The Billo Battalion

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

Bill O’Reilly is a warmonger. Nobody who has even occasionally watched him on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor” can have any doubts about that. There are hardly any nations in the world where he has not urged American military intervention. Whether Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Mexico, or Russia, O’Reilly may not know all of the subtle geopolitical nuances, but he does know that he wants the American military to take swift and violent action. The United States is currently involved in military action in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The United States has the largest and most powerful military in the world by far. The United States has nearly 1.5 million active military personnel. It has an arsenal of thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, and fighter jets. The United States Navy has 10 aircraft carriers, 72 submarines, and 62 destroyers. The Islamic State has perhaps 30,000 fighters. The Islamic State has few heavy weapons, no air force, and no navy. Yet somehow this insurgent group based in Syria and Iraq has O’Reilly saber rattling on a whole new level. News that the United States planned to spend more than $500 million to arm and train “moderate” Syrian rebels caused O’Reilly to think outside of his traditionalist box. Instead of suggesting something sane such as refraining from intervening in Syria and Iraq’s civil wars, O’Reilly came up with a very different and very dubious idea.

O’Reilly has recently outlined a plan for a mercenary army of English-speaking “elite fighters” who would be “well paid and well trained.” These mercenaries—who would number 25,000—would be trained in the United States by American Special Forces. Their mission would be to “defeat terrorists all over the world.” This “anti-terror army” would be led by United States and NATO commanders and would follow American military rules of engagement and the Geneva Conventions. The “anti-terror army” would be paid for by nations in a coalition that want “intelligence and protection from the U.S.A. and NATO.” According to O’Reilly: “If you don’t pay, you get no help.” Active military personnel—including members of the United States armed forces—would not be eligible to serve in the “anti-terror army.”

The problems with O’Reilly’s proposal are legion. However, here is a short list of the most serious difficulties with the “Billo Battalion.”

1.  Placing this mercenary army outside of the United States armed forces raises questions about how it will function under the Constitution. Would the President or NATO be able to deploy it without authorization from Congress? Would Article I of the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution apply or not? This has the potential of giving an already Caesarian Imperial President even greater power.

2. It is ridiculous to believe that any nations in the coalition that O’Reilly imagines will actually pay for the services of the mercenary army. Nations such as Saudi Arabia will continue to assume that the United States will grant it military assistance as required because the precedent has already been set. The Saudis will naturally assume that—like during the Gulf War—when it needs military help, the United States will grant it no questions asked because of American need for oil. Other nations such as Iraq may be unable to pay for such assistance due to poor economies or anti-American public sentiment which could foment a rebellion. At best, this mercenary army would become yet another expensive boondoggle for the American taxpayer.

3. If no active military personnel are eligible to serve in the “anti-terror army,” then where will it find its members? It will either be left with inept fighters, rogues, or foreign terrorists. Or it may lead to the best-trained members of the United States military and allied militaries leaving the service in order to become mercenaries. And what will this do to morale in the United States military? Will brave and selfless American military personnel be pleased that there are these dubious mercenaries earning far more money than they do? American soldiers who have been  grievously wounded serving their country are not getting proper care through VA hospitals. An increasing number of military families are reliant upon food stamps. How would this be fair? Would the American people put up with it? 

4. Why assume that foreign mercenaries will bravely fight against terrorists if things become intense? Shiite soldiers in Iraq simply walked away rather than risk their lives protecting Sunni or Kurd communities against Islamic State insurgents. 

5. Why assume that mercenaries will be likely to follow United States rules of engagement or the Geneva Conventions? Mercenaries, such as those from the Academi (the company formerly known as Blackwater) have been accused of all manner of atrocities. So have UN peacekeepers. Even if commanded by capable American or NATO commanders, how can it be certain that these mercenaries will not end up being a real life version of Kurtz’s army from Apocalypse Now?

6. A potentially volatile and likely unconstitutional group of fighters is almost certainly going to create blowback. Innocent civilians will inevitably be killed. Even if such collateral damage is unintentional and even if these mercenaries perform as admirably as American soldiers do, it is still likely to inspire suspicion and hatred among the populace in areas where this “anti-terror army” performs its deadly missions. The last thing that the American people needs is its government going out of its way to create even more enemies who wish to commit terrorist attacks.

