NSA: Never Straight Answers

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

August 22, 2013

NSA: Never Straight Answers

Dear NSA and its defenders (who am I kidding, you read this as soon as I sent the e-mail):

Before you get started, let us save you some time and go over things we already know, and you don't have to say again.

Yes, the threat from terrorists is real, and you guys and the rest of the intelligence and law-enforcement community have a really tough job.
Yes, being able to intercept, read, and listen to almost any communication in the world is a big help in your mission.
Yes, there's a FISA court system, although we're having doubts about the effectiveness of its oversight.
Yes, there's considerable evidence that Edward Snowden is A) off his rocker and/or B) way too cozy with Russia and China. Of course, you guys are the ones that hired him and gave him access to all the secret stuff.

The problem is every time somebody in authority tries to reassure us by describing what the NSA is doing, it turns out to be a lie. Well, either it's a lie, or they don't know what they're talking about. Like when President Obama told Charlie Rose that the FISA court is "transparent." (The court's proceedings are entirely in secret.) Or when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says, under oath before Congress, that the NSA never gathered "any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans." He later claimed he misunderstood the direct question posed to him and apologized to Congress.

Or when President Obama tells Jay Leno, "We don't have a domestic spying program" -- and then we learn, like we did late Wednesday, that the NSA gathered "tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans" with no connection to terrorism and a federal judge rules the government has "disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program" three times in less than three years. It's very, very bad, according to the judge:

In the strongly worded 86-page opinion, U.S. District Judge John Bates, who was then the court's chief judge, wrote that the "volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe."

Bates blasted the NSA for mishandling thousands of e-mails from Americans over those three years, and said the NSA's disclosures about its e-mail collection effort "fundamentally alters the court's understanding of the scope of the collection . . . and requires careful re-examination of many of the assessments and presumptions underlying prior approvals.''

You guys at the NSA might be the most swell and honorable crowd this side of Dudley Do-Right, but it's hard to believe that these programs could never be abused when everybody in charge of them keeps lying to us.

How Many Syrians Have to Be Gassed Before Intervention Is Necessary?

A couple of simple questions.

All of the photos and videos we're seeing -- The Atlantic assembles a graphic collection, full of disturbing images of dead men, women and children -- couldn't be faked, correct? Indisputably, a whole bunch of civilians in Damascus suddenly keeled over and died Wednesday. Is there any non-chemical-weapon explanation for the foaming mouths and other symptoms?

Presuming the answer is "no," we move on to the next question: Who perpetrated the attack? No matter how cynical you are about the factions in the Middle East, would the anti-Assad forces gas their own children in order to sway the world's opinion? I suppose it's theoretically possible but . . . how likely is it? How likely is it that they could get access to enough of the right chemical weapons, and then hit their own civilians and hope they don't get caught?

Because it's clear Russia and China are willing to avert their eyes from anything:

The reports prompted international outrage, with a U.N. Security Council briefing called late Wednesday to discuss the situation. However, Russia and China -- consistent allies of the Syrian government -- reportedly blocked a formal resolution.

Hours after the closed-door meeting, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told CNN affiliate BFMTV that "force" was needed if the allegations were true.

"If the U.N. Security Council cannot do it, decisions will be made otherwise," Fabius said. But, he said, sending ground troops to Syria is out of question.

Fabius offers a pretty straightforward test for guilt: If the Syrian regime allows the U.N. team currently in Syria to inspect the site of the attack, we'll see what they have to say. If Syria refuses to allow them to go to the site, it's an admission of guilt.

Kelsey Atherton contends, "Face It, Benghazi Made Syria Intervention Impossible."

After the attack on Benghazi's consulate, even a light footprint intervention seems unwise, and the aftermath of an intervention so undesirable that even the use of chemical weapons against civilians, officially the one-step-too-far for Assad, becomes just another tragedy observed from afar.

Faced with the choice between the bad strategy of a Libya-style intervention, and the worse strategy of an Iraq-sized one, the administration has instead decided that inaction is the lesser evil.

Conservative Efforts to Influence the Culture, Continued

The delightful Tabitha Hale contemplated yesterday's item on changing the culture with a headline I wish I had thought of -- "The Separation of Celebrity and State" and concluded:

While there is much to be said for Geraghty's assertion that there should be separation between politics and pop culture, it's hard to maintain that there can be a separation between pop culture and the life of daily Americans. Pop culture reflects the mood of our nation through music, movies, television and yes, Facebook memes. As long as pop culture affects people, pop culture will matter in politics. It's sort of a twisted chain of influence: Celebrities influence the masses, who influence politics, which affects everyone, the outcome of which gets mirrored and mocked on screen by celebrities.
Later, on Twitter, Tabitha added, "Personally, I think the answer is just to make better art and BE the culture."

