Four years ago, when George W. Bush peered into Vladmir Putin’s soul and found a kindred spirit, there was broad amusement at the president’s mu shy take on the Russian leader. Little did we know then the irony in Bush’s observation: Since that time, the governing styles of both men have followed a distinctly undemocratic arc. The disclosure of unauthorized domestic spying by the National Security Agency is the latest in a series of power grabs by the Bush White House, which cumulatively threaten to rise to a constitutional crisis.
When the domestic spying issue first came to light, one obvious question arose from all quarters: Why would the president conduct unlawful spying on American citizens, when he could he could have easily gone to the FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court, which had been set up precisely for that purpose? Senator Joe Biden, one of the original drafters of the FISA Act in 1978, was asked this very question by Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, Sunday:
Sen. BIDEN: I just don't get it. He already has the authority under the FISA court to go in and intercept anything he wants up to 72 hours. This is neither, I think, legal, nor is it necessary what he's been doing. It is a little bit frightening how broadly he asserts his authority as commander in chief, where the guy hasn't shown very good judgment on torture or a lot of other things.
SCHIEFFER: What you're saying, though, in your view, that he has broken the law. Why would he do that, Senator?
Sen. BIDEN: Well, why would he do what he did on torture? Why would he have, you know, gone outside the Geneva Convention? Why would he have put us in that spot? The judgment of this operation has not been very good, and we're rushing to judgment on these things. And if he needed a change in the FISA court, all he had to do is contact the Congress.
Biden’s bewild erment over Bush's behavior was understandable at the time. That is, until we subsequently learned more about the nature of the domestic spying. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on December 21, former Deputy Director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, let the cat out of the bag:
BLITZER: …correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't there a different standard for… a FISA court wiretap, as opposed to the kind of wiretaps that the president had authorized without court orders?
MCLAUGHLIN: …for FISA you need probable cause that someone is involved in terrorism in order to get -- or in some illegal activity to get the warrant. With the activity that NSA was carrying out, the trigger was somewhat softer. You needed something to the effect of a reasonable reason to believe that the person was involved in some kind of illegal activity or terrorist activity.
Notice the euphemism that McLaughlin slips in, that of a “somewhat softer” threshold for a non-FISA wiretap. What McLaughlin really means is that Bush and company created their own new wiretapping standard, which enabled them to run roughshod over the protections built into the FISA Act. In the Bush universe, checks and balances are for wusses. In order to vanquish the terrorists, we need to act more like the terrorists.
When the White House didn’t like the existing domestic spying law, rather than go to Congress and get it modified to meet current technology and new security demands, the Bush team simply chose to ignore the law. The executive branch disregarded all need for judicial oversight, and began to wiretap American citizens without supervision. All this, despite the fact that the FISA court traditionally has shown great deference to the executive branch in authorizing wiretaps. The problem for the Bush administration was that the FISA court, however permissive, still operates under the standard of “probable cause.” Therefore, the president would have to establish a probable link between an American citizen and Al Qaeda before the court would permit electronic surveillance. The Bush team clearly had a different idea. They wanted to set up an electronic dragnet, to go on a fishing expedition—unmonito red, unrestricted—one that those persnickety judges would have found unacceptable.
Indeed, the recent resignation and apparent protest by FISA court judge James Robertson, has given rise to an additional theory of administration mischief: Some are now suggesting that the NSA modus operandi was to conduct widespread, unauthorized eavesdropping, only to later go to the FISA court if it thought it had something useful, using the ill-gotten evidence to make its case. There is much speculation that Judge Robertson quit because he felt that the unlawful methods of the NSA had tainted the entire FISA process. Such tactics by the NSA would be a bit like a police unit breaking into homes indiscriminately, seizing evidence, and then later using that evidence to ask for a search warrant.
Nor is it reassuring to hear former CIA official McLaughlin claim, “This was an extraordinarily valuable tool for filling in a lot of blanks in our intelligence collection.” I will agree with him on one point: It is true that if we suspended civil liberties in the U.S, allowed for no-knock searches of homes, stopped people on the street and frisked them randomly, we would uncover more criminal activity. The former Soviet Union proved convincingly that by ignoring human rights, you can minimize crime. However, who would want to live in such a society? If George Bush wants to preempt the Fourth Amendment, his obligation is to go to Congress and address this matter.