7. How can it be guaranteed that some future Commander-in-Chief would not use this “anti-terror” army against the American people? Senator Harry Reid has called supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy “domestic terrorists.” If some future President decides that the Tea Party, the Occupy Movement, PETA, or some other group of Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights are terrorists, what will stop him or her from employing this “anti-terror” army against these “domestic terrorists?” It is unlikely that American soldiers will fire upon their fellow citizens. However, foreign mercenaries will have few qualms about firing into crowds of American citizens if ordered to do so. Is giving an already tyrannical government a group of vicious Hessians to use against the American people really a good idea?

It is important to Bill O’Reilly that the United States and its President be macho. His self-esteem is apparently so low that he needs the government to knock down any other nation or group that even looks at the nation funny. Such out of control militarism has consequences. It costs blood and treasure, and it creates blowback. O’Reilly’s mercenary army is an even worse idea than those that the host usually has. 

(For a much more detailed critique of the arguments and worldview of Bill O’Reilly, read my new book The Real Culture War: Individualism vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It All Wrong. Available now on Amazon in both print and Kindle.)

On Ward Churchill and Collectivism

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

Prior to September 2011, Ward Churchill was unremarkable and not well known outside of the typical tiresome Marxist academic circles. A University of Colorado professor at the time, Churchill’s claim to fame was a dubious claim to American Indian heritage which he could not prove. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Churchill wrote an infamous essay entitled “‘Some People Push Back’: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” which set off a firestorm of controversy by calling the victims who died in the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns.” Understandably, comparing innocent murder victims to Nazi war criminals did not sit well with Americans. While many are content to merely dismiss Churchill as a loon, it is important to understand his dubious reasoning and to see his errors in thinking.

Ward Churchill is a hardcore collectivist. He believes that human beings do not have individual metaphysical significance or value. They are only significant as part of a larger group. Given his Marxist leanings, this is not surprising. Given how prevalent collectivism is today in the guise of the two dominant mainstream American political movements of neoconservatism and neo-progressivism, it is instructive to consider some implications of collectivism. Given that the collectivist views collective society and not the individual human being as the basic unit of metaphysical analysis, collective guilt is a sensible concept. Under the individualist worldview, collective guilt is nonsensical. Nearly all of Churchill’s intellectual mistakes in his argument are based upon incoherent collectivist assertions.

Churchill begins by claiming that the United States was guilty of war crimes verging on attempted genocide against Iraqis in the Gulf War and beyond. Rather than debate this claim, assume that it is true. He then asserts: “[I]t was pious Americans who led the way in assigning the onus of collective guilt to the German people as a whole, not for things they as individuals had done, but for what they had allowed—nay, empowered—their leaders and their soldiers to do in their name.” This is entirely untrue. Only those Germans who individually committed crimes against humanity were prosecuted at Nuremberg. The Allies made a concerted effort not to repeat the mistakes of World War I. West Germany was quickly brought back into the family of civilized nations, and the Allied occupation ended by 1952. All things considered, the United States allowed the Germans a quick and thorough redemption.

Churchill continues:

As a whole, the American public greeted these revelations [of an alleged American program of attempted genocide against the Iraqi people] with yawns. There were, after all, far more pressing things than the unrelenting misery/death of a few hundred thousand Iraqi tikes to be concerned with. Getting “Jeremy” and “Ellington” to their weekly soccer game, for instance, or seeing to it that little “Tiffany” and “Ashley” had just the right roll-neck sweaters to go with their new cords. And, to be sure, there was the yuppie holy war against ashtrays – for “our kids,” no less – as an all-absorbing point of political focus.

Let us again allow Churchill to have the strongest possible argument. Assume that the American people were aware that Iraqi civilians were dying in large numbers due to the military operations of the Gulf War and the crippling economic sanctions which followed. Ignore the obvious fact that for consistency, one would have to assign collective guilt to the Iraqi people for the war that their government started by invading Kuwait. There is every difference in the world between inappropriately cheering something on and actually doing it. Those in foreign nations who cheered on the 9/11 attacks were not responsible for carrying them out. This is also true of the American people if they did actually cheer on the violence and brutal sanctions against Iraq. Despite the fact that the United States is a democratic republic, its citizens still cannot be held morally responsible for the actions of their President and Congress. The United States does not have a direct democracy, and elections are not held often. Even if every American had voted for and approved the Gulf War and the sanctions against Iraq, this still would not make them morally culpable. If such a notion of collective political guilt were to be held, it would mean that when a politician commits a criminal offense involving corruption, each and every constituent would have to be sent to prison. In addition, crony capitalism, disrespect for the Constitution among elected federal officials, and a broken electoral process all make the American people more and more attenuated from the harm caused to the Iraqi people. Also, the fact that the government lied to the American people about Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti babies in incubators and about Iraq preparing to invade Saudi Arabia indicates that the American people were not fully informed. The government and the corporatist mainstream media used propaganda that would have made Goebbels jealous in selling the war.

