From the perspective of a President encumbered by
contentious politics, perhaps so.
As a constitutional scholar, not so.
As a risk manager, no.
He gave a very good speech, intending to and appearing
thoughtful, balanced, confident and supportive of his beleaguered intelligence
and security personnel. He covered all
the bases -- national interests, international responsibilities to allies and
cautions to adversaries, corporate and trade interests, civil rights. But so many interests to balance means
compromises, in this case, of our civil liberties.
Obama compromised 4th Amendment rights, the cornerstone of
citizens' protection against intrusive officials and agencies of the government. Warrants must be specific to individuals,
with well-founded suspicion spelled out.
NSA and the FISA court can continue to flaunt that.
The tougher issue is risk management. What do we pay for "protection?" TSA inconvenience; billions spent on a runaway
intelligence industry that remains unaccountable with fat government contracts,
consultants galore, and inept suppliers like those that brought us the
insurance exchange or didn't monitor Mr. Snowden or identify traitors like Pfc.
Manning. Vigilante drone strikes that
feed antipathy and an unending mentality of war (which I do believe Obama
searches for ways to exit.) So far, this
"protection" has failed to stop armed Jockey shorts, Boston marathon
bombers, and Times Sq. propane armed SUVs.
Risk management entails probability. What is the probability of setting off a
dirty bomb? At worst, one would
contaminate a downtown area and be survivable for all but hundreds, a
few thousand at most, but not hundreds of thousands. What's the probability of terrorists getting and smuggling in a full-fledged atom bomb? What's the
probability of non-state terrorists getting an ICBM with nuclear warhead and
launching it undetected? Low, low,
low. If we were truly in a risk management
mode, we would pay only a fraction of the costs and inconveniences and civil
liberty infringements we suffer. But,
alas, no President could survive the heat of having another tragic attack happen on his
watch. And that's the conundrum: if it
can be imagined, he has no choice but to ignore probability and pose as
"protecting" us from it ,no matter how remote it might be and no
matter what the cost.
Will Obama's announcements change anything at the NSA? Probably not.
My friend Frank Novosel observed that " those guys aren't sitting
around figuring out how to play by the rules.
No, they're figuring out how to get around them, 'cause if they miss the
intelligence, their goose is cooked."
As a nation, we are weakened by our "security"; oh
to be a Denmark or Sweden or Switzerland, free of being the world's policeman with
a bull's-eye on his back. But there it
is ... so Mr. President did about as well as one could expect given a no-win
situation. He didn't get it right
because there is no right... only the least of several wrongs.