I think a lot of conservatives would relish the opportunity to do that, but don't know how. As noted in an earlier Jolt, conservatives have been pretty successful in the worlds of talk radio, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos . . . all relatively inexpensive forms of media. Movies, television shows, and to a lesser extent, pop music are forms of art or storytelling that are usually extremely capital-intensive. (You can always strum on a guitar, but putting on a concert with enormous spectacle the way the big-name acts do requires a lot of resources.)

BBCover For what it's worth, NR has tried to assess, praise, evaluate and chew over modern pop culture. Currently on a newsstand near you, Jonah's cover piece on the television series Breaking Bad is now available online:

Of the many conservative themes in Breaking Bad, the one I appreciate most is the fragility of civilization: Preserving it requires a constant struggle. When I say "civilization," I don't mean just the particular swath of time and culture we call "Western Civ"; I mean families, communities, and individuals. These can be healthy only when individuals are willing to take on faith that some moral laws -- whether grounded in nature, theology, or simple trial and error -- are there for a good reason. As Chesterton tells us, pure reason doesn't get humanity very far. The merely rational man will not make commitments to causes greater than his own self-interest. We need binding dogmas to constrain us even when our intellects or appetites try to seduce us to a different path. When, through the arrogance of our intellect and the promptings of our egos, we decide that we can make the rules up as we go, we invariably relearn why we need those rules. In Breaking Bad, there are countless, sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying moments where Walter is given concrete evidence that he is not smarter than the accumulated moral wisdom of civilization. He rejects these lessons as merely illustrations of the failures of others, and lies himself down a path of ever greater evil.

And previously Jonah examined FX's biker drama, Sons of Anarchy:

In an early episode of Sons of Anarchy, a television series on FX entering its third season this month, Jackson "Jax" Teller reads a passage from his dead father's unpublished memoir. It's narrated in his father's voice: "First time I read Emma Goldman wasn't in a book. I was sixteen, hiking near the Nevada border. The quote was painted on a wall in red. When I saw those words it was like someone ripped them from the inside of my head."

The son finds the passage on a wall under a dilapidated bridge in the California desert. It reads: "Anarchism . . . stands for liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from shackles and restraint of government. It stands for social order based on the free grouping of individuals." The father's voice returns: "The concept was pure, simple, true. It inspired me, lit a rebellious fire. But ultimately I learned the lesson that Goldman, Proudhon, and the others learned: that true freedom requires sacrifice and pain. Most human beings only think they want freedom. In truth, they yearn for the bondage of social order, rigid laws, materialism. The only freedom man really wants is the freedom to become comfortable."

Elsewhere, John J. Miller assembled NR's top 50 conservative rock songs of all time, compiled in 2006, and the magazine put together a list of best conservative movies, from 1994; and then a later list.

I liked this comment from Red State's John Hayward about how Game of Thrones helped illustrate a hard lesson about actions in the political world:

Those who can accept the horror of the Red Wedding might appreciate the point it makes about the dangers of blind idealism in a brutal world where cosmic justice is not swiftly meted out to villains. . . .

Not to overstretch the themes Martin expounds in his books, but there is something for the student of modern politics to glean from the way one character sums up the overall conflict: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die." We don't literally die when we lose power struggles in the more civilized modern West, and our families are not slaughtered beside us. Our political culture admires idealism, or at least claims to, and just about every politician presents himself or herself as a deeply principled idealist.

But still . . . the game has high stakes, and the quest for power has rules -- unfair rules, administered differently for the two major American political parties, and every third party that seeks a place on the national stage. Good intentions do not suspend these rules. Kind and decent people get chewed up and spit out by the system. Look at what happened to all those energetic outsider candidates who ran in the 2012 presidential election. It's just not enough to be an enthusiastic outsider with some bright ideas. It is necessary to run a tight race, attend to the ground game, and avoid self-destructive mistakes.

In other words, the requirements of power must still be obeyed. Those who believe their good intentions or persuasive charisma can change the game tend to suffer for their hubris, even when they are decent people with fine ideas.

ADDENDUM: This morning, Quinnipiac finds Virginia voters strangely split in their assessment of Governor Bob McDonnell: "Voters still approve 47-39 percent of the job Gov. Bob McDonnell is doing, little changed from his all-time low 46-37 percent score July 17. The governor gets a split 34-35 percent favorability rating."

Character doesn't really count in job approval anymore, does it?

NRO Digest — August 22, 2013

Today on National Review Online . . .

ROBERT COSTA: Former ambassador John Bolton seriously considers a presidential campaign. Bolton 2016?

CHARLES C. W. COOKE: The campaign to recall two Democratic state senators appeals to some surprising demographics. Colorado Gun Restrictionists

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Our country is consumed by the trivial while snoozing through the essential. America the Trivial

ANDREW STILES: The Left's animosity toward Cruz is approaching hysterical levels. Liberals' Ted Cruz Obsession

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: How to cripple your state in five easy steps. Suicide Pact

JOHN YOO: Bradley Manning should have received far more than 35 years. The Manning Verdict

To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com

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