Churchill also suggests that capitalism is to blame for the crimes against humanity committed against Iraqis:

Property before people, it seems—or at least the equation of property to people—is a value by no means restricted to America's boardrooms. And the sanctimony with which such putrid sentiments are enunciated turns out to be nauseatingly similar, whether mouthed by the CEO of Standard Oil or any of the swarm of comfort zone “pacifists” queuing up to condemn the black block after it ever so slightly disturbed the functioning of business-as-usual in Seattle.

While history has shown ad nauseum that free markets produce exponentially better economic outcomes for nations than the disastrous Marxist policies that Churchill favors, this is the one place where Churchill is not entirely off base. Corporatism involving the Military-Industrial Complex and war profiteers such as Halliburton does lead to the ginning up of unnecessary wars. The corporatist banking cartel of the Federal Reserve likewise encourages wars for its own ends.

Churchill’s next mistake is in his characterization of the 9/11 hijackers. He lionizes these murderers as brave warriors. He views them as “combatants” instead of terrorists. Given that the hijackers were predominantly Saudi, there is simply no way to characterize them as “combatants” connected with the Gulf War. The United States waged war against Iraq partly in defense of Saudi Arabia. Churchill’s claim is as ridiculous as Belgians claiming that they are waging war against the United States in response to Americans warring against Germany in WWII. To avoid this absurdity, he takes an even wider approach:

A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants has been waged more-or-less continuously by the “Christian West”—now proudly emblematized by the United States—against the “Islamic East” since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago. More recently, one could argue that the war began when Lyndon Johnson first lent significant support to Israel’s dispossession/displacement of Palestinians during the 1960s, or when George the Elder ordered “Desert Shield” in 1990, or at any of several points in between.

Churchill’s collectivist worldview is even more inappropriate here. There are no individuals in this collectivist vision. Those who live in the “West” or “Islamic East” are not individual humans beings. Neither Christians nor Muslims are individuals. They simply exist in virtue of class membership. Apparently, based on this reasoning, all collectivized humans are engaged in countless wars based upon their race, ethnicity, nationality, etc. Greeks and Iranians should still be killing each other as part of the ancient Greco-Persian Wars. And Parthonons and Fomorians should still be warring in Ireland.

Churchill’s most incendiary claim—the aforementioned “little Eichmanns” comment—is that there were no innocent victims on 9/11:

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . .

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the “mighty engine of profit” to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved—and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to “ignorance”—a derivative, after all, of the word “ignore”—counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in—and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it.

In Churchill’s fevered brain, nobody is innocent. This collectivist belief provides a sickening justification for total war. It is also a double-edged sword. It means that innocent civilians—including children—in the Middle East are fair game in this war. A bloodthirsty neoconservative could use Churchill’s argument and claim that because the brave Islamic “combatants” attacked the United States on 9/11, this means that the United States has the right to strike back. Since young Muslim children will grow up to become militants who will hate the United States and may attempt to attack Americans, they are all fair game.

Ultimately, Ward Churchill’s hateful collectivism promotes endless cycles of bloody killing. One wonders with his cultural hyperopia if he is actually even able to physically see individual human beings.

(For a much more detailed critique of collectivism, read my new book The Real Culture War: Individualism vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It All Wrong available now on Amazon in both print and Kindle.)

The Fearmongering of King Abdullah

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has recently issued dire warnings about the Islamic State and other Jihadists that are wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria. He claims that the West will be the next target of the Jihadists unless the United States and its allies act quickly:

If we ignore them, I am sure they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month. … Terrorism knows no border and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East.

The remarks of the decadent and cruel Saudi tyrant raise two questions. Why is he saying this? Is he correct?

