You Can Never Be Too Careful

by digby

Following up my post below, I’d like to recommend this diary over at Kos by hekebolos. I think this is an excellent insight into why this port issue is having so much resonance:

Time and time again, this president has said that his highest goal, superceding all others, and even superceding any previous precedent of executive authority–is to defend the American people. He has shown time and time again that neither international law, nor federal law, nor the constitution, nor the Legislative or Judicial Branches of the Government of the United States, will prevent him from executing that duty as he and he alone sees fit.

The Bush presidency has not really been the “fuck-you” presidency. Really, it has been the “I can act like a king because I do national security and after 9/11 you can never be too careful” presidency.

And right here, it all comes crashing down. Because for many Bush supporters, it doesn’t really matter whether Iraq helped or harmed national security. It doesn’t really matter whether the domestic spying program assisted or hindered surveillance of suspected terrorists. It doesn’t really matter whether the Patriot Act helps get new leads against terror suspects–because he’s trying his best to do what he thinks is right, in their view, and if they agree with him on other issues, they’ll be willing to forgive whatever mistakes have been made in his quest to protect the country, because he seems to care that much.

The Portgate scandal is crucial because Bush has violated his own doctrine. When Bush said that we need to justify holding a Middle Eastern company to a higher standard, he showed that he in fact does not agree with the key point of his own doctrine: namely, that in a post-9/11 world, you can never be too careful.

He needs to be secretly spy on American citizens without a warrant and he needs to be able to hold them indefinitely in jail without a trial and he needs to be able to torture innocent people with impunity because we just can’t be too careful after 9/11.

But there’s no reason to go overboard by saying that we shouldn’t outsource our port management to a company owned by a state whose leaders have been known to hang out with bin Laden.

Perhaps the best way to put this is that the administration seems to trust the leaders of the United Arab Emirates more than the US congress or the secret FISA Court.

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