Rand makes a compelling case in The Scope of Collateral Damage discussed at Collateral Damage for Whom? that good intelligence can save lives. The questions I want to address is, “How much does it cost to save those lives in terms of liberty?” Left unaddressed will be “How do we define ‘good intelligence’ so the benefits outweigh the cost?”

We decided not too long ago that butter knives and toenail clippers in an airplane have more benefits and costs avoided than the security value of blocking them. The calculus was that the time and annoyance of the security procedures combined with the slight indignities of plastic silverware and long toe nails outweighed the slight increase in security from not having them.

For roving wiretaps on our enemies who may talk to US citizens we may get valuable information to stop an attack. We may abuse the wiretaps to gather information on domestic political opponents. Who gets to designate who is an enemy?

A start to protect civil liberties would be to bar information gathered in warrantless searches from being used as evidence in a criminal prosecution. But it may still be too much power to concentrate into the hands of the executive branch.

Millions of people die in the United States every year. Al Qaeda action is not yet a leading cause of death in the US. Our war was triggered more by the novelty of the attack than its threat to national security. The flu kills 36,000. Heart attack many times more. Those deaths don’t rankle as much because they are common and expected.

It is not necessary to use unusual counterespionage techniques in this war to win it. There may be a cost in blood of both US soldiers and the Iraqis and Afghanis we have dragged into our struggle if we insist on keeping to pristine methods of intelligence gathering at home.

The lost liberty in the event we embrace the blurred lines between domestic and foreign spying may be far more costly than the lives that can be saved by prompt intelligence. If we embrace wiretaps, it is a step on the road toward any means necessary.

Patrick Henry said, “Give me Liberty or give me death.” The soldiers in the Revolutionary war were prepared to die at a time when life was viewed much more cheaply. Now life is so dear that matters of war and peace turn on atrocities and combat deaths that kill far fewer than infant mortality (62500 or 50% of births at about 50 per thousand) in an America that had less than 1% as many people as it does today (2.5 million vs 300 million).

But let us not elevate the value of life so highly that we empower an unchecked executive to use war powers such as espionage on citizens. That is a step toward the tyranny that eighteenth century Americans died to vanquish. Perhaps we should be willing to give up a few of our much more dear lives as the price to pay for continuing liberty.

OK, I don’t have much time (or technical ability) to blog, but I do have a new piece up at TCS Daily, on collateral damage of intelligence gathering. The links in it are broken, but I hope they’re being fixed.

[Update late on Friday afternoon]

There’s a countersuit being filed against the ACLU. You can contribute here.

[Update on Saturday morning]

The problem with FISA.

A frightening, and unfortunately plausible (given the inevitable insouciance of Europe, and much of the American electorate itself), future history:

The ideological cocktail that produced ‘Islamism’ was as potent as either of the extreme ideologies the West had produced in the previous century, communism and fascism. Islamism was anti-Western, anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic. A seminal moment was the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s intemperate attack on Israel in December 2005, when he called the Holocaust a ‘myth’. The state of Israel was a ‘disgraceful blot’, he had previously declared, to be wiped ‘off the map’.

Prior to 2007, the Islamists had seen no alternative but to wage war against their enemies by means of terrorism. From the Gaza to Manhattan, the hero of 2001 was the suicide bomber. Yet Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, craved a more serious weapon than strapped-on explosives. His decision to accelerate Iran’s nuclear weapons programme was intended to give Iran the kind of power North Korea already wielded in East Asia: the power to defy the United States; the power to obliterate America’s closest regional ally.

No, nothing like Munich at all.

As Dennis Miller once quipped (though it wasn’t really funny), “To believe the left, Bush is Hitler, Cheney is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler, but the guy with the mustache who gasses people and hates Jews and wants to conquer the world isn’t Hitler. Go figure.”

A frightening, and unfortunately plausible (given the inevitable insouciance of Europe, and much of the American electorate itself), future history:

The ideological cocktail that produced ‘Islamism’ was as potent as either of the extreme ideologies the West had produced in the previous century, communism and fascism. Islamism was anti-Western, anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic. A seminal moment was the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s intemperate attack on Israel in December 2005, when he called the Holocaust a ‘myth’. The state of Israel was a ‘disgraceful blot’, he had previously declared, to be wiped ‘off the map’.

Prior to 2007, the Islamists had seen no alternative but to wage war against their enemies by means of terrorism. From the Gaza to Manhattan, the hero of 2001 was the suicide bomber. Yet Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, craved a more serious weapon than strapped-on explosives. His decision to accelerate Iran’s nuclear weapons programme was intended to give Iran the kind of power North Korea already wielded in East Asia: the power to defy the United States; the power to obliterate America’s closest regional ally.