It is obvious why King Abdullah is fearmongering. He wants the United States to do his dirty work. He fears that Jihadists such as those in the Islamic State may threaten his corrupt rule. Any time that Saudi Arabia fears that its monarchy is threatened, it inevitably tricks the United States into sacrificing its blood and treasure in defense of the brutal human rights violating kingdom. When Saddam Hussein was rattling a saber at Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah coaxed the United States to attack Iraq. Knowing that inviting Osama bin Laden and his followers into Saudi Arabia to protect the kingdom and the Holy Land from Saddam Hussein would have been the first step in his overthrow, King  Abdullah coaxed President George H.W. Bush to place American troops in Saudi Arabia to defend the monarchy from both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The blowback that resulted was aimed at the United States and not Saudi Arabia, so what did King Abdullah care? It was not like any planes were flown by terrorists into any of his palaces.

King Abdullah again feels threatened, so it is American troops who must die in protecting him. It is American taxpayers who must foot the bill. It is the United States that must suffer blowback.

It is equally obvious that King Abdullah’s histrionic warning is dubious at best. There is no reason to believe that the Islamic State is any threat to Europe or to the United States. Not in the next two months. Not ever. The Islamic State is a different beast than is Al Qaeda. Despite its cruel and bloody actions, the Islamic State is not truly a terrorist organization. It is an insurgency. Baghdadi is not content to hide in a dump in Pakistan. He wishes to be a Caliph and live in opulence as does King Abdullah. The Islamic State seeks to kill Shiites in Iraq, Syria, and beyond. It seeks to form a caliphate in that region. Baghdadi is far too occupied fighting the Syrian army, the Iraqi army, and Shiite militias to even contemplate attacking the West. The Islamic State may kidnap Americans in the Middle East to use to raise financing through ransom or to use as recruiting tools as was done with James Foley. However, there is no chance that the Islamic State will be marching in with its black masks and rifles and threatening London, Paris, Berlin, or New York. They may one day be marching into Riyadh, but that is King Abdullah’s problem. It is not like the oil-rich tyrant is hard up for money. He clearly has the means to raise an army to defeat the Islamic State. Only he does not wish to spend the money or risk blowback. King Abdullah is the one who should act quickly and boldly against the Jihadists. But do not hold your breath.

Memo Authorizing Targeted Drone Killing of Al-Awlaki Released

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

The memo by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel which authorized the targeted drone killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without a trial was released earlier this week. The memo reasons that the targeted killing of American citizens such as al-Awlaki is not a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1119 which makes it a federal offense for an American citizen to murder or attempt to murder another American citizen in a foreign nation. The memo appeals to the public authority justification as providing an exemption to the statute in such cases of targeted killings. Public authority justification comes into play where “the defendant knowingly committed a criminal act but did so in reasonable reliance upon a grant of authority from a government official to engage in illegal activity.” The memo concludes that the Department of Defense and CIA operations involved with the targeted killing of al-Awlaki were justified under a particular variant of public authority under “the lawful conduct of war.”

This defense of the al-Awlaki assassination is dependent upon the War on Terror being an actual war, and this is dependent upon the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) being a legal Congressional declaration of war. As argued at length in a previous post, the AUMF is not a declaration of war because war must be declared against a specific entity, there is no precedent for declaring war against groups or individuals rather than against nation states, and terrorists cannot be viewed as both criminals and enemy combatants.

Assuming for the moment that AUMF is a legitimate declaration of war, the next step of the memo’s justification for the targeted killing of al-Awlaki is based upon the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004). In that landmark case, the Court ruled that American citizens designated as enemy combatants have a right to challenge their detainment under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Court supported its plurality opinion that it was appropriate to limit the amount of due process that an American citizen enemy combatant received by appealing to a three part test formulated in Mathews v. Eldridge (1976):

1. The interests of the individual in retaining their [life, liberty, or] property, and the injury threatened by the official action
2. The risk of error through the procedures used and probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards;
3. The costs and administrative burden of the additional process, and the interests of the government in efficient adjudication.

In Hamdi, the Court ruled that an American who was being detained as an enemy combatant after being captured on a battlefield overseas required notice of the charges, access to counsel, and an opportunity to be heard. Although the Court held that the due process requirements of placing the burden of proof on the government and of making hearsay inadmissible would place too much of a burden on the executive branch during hostilities, the due process requirements for such individuals were nevertheless still stringent.

The government claims that capturing al-Awlaki was infeasible. It concludes that it was reasonable to believe that a decision-maker could conclude the threat posed by al-Awlaki’s activities to United States persons was “continued” and “imminent” and that this outweighed the risk of possible erroneous deprivation.

