Upping the ante on losing

She was trembling, on the razor edge of tears.

"I'm scared," she said. "I've never been scared before. But now I'm scared they're going to take away our way of life. And no one is going to stop them."

The quotes are neither fictional nor melodramatic. They are exact.

Washington (CNN, July 11) - U.S. officials have discussed the idea of postponing Election Day in the event of a terrorist attack on or about that day, a Homeland Security Department spokesman said Sunday.

The department has referred questions about the matter to the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, said a spokesman, confirming a report in this week's editions of Newsweek magazine. ...

Newsweek said the discussions about whether the November 2 election could be postponed started with a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge from DeForest Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. ...

Newsweek reported that Soaries expressed concern that no federal agency had the authority to postpone an election and asked Ridge to ask Congress to give his commission such power.

Not surprisingly, some GOPpers wanted to distort the meaning of what was going on.

[T]he Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Christopher Cox of California, said on "Late Edition" that he sees Ridge's request as part of a prudent effort to plan for "doomsday scenarios."

"We don't have any intelligence to suggest that it is going to happen, but we're preparing for all of these contingencies now," Cox said.

I tell you, whenever one of the rightists starts talking about "prudent efforts" or "common sense measures," run the other way.

Now, the issue here is, and what she is afraid of is, given the power to "delay" the election, the next question is - until when? Perhaps until "conditions allow?" Until a "secure vote" can be "assured?" When would that be? And who decides if the elections need to be "delayed," on what basis, and for how long? The example of New York City is constantly cited because September 11 was a primary day - but what's often overlooked is that the decision to postpone the election was taken because the attacks made a number of polling places unreachable. What level of attack is anyone imagining that would have the equivalent effect on the entire country? Who are you prepared to trust with that power?

Which risk, which threat, do you think is greater?

Now, personally I don't think - or at least I don't now - that any such legislation as Soaries suggested will get through Congress. I think this is more a matter of an ego-trip power play on his part. His commission was established to help states with election-related logistical issues, but he seems to think it actually is or at least should be running the entire election apparatus of the US. His proposal, in turn, lead to a lot of blue-skying among people who constantly fantasize about how great it would be if they could just run everything and not have to worry about that messy democracy stuff.

However, the administration has tried to play down the idea. CNN said on July 12 that

[national security adviser Condoleezza] Rice said the Bush administration, while concerned about the impact of terrorism, is not thinking of postponing the elections.

"We've had elections in this country when we were at war, even when we were in civil war. And we should have the elections on time. That's the view of the president, that's the view of the administration," Rice told CNN on Monday.

Now, that's not to say that I trust that statement or, frankly, anything else that comes out of the White House; rather, I think the speed with which they tried to shut the door on the story says that they know it's a political loser.

But that's now. What if there is another attack? What happens? There have already been opinions and hints that another 9/11 could trigger martial law. Think that's impossible? Go back and read the item a couple back about the protests at the G-8 summit. Yes, that was limited - but it was also against one set of nonviolent demonstrations at one particular time and place.

So would that happen? Could that happen? The truth is, I have no idea. I don't know if it would happen and if it did I don't know what the response would be: quiet acquienscence or millions in the streets. What I do know is that those who think more of their powers and privileges than of our freedoms are opportunistic: The TRAITOR Act, passed with no debate worth the word in the immediate wake of 9/11, was not a response to that event, it was an appropriation of it. As I'm hardly the first to point out (and this is not the first time I've said it, either), the bill consisted for the most part of a wish-list of powers to investigate, invade, and intrude that our overseers and "protectors" had wanted for a long time and the attack was not the reason for the new powers, it was the excuse for them.

I am firmly convinced that there are even greater powers lurking, desired, in the minds of the already-powerful. Another attack could be - would be - the excuse to reveal them, even to act on them as "emergency powers" and "executive orders," even if that fell short of outright martial law - and our future would be determined by our response and the risks we're prepared to take on that response's behalf. So yes, I'm scared, too. Not as scared as she is, but scared.

Footnote: We have here an exquisite example of one of I. F. Stone's "shirttails," the little bit at the tail end of an article that is often more revealing than the rest of it. These are the last three paragraphs of the July 11 CNN story:

What has Homeland Security officials worried is that terrorists could attempt to disrupt the election in the same way that train bombings in Madrid created unrest three days before the Spanish general election, the Homeland Security spokesman said.

Although there is no evidence that the bombings influenced the March 11 vote, socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero unseated Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, whose center-right government supported the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

The country's new government then pulled Spanish troops from Iraq.

Just let that sink in for a while.