the 1950s. After a decade of the "soft on communism" charge, the only way a Democrat could win in 1960 was to out cold warrior the cold warriors. Hence, JFK with his non-existent "missile gap," his belligerent anti-Castro rhetoric, his uptick in Vietnam.

So it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I wish I could see an easy way out of this, but I don't.