However, the hole in the memo’s reasoning is that depriving an American citizen of his or her life is far more serious than depriving him or her of liberty as in the cases of the detention of American citizen enemy combatants as in Hamdi. This makes it reasonable to conclude that the amount of due process to be afforded to the target of assassination should be equivalent to that afforded to detained enemy combatants if not even greater.

The biggest issue is the Orwellian nature of the War on Terror created by the AUMF. The very vague nature of organizations like Al Qaeda makes it all too easy for the federal government to find even the most arbitrary of connections between an American citizen and Al Qaeda. Even where such connections do not exist—like the alleged connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that the Bush administration “found”—this will not necessarily discourage the government. Using its tortured logic, more and more Americans will become potential targets of targeted killing. Public authority and “the lawful conduct” of war can also just as easily be used as justifications for committing domestic homicides. The government sees the entire world as a “battlefield” in the War on Terror, so no American citizen is necessarily safe from losing due process in the name of doing “whatever it takes” to defeat the terrorists. Who decides whether an American citizen constitutes a “continued” and “imminent” threat to the United States? The President? What in Article II of the Constitution grants the Caesar-like power to decide life or death with a thumbs up or down like an Emperor to the President?

Highlights and Analysis of President Obama’s Appalling NSA Speech

by Gerard Emershaw

President Obama’s January 17, 2014 speech on NSA surveillance may cause some devoted progressives to claim that the Commander-in-Chief has seen the light on civil liberties. However, anyone who listened to the speech with his or her ears rather than a deaf progressive heart understands how the President said nothing encouraging in terms of willingness to fulfill his duty to defend the Constitution. 

1. Isn’t spying on our enemies different from spying on our citizens?

President Obama pointed out that the United States government has a long history of employing various types of surveillance in an effort to keep the nation and its citizens safe:

At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the “The Sons of Liberty” was established in Boston. And the group’s members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America’s early Patriots. Throughout American history, intelligence has helped secure our country and our freedoms. In the Civil War, Union balloon reconnaissance tracked the size of Confederate armies by counting the number of campfires. In World War II, code-breakers gave us insights into Japanese war plans, and when Patton marched across Europe, intercepted communications helped save the lives of his troops. After the war, the rise of the Iron Curtain and nuclear weapons only increased the need for sustained intelligence gathering. And so, in the early days of the Cold War, President Truman created the National Security Agency, or NSA, to give us insights into the Soviet bloc, and provide our leaders with information they needed to confront aggression and avert catastrophe.

However, what the President failed to note is that spying on the Confederacy, the Axis Powers, and the Soviets were different than spying on American citizens with the NSA through the bulk collection of metadata. No rational American would criticize spying on dangerous enemy governments. The NSA and other American intelligence agencies can spy on China, Russia, and even allies such as Germany. These agencies can also spy on terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. But why do they need to spy willy nilly on American citizens?

2. Don’t bring up a cautionary tales if they don’t make you proceed with caution.

President Obama discussed the Constitution, the checks and balances built into the American form of government, totalitarianism, and past abuses by American intelligence agencies:

Throughout this evolution, we benefited from both our Constitution and our traditions of limited government. U.S. intelligence agencies were anchored in a system of checks and balances—with oversight from elected leaders, and protections for ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, totalitarian states like East Germany offered a cautionary tale of what could happen when vast, unchecked surveillance turned citizens into informers, and persecuted people for what they said in the privacy of their own homes.

In fact, even the United States proved not to be immune to the abuse of surveillance. And in the 1960s, government spied on civil rights leaders and critics of the Vietnam War. And partly in response to these revelations, additional laws were established in the 1970s to ensure that our intelligence capabilities could not be misused against our citizens. In the long, twilight struggle against Communism, we had been reminded that the very liberties that we sought to preserve could not be sacrificed at the altar of national security.

But what is the point of bringing up cautionary tales if these tales do not make you cautious? One of the most important checks against tyranny from the federal government has been the Fourth Amendment, yet President Obama did not refer specifically to it even once during his speech. He brought up Stasi East Germany, but he failed to recognized that the NSA, FBI, and CIA are beginning to resemble East Germany’s Stasi and that the Department of Homeland Security’s “see something, say something” campaigns have attempted to turn Americans into informers. The fact that the United States government has used its vast spying apparatus against its own people on so many occasions—COINTELPRO, Operation CHAOS, Nixon’s “Plumbers,” Project Shamrock, Project MKUltra, Operation Northwoods, etc.—should lead President Obama to realize how close the nation can come to becoming a totalitarian surveillance state.  It is one thing to say that “the very liberties that we sought to preserve could not be sacrificed at the altar of national security” and another thing entirely to mean it. Meaning it requires being ever-vigilant in preserving natural rights regardless of what threats—even if existential—the nation faces. Being truly aware of “cautionary tales” such as Stasi East Germany and the various violations of rights by American intelligence agencies which the Church Committee revealed in the 1970s means making it a priority to oversee these executive agencies. President Obama has at most given lip service to this responsibility. At worst he has cynically pretended to do it while in fact helping these security agencies violate Constitutional rights.

