We fight them over there…

and we fight them over here.

“… the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.”

Anna Diggs Taylor, a Jimmy Carter appointed federal judge in Detroit, recently ruled our terror spy program unconstitutional.
"The ruling of the judge is not only a victory for the American Muslim community but a victory for the entire American population," said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations(CAIR) for Michigan, which joined the ACLU as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
"We think the program is unconstitutional and we are hopeful and confident that any district or appellate court who looks at it seriously will agree with that," said ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer.

It would be comforting if a Muslim said, “We understand the times and that the actions of some Muslims require greater scrutiny of all Muslims, because the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.”
But, of course, that has not been said.

And President Bush said:
United States intelligence officials have confirmed that the program has helped stop terrorist attacks and saved American lives. The program is carefully administered, and only targets international phone calls coming into or out of the United States where one of the parties on the call is a suspected Al Qaeda or affiliated terrorist. The whole point is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks before they can be carried out. That's what the American people expect from their government, and it is the President's most solemn duty to ensure their protection.
The Terrorist Surveillance Program is firmly grounded in law and regularly reviewed to make sure steps are taken to protect civil liberties. The Terrorist Surveillance Program has proven to be one of our most critical and effective tools in the war against terrorism, and we look forward to demonstrating on appeal the validity of this vital program.

Some of the logic used by Judge Taylor in her decision:
"As Justice Warren wrote in U.S. v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258 (1967): (Robel was a communist working in a defense plant).
Implicit in the term ‘national defense’ is the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of . . . those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile."

It would indeed be ironic, and cause irreparable damage to our liberty, if in blindly defending imaginary people against imaginary danger, we sanctioned the subversion of our national defense.

A much more logical reasoning was given for the internment of Japanese during World War II. That was a wrong thing to do, in retrospect, but the Japanese then were not the Japanese now.

Justice Black wrote
[c]itizenship has its responsibilities as well as its privileges, and in time of war the burden is always heavier. Compulsory exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direst emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental institutions. But when under conditions of modern warfare our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger.

And today the power to protect must also be “ commensurate with the threatened danger.”

Our nation, though embarrassed at the treatment of our Japanese citizens, and our Japanese citizens, though wronged, survived.
As did the liberty of all, without subverting the national defense.

We know who we’re fighting over there.
And just so you know who we’re fighting over here:

AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION;
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
FOUNDATION;
AMERICAN CIVIL
LIBERTIES UNION OF MICHIGAN;
COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS;
COUNCIL ON AMERICAN
ISLAMIC RELATIONS MICHIGAN;
GREENPEACE, INC.;
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS;
JAMES BAMFORD;
LARRY DIAMOND;
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS;
TARA MCKELVEY; and
BARNETT R. RUBIN,
Plaintiffs,
v.
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY / CENTRAL
SECURITY SERVICE; and LIEUTENANT
GENERAL KEITH B. ALEXANDER, in his official
capacity as Director of the National Security Agency
and Chief of the Central Security Service,
Defendants.