The scandal surrounding the National Security Agency (NSA) spying on private information of U.S. citizens has largely been portrayed as Big Brother running amok on President Obama’s watch. It’s not unfair to tag a sitting chief executive with problems that blow up on his watch; that’s the reality of hardball politics in the capital city. When he was sitting in the Oval Office, Harry S. Truman said, “The buck stops here,” and he was a Democrat. That principle should apply even to Barack. Yet, the issue isn’t black and white, as many of the policies currently being derided were instituted or perpetuated by Republican administrations which generally were not ideologically disposed to enlarge the scope of government. So what’s the deal? Here are four conservatives explaining why they support controversial NSA surveillance programs:
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Dick Cheney: As a one-time defense secretary and congressman, the former vice president has as much credibility as anyone on the political scene regarding both national security and conservative ideological principle. “As everybody who has been associated with the program has said, if we had this before 9/11, when there were two terrorists in San Diego, two hijackers able to use that program, that capability against the target, we might have been able to prevent 9/11,” Mr. Cheney said on Fox News yesterday. “If we had been able to read their mail and intercept those communications and pick up from the calls overseas the numbers here that they were using in the United States, we would then probably have been able to thwart that attack.”
Rep. John Boehner: The speaker of the House from Ohio has earned his stripes for combating White House policies under difficult circumstances without a GOP majority in the Senate, while also managing a very solid, committed but at times rebellious Republican Conference. “He’s a traitor,” the speaker said of NSA leaker Edward Snowden. “The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk. It shows our adversaries what our capabilities are.”
Rep. Mike Rogers: The Michigan Republican, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is a leader in a chamber that cannot be characterized as a shrinking violet on right-of-center political grounds. “As people get a better feeling that this is a lockbox with only phone numbers, no names, no addresses in it, we’ve used it sparingly, it is absolutely overseen by the legislature, the judicial branch and the executive branch, has lots of protections built in, if you can see just the number of cases where we’ve actually stopped the plot, I think Americans will come to a different conclusion than all the misleading rhetoric I’ve heard over the last few weeks,” Mr. Rogers stated yesterday on CNN. He pegged the number of thwarted attacks in the dozens.
Sen. John McCain: OK, some conservatarians might have legitimate issues with the Arizonan on a number of policies, but the 2008 Republican nominee ran for president on a conservative platform and has been engaged in national-security matters for decades. “The threat is growing, not diminishing,” he said last week of terrorism on American soil. Countering the notion that NSA snooping represented a rogue government operation, he explained, “We passed the Patriot Act. We passed specific provisions of the act that allowed for this program to take place, to be enacted in operation. Now, if members of Congress did not know what they were voting on, then I think that that’s their responsibility a lot more than it is the government’s.”
Elephants who support the NSA are at odds with their base, which opposes the snooping programs by a 2-1 margin, according to the Washington Post. That could change as more information comes to light. Still, the point is, this NSA scandal isn’t merely a partisan issue. There are respected members on both sides of the aisle who fall on all sides of the debate over whether surveillance of U.S. citizens is unconstitutional and where lines need to be drawn to protect privacy.
Brett M. Decker is Editor-in-Chief of Rare. Follow him on Twitter @BrettMDecker