3. Neoconservative in Progressive’s clothing?

President Obama sounded like Vice President Dick Cheney or some member of a 1990s neocon think tank when he said:

If the fall of the Soviet Union left America without a competing superpower, emerging threats from terrorist groups, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction placed new and in some ways more complicated demands on our intelligence agencies. Globalization and the Internet made these threats more acute, as technology erased borders and empowered individuals to project great violence, as well as great good.  
     

Terrorist threats are overblown. Threats of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are also overblown. Unlike something from Fox’s “24” or a novel by the late Tom Clancy, “suitcase nukes” do not grow on trees. Nuclear weapons are difficult to create and difficult to maintain. Hostile or potentially hostile nuclear nations have every reason to avoid allowing any proliferation. While the United States has shown caution in getting involved with military confrontations with nuclear powers, does anyone doubt that if terrorists obtained and used a nuclear weapon and this weapon could be traced to North Korea, Pakistan, etc, that the United States would not respond with a “shock and awe” military strike against such a nation? Terrorism does not pose an existential threat to the nation as did the Axis during World War II or the nuclear armed Soviet Union during the Cold War. If anything, the United States should be doing less spying and not more. If anything, the American people are finally owed the peace dividend from the ending of the Cold War.

Like the ruthless yet clueless neocons in the administration that preceded his, President Obama shamelessly invoked 9/11:

The horror of September 11th brought all these issues to the fore. Across the political spectrum, Americans recognized that we had to adapt to a world in which a bomb could be built in a basement, and our electric grid could be shut down by operators an ocean away. We were shaken by the signs we had missed leading up to the attacks—how the hijackers had made phone calls to known extremists and traveled to suspicious places.

Adapt? How about not escalating the Afghanistan War? How about not unconstitutionally attacking Libya? How about not trying to gin up a war against Syria? How about watching China and Russia—who actually probably can shut down the electric grid—instead of watching ordinary Americans? How about paying attention to obvious signs like memos stating that Al Qaeda is poised to strike?

President Obama even shamelessly evoked the debunked lie about how 9/11 could have been prevented if the NSA had been bulk collecting metadata at the time:

Why is this [NSA bulk collection of metadata] necessary? The program grew out of a desire to address a gap identified after 9/11. One of the 9/11 hijackers—Khalid al-Mihdhar -- made a phone call from San Diego to a known al Qaeda safe-house in Yemen. NSA saw that call, but it could not see that the call was coming from an individual already in the United States. The telephone metadata program under Section 215 was designed to map the communications of terrorists so we can see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible.

Without the bulk collection of metadata, the United States knew the identity of Khalid-al-Mihdhar well before 9/11 and knew exactly where to find him. They just failed to do so. The NSA, FBI, CIA, and their sister intelligence agencies in the federal government were all negligent prior to 9/11. Should negligent actors be awarded more power? If too much was slipping through the cracks then, why give these agencies even more hay—in the form of metadata—to obscure the needles for which they are searching?  

4. Pot, meet kettle.

President Obama pulled out one of his favorites from his bag of tricks—blaming President Bush:

And yet, in our rush to respond to a very real and novel set of threats, the risk of government overreach—the possibility that we lose some of our core liberties in pursuit of security—also became more pronounced. We saw, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, our government engaged in enhanced interrogation techniques that contradicted our values. As a Senator, I was critical of several practices, such as warrantless wiretaps. And all too often new authorities were instituted without adequate public debate. 

As usual, the President did not let the facts get in the way of a good story. Enhanced interrogation? What is the difference between doing it and having some ally do it in a secret prison overseas after you have allowed terror suspects and others to be whisked away using extraordinary rendition? How was Bush’s warrantless wiretapping any worse than what the NSA has done on President Obama’s watch?

