Does ACLU Share Blame for Christmas Day Attack?

The ACLU certainly did its best to water down airport security. They fought against every kind of search possible under the guise of privacy rights, and are the greatest foe against watch lists around. They have truly been America’s greatest impediment to security.

From 9-11 to the present day, the ACLU has vigorously opposed every governmental attempt to more effectively protect the American people’s security. It sued, for example, to prevent the implementation of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which was passed in November 2001 and included a citizenship requirement for airport screeners. It organized protests against a “discriminatory” Justice Department and INS registration system requiring male “temporary visitors” to the US from 25 Arab and Muslim nations to register with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Gabriel Schoenfeld wonders now if the ACLU’s chickens have come home to roost!

The Bush administration was subjected to withering criticism for the way it managed the no-fly list. The American Civil Liberties Union put the system on its own list of the “Top Ten Abuses of Power Since 9/11,” asserting that “the uncontroversial contention that Osama bin Laden and a handful of other known terrorists should not be allowed on an aircraft” has been exploited “to create a monster.” In one of several lawsuits the group has filed involving terrorist lists, the ACLU alleged that they “violate airline passengers’ constitutional right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and to due process of law.”

Indeed, even after the attempted Christmas day attack from a terrorist on the watch list, the ACLU are still calling the program a “monster”.

The uncontroversial contention that Osama Bin Laden and a handful of other known terrorists should not be allowed on an aircraft is being used to create a monster that goes far beyond what ordinary Americans think of when they think about a “terrorist watch list.”

Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been one among a chorus of voices that accused the former administration of being far too sweeping, placing “infants, nuns and even members of Congress” on terrorist watch lists. The writer Naomi Wolf has called travel restrictions such as the no-fly list, “a classic part of the fascist playbook” akin to the depredations of Nazi Germany, where “families fleeing internment were traumatized by the uncertainties that they knew they faced at the borders.” This was hysteria directed against Bush counter-terrorism mechanisms that the Obama administration has left almost entirely unchanged.

The Department of Homeland Security has indeed received a high volume of complaints about airport screening by individuals attempting to travel. Yet only a minuscule 0.7% of the complaints stemmed from issues relating to the watch lists. And of that 0.7%, about 51% of the complaints led to the conclusion that the individual in question was appropriately on the watch list. Whatever problems exist, the system is not outrageously over-inclusive. Indeed, if anything, the opposite is the case.

We will never know whether fierce criticism from the left had any direct effect on the processing of Abdulmutallab’s file, but the political environment is important to consider going forward. The officials managing the watch lists are not eager to be hauled before a congressional committee if they blunder and bar innocent people from getting on flights. But they are also acutely aware of the potential price tag of being under-inclusive.

So, should the ACLU share the blame? They have certainly been leading the mindset to weaken our defenses.

Ed Morrissey:

However, this is one area in which Schoenfeld is correct to call the no-fly list critics “extremist.” The danger of terrorist attacks on our air travel is all too real, as 9/11 proved and the latest attempt corroborates. The main constitutional role of the federal government is to secure the nation against attack, and no one doubts that air travel with its interstate and international nature belongs in their jurisdiction for law enforcement and counterterrorism. They have the responsibility to make sure we know who represents a danger to Americans traveling by air and to prevent them from getting onto airplanes before they attack. Once the attack takes place, it’s generally too late to do anything about it; we just got lucky last week.

If Janet Napolitano wants to blame the rules surrounding the no-fly listings for the attack, then she should blame the people who forced those rules into place — many of whom were the people who supported her boss in the last election.