However, my problem with Bush isn’t simply this latest example of the trampling of civil liberties. My problem is that from the start, he has never understood what was needed to combat terrorism. This war can never be won by simply squashing the adversary militarily. From the get-go, Bush has conducted the war on terror as if it were a traditional battle with a nation-state, as if by killing enough insurgents or seizing enough territory, we could achieve victory. This mindset gave rise to such dumb public relations stunts as the “terrorist deck of cards,” with regular updates on how many of the “cards” had been captured. What Bush never grasped was that unless and until the right diplomatic and political foundation is laid, terrorists are a vast and infinitely renewable resource. Indeed, if we found out tomorrow that Osama bin Laden were dead, it would make no difference to the magnitude of global terrorism.
For years we have grossly overplayed the challenge that global terrorism poses to our military, and have underplayed the challenge that it poses to our moral and spiritual resources. The war on terror can’t be won simply with bunker-busting bombs. Rather, any military success must be fortified by a steadfast adherence to democratic principles. The war on terror has repeatedly forced us to reevaluate how much we really believe in these principles, and how firmly we embrace them. It is in this area that the Bush administration has failed so miserably. Instead of demonstrating to the world that even in times of uncertainty and stress, we believe so strongly in human dignity and the rule of law that we embrace these principles even when we know that our adversary does not, George Bush has consistently regarded democratic checks and balances as wimpy and annoying inconveniences.
From the moment that 9/11 occurred, the Bush administration has made extraordinary efforts to chip away at core democratic institutions and values. Everything from specious legal arguments to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, to kidnapping individuals on foreign soil, to holding detainees incommunicado, to mocking and degrading detainees’ religious beliefs, to arguing that “torture doesn’t work” while simultaneously demanding that the CIA be allowed to use it, the administration’s response to terrorism has been a horror show. The human rights failings of the Bush administration have stripped us of any moral high ground, have embarrassed the nation, and have made us look like hypocrites on the subject of democracy. Such failings have made our task far more difficult throughout the world. Indeed, it is now apparent that following Abu Ghraib, the whole character of the Iraqi resistance changed, because we had stoked the flames of the insurgency by playing to the worst stereotypes of American conduct.
Beyond the Bush missteps on human rights, there is an additional fact that is rarely discussed, but needs to be said: Despite the great unease that Americans have felt since 9/11, despite the further possibility of attacks on our soil, we are among the least vulnerable nations in the world. We have no enemies on our borders, and are separated from the breeding ground of terrorism by a gigantic ocean. While attacking the U.S. may represent a bigger “prize” than, say, Spain, England, France, Saudi Arabia, or Bali, we are infinitely less accessible than those other countries. And when we find ourselves feeling unsafe, we should compare our situation with that of two countries who share a border, have a disputed territory, and have nuclear weapons (Pakistan and India), or a country with vicious insurgents (Sri Lanka), or countries wracked by poverty, sectarian, and ethnic friction (much of the Middle East). These nations are infinitely more at-risk than we are, yet we expect them to abide by appropriate standards of human rights. If we can’t abide by civilized notions of conduct, how do we expect them to do so? If we can’t maintain a respect for the rule of law in our relatively comfortable circumstances, how do we ask it of Pinochet, Milosevic, the Syrian leadership, or the strongmen who run Burma?  It is easy to embrace the rule of law when things are going smoothly; the test of a democracy is embracing the rule of law in times of trouble.

Every time Dick Cheney shoots off his mouth about our need to leave open the torture option, every time a story emerges about an innocent German citizen kidnapped off the streets and flown to Kabul to be tortured by the CIA, every time Condoleeza Rice looks an interviewer in the eye and says, “I’m not a lawyer, but the Constitution allows the president to wiretap American citizens without a warrant,” we look less like a great nation, and more like a confused and corrupt superpower. And that’s a hell of a poor way to win over the hearts and minds of the world community.