5. President Obama’s War on Whistleblowers will continue.

President Obama has been notoriously hard on whistleblowers. He assured us that he will continue to fight this war in earnest: 

And given the fact of an open investigation, I’m not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden’s actions or his motivations; I will say that our nation’s defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation’s secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy. Moreover, the sensational way in which these disclosures have come out has often shed more heat than light, while revealing methods to our adversaries that could impact our operations in ways that we may not fully understand for years to come.

Without whistleblowers, how would the people ever learn of abuses done by clandestine government organizations? One wonders if President Obama believes that Woodward, Bernstein, and Deep Throat should all have been prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act.

6. Friend of false dilemma.

President Obama implied time and time again that one can either accept that the NSA must violate Constitutional rights or one believes that the nation should disarm its intelligence agencies. This is the kind of black and white thinking that made President George W. Bush infamous. It turns out that President Obama is also skilled in such fallacious thinking:

First, everyone who has looked at these problems, including skeptics of existing programs, recognizes that we have real enemies and threats, and that intelligence serves a vital role in confronting them. We cannot prevent terrorist attacks or cyber threats without some capability to penetrate digital communications—whether it’s to unravel a terrorist plot; to intercept malware that targets a stock exchange; to make sure air traffic control systems are not compromised; or to ensure that hackers do not empty your bank accounts. We are expected to protect the American people; that requires us to have capabilities in this field. Moreover, we cannot unilaterally disarm our intelligence agencies.

Who was suggesting that the United States disarm its intelligence agencies? This is like saying that anyone who opposes unnecessary and unconstitutional uses of military force believes that the United States should disarm its military and throw up the white flag to its enemies around the globe. President Obama again and again misses the point. Surveilling foreign governments and terrorists is necessary. Nobody is denying that. But why does that mean that the NSA should be collecting information on citizens domestically without probable cause or even suspicion? Why is the federal government targeting American citizens at all when all the 9/11 plotters were foreign?

7. No such thing as double standards.

President Obama claimed that employees of the NSA and other intelligence agencies can be trusted because they are just like us:

Second, just as ardent civil libertarians recognize the need for robust intelligence capabilities, those with responsibilities for our national security readily acknowledge the potential for abuse as intelligence capabilities advance and more and more private information is digitized. After all, the folks at NSA and other intelligence agencies are our neighbors. They're our friends and family. They’ve got electronic bank and medical records like everybody else. They have kids on Facebook and Instagram, and they know, more than most of us, the vulnerabilities to privacy that exist in a world where transactions are recorded, and emails and text and messages are stored, and even our movements can increasingly be tracked through the GPS on our phones.

Uh, members of the Gestapo, the KGB, and the Stasi were just like ordinary Germans, Soviets, and East Germans. So why did members of those organizations not “readily acknowledge the potential for abuse?” Could it be that members of spy agencies have the ability to exempt themselves and their family members? What is to prevent members of the NSA from formulating a policy of not surveilling employees, friends, and family of the agency? If Obamacare has taught us anything, it is that the President has no trouble with making unjustified exceptions to rules. So why not here as well?

8. Okay, I’m a crook, but look at that bigger crook over there!

President Obama essentially acknowledged that the federal government is violating the privacy of its citizens, but he distracted his audience by pointing to another culprit:

Third, there was a recognition by all who participated in these reviews that the challenges to our privacy do not come from government alone. Corporations of all shapes and sizes track what you buy, store and analyze our data, and use it for commercial purposes; that’s how those targeted ads pop up on your computer and your smartphone periodically. But all of us understand that the standards for government surveillance must be higher. Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends on the law to constrain those in power.

It is no secret that President Obama the corporatist does not like business—unless it is a business that gives campaign contributions to his party. He basically said: “Hey, the corporations are violating your privacy, too!” So what? He claims that the government should have a higher standard. But the thing is that the government is becoming unaccountable. One has a choice whether or not to do business with a corporation that violates privacy. If you do not like the policies of Facebook, then you can delete your account. If you think that Google is probing too much, then you can use other websites and online services. If you think that Amazon is spying too much on your internet activity, then you can shop elsewhere. The bottom line is that there is at least a small check against private businesses in that angry customers and others can boycott them. The two major political parties are two sides of the same rotten penny, so “throwing the bums out” will not do a thing.

9. Playing the King card.

President Obama, as he often does, referenced Martin Luther King:

In fact, during the course of our review, I have often reminded myself I would not be where I am today were it not for the courage of dissidents like Dr. King, who were spied upon by their own government.

