Bring It On!

William Kristol is a Skinny, Little Idiot.

December 29th, 2005 | by Jersey McJones |

I’ve made the mistake of reading conservative columns before, but the William Kristol piece I read from the January 2 Weekly Standard takes the cake – and lets you eat it. It seems Mr. Kristol is concerning himself with a paranoia he detects in the line of critical questioning from his fellow Americans regarding the recent NSA/FISA-bypassing "snooping" controversy. So what is it, Mr. Kristol? Trust the government or distrust the government? And which government do we trust? And which branch? I assume you have a conservative-approved list.

He leads his piece-of-work off with this: "No reasonable American, no decent human being, wants to send up a white flag in the war on terror." In the world of baiting-and-switching that is the totality of right wing rhetoric, this bait is a ton of chum in shark infested waters. Any number of issues may be framed this way by anyone who feels the urge to do so ("No reasonable American, no decent human being, wants to send up a white flag in the war on child abuse." or, "No reasonable American, no decent human being, wants to send up a white flag in the war on cannibalism"). Bill O’Reilly patented this baiting method some years ago and graciously shares it with Right-Wing pundits and pols.

With the bait set, Mr. Kristol then reminds us that any and all criticism of this republican excuse for a president is completely without merit and irrational. It’s an old line. He says, "…leading spokesmen for American liberalism-hostile beyond reason to the Bush administration, and ready to believe the worst about American public servants-seem to have concluded that the terror threat is mostly imaginary." Not only is he suggesting that the only critique of this unilateral, executive-branch snooping is from the far Left (which is a lie), but his Harvard-readied mind also manages to slip in another typically hypocritical jab at the Left: he insinuates that we liberals also have some irrational, universal distrust of our "public servants," even though the Right is notoriously disdainful of most public service and incessantly criticizes the Left for relying on too much on - guess what! - Public Servants! (duh) After all is said here, the only thing "public" about what these "servants" did was that they are apparently so inept, like the rest of this "administration," they got caught. Finally, he believes that the Left believes that terrorism is a conspiratorial, Right-Wing myth. Well, Mr. Kristol, we here in the liberal bastion of the New York Metropolitan Area know full well that terrorism is real, so fear not for our grasp on reality.

The gist of Mr. Kristol’s piece, and in fact the gist of that whole Spectator issue, is that FISA was somehow "broken" and so therefore the administration was justified to bypass the FISA Court, almost just as they have bypassed the Judiciary with the Patriot Act, but without legal reconciliation of any kind. Though only 5 of the 19,000 surveillance requests before the FISC were rejected in the known past, Mr. Kristol would have us believe that somehow the FISC impeded investigations of terrorism. His logic? The broad, wide-net, sweeping surveillance of modern, multimedia communications rendered the FISA process obsolete. Would the FISC have had to okay the surveillance of every single individual or organization that may be caught in the net? Would new law be required for such a thing? He only answers the first question, and that’s a resounding no.

What he doesn’t wonder is whether the FISC, or something like it, could have okayed specific mediums searched, and algorithms utilized, in the sweeps, thereby pre-approving the surveillance of individuals by okaying the search for certain types of data and communications. If the answer is that question is "no," and there was no other course through the Judiciary, then Bush was without recourse but to request legislation. Why didn’t he? Could it be that what the administration looking at they didn’t want the FISC, congress, judiciary, and the public to know? If it turns out they were hunting peaceful American activists, as done in the past, I’m sure Mr. Kristol and his ilk will find a way to justify that as well.

Mr. Kristol then asks this: "So we are really to believe that President Bush just sat around after 9/11 thinking, "How can I aggrandize my powers?" Or that Gen. Hayden-and his hundreds of nonpolitical subordinates-cheerfully agreed to an obviously crazy, bizarre, and unnecessary project of "domestic spying"?"

Personally, I don’t think President Bush thinks about all that much, but, once again, Mr. Kristol’s hypocrisy rears it’s little, skinny head – I thought conservatives believed that power inevitably corrupts, that power begets want for more power? What happened? Does this only apply to "liberals?" I guess so.

Secondly, to say that military people are by definition "apolitical" seems so incredibly stupid, I don’t even know what to ask (to try to understand) except: are all people not people, be they military or not? Everyone is political, Mr. Kristol. Eisenhower warned of what would happen once the Military Industrial Complex became ensconced in our body politic. We are seeing the results now. 

Thirdly,  America has a recent history of doing just this: crazy, bizarre, and unnecessary projects of domestic spying. Perhaps Mr. Kristol missed the Harvard class on that period in American history - the period when these same ideological bents held sway, when communism (instead of terrorism) was the excuse, and when obviously crazy and bizarre domestic spying was rampant. May I please point Mr. Kristol to this handy Wikipedia biography of J. Edgar Hoover ? It was reported this morning (Dec 29) on NPR that the NSA had been attaching cookies to the computers of visitors to the NSA website in order to track their browsing. Does that sound kosher to you, Mr. Kristol?

He continues, "This is the fever swamp into which American liberalism is on the verge of descending." Again, we liberals are all just loonies. He finishes with this little nugget: "It would be good to have a responsible opposition party in the

United States today. It would be good to have a serious mainstream media. Too bad we have neither." To the former, I agree. The loyal opposition is not nearly oppositional enough. To the latter I will remind the readers of for just whom Mr. Kristol writes:

"© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved."

Yes, Mr. Kristol, too bad we have neither.