No, nothing like Munich at all.

As Dennis Miller once quipped (though it wasn’t really funny), “To believe the left, Bush is Hitler, Cheney is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler, but the guy with the mustache who gasses people and hates Jews and wants to conquer the world isn’t Hitler. Go figure.”

A frightening, and unfortunately plausible (given the inevitable insouciance of Europe, and much of the American electorate itself), future history:

The ideological cocktail that produced ‘Islamism’ was as potent as either of the extreme ideologies the West had produced in the previous century, communism and fascism. Islamism was anti-Western, anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic. A seminal moment was the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s intemperate attack on Israel in December 2005, when he called the Holocaust a ‘myth’. The state of Israel was a ‘disgraceful blot’, he had previously declared, to be wiped ‘off the map’.

Prior to 2007, the Islamists had seen no alternative but to wage war against their enemies by means of terrorism. From the Gaza to Manhattan, the hero of 2001 was the suicide bomber. Yet Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, craved a more serious weapon than strapped-on explosives. His decision to accelerate Iran’s nuclear weapons programme was intended to give Iran the kind of power North Korea already wielded in East Asia: the power to defy the United States; the power to obliterate America’s closest regional ally.

No, nothing like Munich at all.

As Dennis Miller once quipped (though it wasn’t really funny), “To believe the left, Bush is Hitler, Cheney is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler, but the guy with the mustache who gasses people and hates Jews and wants to conquer the world isn’t Hitler. Go figure.”

Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on what he views as the inevitable American air strike on Iran.

As I’ve said, this is our Munich moment. A world in which the mad mullahs have nukes is a frightening one indeed. Our previous totalitarian enemy in the Cold War at least had a keen sense of self preservation, that allowed MAD to work, at least for a while. We can’t bet on that from the Iranian government.

The goal of the enemy:

He said democracy was crumbling and laid out a two-stage plan to replace it with a Muslim nation.

The first he said meant “bleed them from their sides, their heads, their economy, everything until they surrender.”

The preacher went on: “Like you imagine you have only one small knife and you have a big animal in the front of you, the size of the knife you can’t slaughter him with this.

“You have to stab him here and there until he bleeds to death, until he die, then you cut his meat the way you like it or leave it for the maggots.”

After that he claimed: “The people who called you terrorist before, they will call you khalifas (Muslim rulers) and the scholars who used to call you khawarij (rebels against Islam) yesterday, they will write poems about you.”

The second stage involved taking control of the whole world, he added.

“Don’t be a shield for the kufr because we will get you,” he added. “Even if you are not a target and you are in the target area. If you fear them, you should fear Allah more. It’s a bloody way.”

Hamza told his followers they would eventually see a Muslim ruler in the White House and added: “The whole earth, it will be for Muslims, this is a promise from Allah.

No, they’re nothing like Hitler.

Hitler only had ambitions to rule Eurasia.

Europeans leaders say that Iran should go before the UN Security Council. What will they do, send in Hans Blix to wander around for a few months?

The New York Times, of all places, reports that Iraqi insurgents are fighting with Al Qaeda:

According to an American and an Iraqi intelligence official, as well as Iraqi insurgents, clashes between Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Iraqi insurgent groups like the Islamic Army and Muhammad’s Army have broken out in Ramadi, Husayba, Yusifiya, Dhuluiya and Karmah.

In town after town, Iraqis and Americans say, local Iraqi insurgents and tribal groups have begun trying to expel Al Qaeda’s fighters, and, in some cases, kill them. It is unclear how deeply the split pervades Iraqi society. Iraqi leaders say that in some Iraqi cities, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and local insurgent groups continue to cooperate with one another.

American and Iraqi officials believe that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is largely made up of Iraqis, with its highest leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. Even so, among Iraqis, the group is still perceived as a largely foreign force.

Bad news, for those hoping for bad news from Iraq.

It’s not the best sourcing, but if this post is valid, Hugh Thompson has died.

My Lai means different things to the different people. I still remember the Life magazine cover with Lt. Calley on it. To the left, it was big news, because it was emblematic of the war, and validated their belief that US soldiers were wanton baby killers, and that they’d finally gotten caught in the act. To others, it was big news because it was so anomalous and out of character for American troops. The actions of Hugh, and others, who put an end to it when they discovered what was going on (and the fact that Calley was court martialed) would seem to me to be much stronger evidence for the latter thesis than the former.

But the myths of My Lai continue to permeate thought and discussion of the war that we’re in now, almost four decades later, and were a backdrop to John Kerry’s despicable 1972 Senate testimony that was in itself part of the context of last year’s campaign, even if many wanted to brush it under the carpet.

[Update at 2:50 PM EST]

Here’s the story. RIP