How are those like Snowden and Manning not dissidents? At this point it seems likely that if Martin Luther King were still alive, President Obama would be spying on him. It is also plausible that Reverend King might be facing a charge under the 1917 Espionage Act or living in forced exile.

10. Fox guarding the hen house.

President Obama promised greater executive oversight:

First, I have approved a new presidential directive for our signals intelligence activities both at home and abroad. This guidance will strengthen executive branch oversight of our intelligence activities. 

President Obama has hardly proven himself to be a friend of the Constitution. The centerpieces of his presidency—Obamacare and the Libyan “kinetic military action”—both involved egregious violations of the Constitution, so how can he be trusted to provide adequate oversight?

11. Most transparent administration.

President Obama also claimed that there will now be more transparency:

Second, we will reform programs and procedures in place to provide greater transparency to our surveillance activities, and fortify the safeguards that protect the privacy of U.S. persons.

The President has claimed time and time again that his is “the most transparent” administration ever. Repeating this claim over and over does not make it any more true—or any less ridiculous. The Obama administration has been anything but transparent with its army of lawyers fighting Freedom of Information Act requests, its War on Whistleblowers, its secretive drone campaign, etc. However, even if he does turn over a new leaf, transparency is not enough. Being transparent about the violation of rights does not make those actions any less unconstitutional.

12. Whatever happened to probable cause?

The Fourth Amendment states that warrants shall not issue without probable cause. President Obama defended the NSA bulk metadata collection program by stating:

This brings me to the program that has generated the most controversy these past few months—the bulk collection of telephone records under Section 215. Let me repeat what I said when this story first broke: This program does not involve the content of phone calls, or the names of people making calls. Instead, it provides a record of phone numbers and the times and lengths of calls—metadata that can be queried if and when we have a reasonable suspicion that a particular number is linked to a terrorist organization.

In sum, the program does not involve the NSA examining the phone records of ordinary Americans. Rather, it consolidates these records into a database that the government can query if it has a specific lead—a consolidation of phone records that the companies already retained for business purposes. The review group turned up no indication that this database has been intentionally abused. And I believe it is important that the capability that this program is designed to meet is preserved.

Reasonable suspicion? Whatever happened to probable cause? It is the reasonable suspicion standard which causes the greatest problem. If the government has all this data in a big database and can dig deep into it with merely a claim of reasonable suspicion, then there is simply no way to protect the rights of American citizens. Unless and until the Fourth Amendment is fully restored and probable cause is again treated as the exceptionless standard it was intended by the Founders to be, then no safeguards will help.

13. Fascism or corporatism? Take your pick.

President Obama suggested two possible reforms to NSA bulk collection of metadata:

The review group recommended that our current approach be replaced by one in which the providers or a third party retain the bulk records, with government accessing information as needed. Both of these options pose difficult problems. Relying solely on the records of multiple providers, for example, could require companies to alter their procedures in ways that raise new privacy concerns. On the other hand, any third party maintaining a single, consolidated database would be carrying out what is essentially a government function but with more expense, more legal ambiguity, potentially less accountability—all of which would have a doubtful impact on increasing public confidence that their privacy is being protected.

Six of one, a half dozen of the other. What difference does it make if the NSA itself has this data or some third party does? Furthermore, such collaboration between government and private entities in such nefarious matters just stinks of fascism or corporatism. When government and corporations collaborate in such a manner, the only question is which one is steering the unconstitutional bus that is about to run over the people. This all begins to feel like a shell game. The NSA will unconstitutionally get this data and will be able to access it on demand. What does it matter where it is stored or who is storing it?

14. Didn’t you hear my lies the first time?

President Obama began to wind up his speech by again repeating a dubious claim:

The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security, and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures.

The NSA is collecting metadata on essentially everyone. That is the definition of spying. And since everybody is not threatening American national security, the President’s statement is simply not true.

15. Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.

President Obama concludes with some language which in another context would be inspirational:

As the nation that developed the Internet, the world expects us to ensure that the digital revolution works as a tool for individual empowerment, not government control. Having faced down the dangers of totalitarianism and fascism and communism, the world expects us to stand up for the principle that every person has the right to think and write and form relationships freely—because individual freedom is the wellspring of human progress.

However, President Obama and all future presidents must take heed. The United States did in fact help defeat the evils of fascism and communism, but there is the danger that fighting such monsters could turn the nation into such a monster. Perhaps it has already happened.