How Would A Patriot Act?

I read a lot of political books. I recently read "Lapdogs : How the Press Rolled Over for Bush" (a thorough detailing of how the press has replaced serious journalism with political cheerleading and beltway conventional wisdom) and just finished reading "Playing President : My Relationships with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush" (a genuinely great collection of personal interviews and articles by longtime journalist Robert Scheer which gives insight into the Presidents profiled). The book I am reading currently- so far the best- is Glenn Greenwald's "How Would a Patriot Act?: Defending American Values from a President Run Amok".

For several months, Greenwald has been doing geniunely great reporting on his blog about political and constitutional abuses occurring under our current political leadership, most notably the NSA spying scandal. His work- which has led to reports in the Washington Post among other outlets and was even referenced by Sen. Feingold during the censure hearing- is the basis for this new book. Needless to say, I highly recommend it. Even more impressively, it is set to debut at #11 on the NY Times Best Seller List.

But other than just plugging the book, I wanted to highlight a passage from the preface that really stood out to me more than anything else I've read so far in the book. I've always felt that one of Bush's most spectacular failures is not just his failure to utilize the post-9/11 moment (when all the world was united with us and when he had all of our support) to enact meaningful change, but in addition his decision to willfully abuse that moment to realize the extreme policies those in his administration has been yearning for for years. In one perfect sentence, Greenwald sums up this failure-

"It appeared that in the great national unity the September 11 attacks had engendered, the administration had seen not a historically unique opportunity to renew a sense of national identity and cohesion, but instead a potent political weapon with which to impose upon our citizens a whole series of policies and programs that had nothing to do with terrorism, but that could be rationalized through an appeal to the nation's fear of further terrorist attacks."

That sums up the Bush administration's post-9/11 political maneuvering in a nutshell. It sums up how they used the nation's pain and emotional instability (turning it into weakness rather than strength- the opposite of what FDR did after Pearl Harbor) to sell Americans a litany of unamerican wares... the war in Iraq, warrantless spying on american citizens, torture, rendition, prison without trial, media manipulation, secrecy, and an unprecented and frightening expansion of executive power. It all goes back to that.

Years from now when we look back on that moment- and how it was wasted- I believe we will be truly ashamed.