The debate over the Bush Administration’s authorization of the use of wiretapping is another gut check for Americans in our fight against terrorism. Throughout its history, America has always struggled to balance its commitment to liberty with the flexibility to do what’s necessary to respond to foreign threats. From the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, to FDR’s internment of the Japanese in WWII, there is a long history of compromising liberty in the name of national security. Now, I’m not defending any of these actions. But I bring these up to demonstrate that this issue has always been a struggle and that compared to something like internment, the Bush Administration’s use of wiretapping is quite benign.
This is not to say that in times of war, the president should run roughshod over the law and assume dictatorial powers. When evaluating a given policy, we should consider how helpful it is to the war effort and balance that against how big of a compromise is involved with civil liberties. Monitoring the phone calls of a limited number of people who are communicating with terrorists clearly is an important part of a strategy for gathering intelligence in the War on Terror. And on the other side, it’s hard to see why this represents such a major violation of civil liberties. If there were evidence that the Bush Administration used the program to gather information on political opponents, that’s one thing. But as it stands now, the program is extremely limited to people who are in contact with terrorists. This is exactly the type of thing we should be doing.
The bottom line is that as a society, we have to recognize that during wartime the executive has to take actions that we would be uncomfortable with under normal circumstances. Civil libertarians may have many legitimate concerns about the threats to liberty during wartime, but their problem is that they don’t recognize that a tradeoff exists. They create a fantasy world in which we can win a war while keeping everything the same as it was while we were at peace.