The Terrorism Component to Brown's Victory Helps Grayson

Much has been said about Scott Brown's opposition to Obamacare, high taxes and deficit spending. But Brown's internal polling showed that terrorism and treatment of enemy combatants was the "most potent issue," according to NRO's Andy McCarthy.

That has direct implications for Kentucky's Republican primary to replace Sen. Jim Bunning. Trey Grayson has reiterated his opposition to closing Gitmo and to giving civilian trials to enemy combatants. Grayson likewise argues that the U.S. must stay on the offense in the war on terror.

Dr. Rand Paul, in contrast, avoids the whole subject of terrorism like it is the Swine Flu. And no wonder: many of his libertarian followers, according to their comments to this blog, blame the U.S. for 9/11. Ignoring the high rate of recidivism among enemy combatants, Paul has said that he would send Gitmo prisoners back to their country of origin because it would "take them a long time" to get back here to try to kill us again.

After the attempted bombing of the Detroit-bound plane on Christmas day, Grayson quickly issued a statement. Grayson pointed out that some of the attack's planners had been released from Gitmo, only to become al Qaeda leaders in Yemen; the attempted bomber's master-minds thus are the poster-terrorists of why Gitmo should not be closed. Paul issued no statement about the attempted attack.

This is the dilemma for Paul. He has many loyal and energized followers who hate the U.S. war on terror. But unless and until Paul speaks to the issue of national security, he cannot appeal to the third leg of the Reagan coalition: voters who value a strong national defense.

Those national security voters are one reason that Scott Brown was able to reassemble the Reagan coalition. As McCarthy writes,

Scott Brown went out and made the case for enhanced interrogation, for denying terrorists the rights of criminal defendants, for detaining them without trial, and for trying them by military commission. It worked.. . . .

Yes, the Left will say you are making a mockery of our commitment to “the rule of law.” MSNBC will run segments on your dark conspiracies to “shred the privacy rights of Americans.” The New York Times will wail that you’re heedless of the damage you’ll do to “America’s reputation in the international community.”

The answer is: So what? The people making these claims don’t speak for Americans — they speak at Americans, in ever shrinking amounts. If you’re going to cower from a fight with them, we don’t need you. Get us a Scott Brown who’ll take them on in their own backyard. And he’ll take them on with confidence because he knows their contentions are frivolous — and he knows that Americans know this, too.

So while both Grayson and Paul celebrate Brown's victory, and both echo Brown's opposition to Obamacare and deficit spending, only Grayson has thus far tapped into Brown's "more potent issue."

FISA Can't Wait

It's been nearly two months since Congressional Democrats let the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) expire. That gave terrorists two months to chat with each other on the phone without fear that anyone -- say the U.S. government -- was listening. Two months to plot God knows what.

Those conversations between terrorists have come and gone. Whatever they said, whatever they have planned, we cannot know. What's worse, while the terrorist's phone calls were secret, our lapse in intelligence was not; the whole world watched the Democrats go on vacation while FISA expired.

The issue that the Democrats seize, in an attempt to justify their failure to renew FISA, is whether those telecommunications companies that helped the U.S. government listen to the terrorists can be sued for their assistance. Democrats like to call that immunity.

There was a time when it was considered patriotic for citizens to assist the government during a a time of war. Americans voluntarily grew victory gardens and rolled bandages, simply to help the war effort. No one would have thought of suing the women and children who rolled the bandages if the military doctor who subsequently used them did so negligently. (Indeed, no one would have sued the doctor).

That was before the trial lawyers learned how much money they could make on contingency by convincing juries to return verdicts with punitive damages that bore no relation to the harm allegedly suffered.

Unlike the civilians who rolled the bandages in World War II, the telecommunications companies really had little choice but to help the government eavesdrop on terrorists. If it's unfair to penalize someone for voluntarily helping the government in the war effort, it is doubly wrong to penalize these companies that were, in essence, commandeered.

Not surprisingly, some individuals who were not terrorists were surveilled by mistake. Their loss of privacy pales in comparison to the loss of life on 9/11 and in the war against Islamofascism. If those people who were mistakenly wiretapped cannot bring a cause of action due to FISA, all they forgo is a little money (their trial lawyers are the ones who would really lose -- thus the lobbying effort against FISA).

When our government is prevented from eavesdropping on terrorists, in contrast, we lose the ability to foil future plots. This is not a hard issue. The Democrats' unspoken fear -- that they will lose big contributions from the trial lawyers -- is misplaced; to whom else can that lobby give? Not to Republicans, who want to cap punitive damages and reform tort law.

Eventually, the Democrats will cave on this issue. They need to stop delaying the inevitable, because every day they posture on FISA -- every day they vacation in recess -- gives al Qaeda a free pass to reach out and touch someone.

"Financial" Cost of War

Look at all the money the war is costing us! We hear this all the time in the media. As one discusses the financial cost of war, we have to be careful not to forget those who have paid the ultimate price, those who have been wounded and those who have dedicated their lives for our freedoms. Unfortunately wars cannot be won without sacrafice.

But liberal accounts say the war has cost us $495,000,000,000.00 plus. Yes that is billions. http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home Let us also try to understand that this site states "War in Iraq" but I will be willing to bet it includes the "War in Afghanistan" and the collective "War on Terror". So semantics seem to confuse the issue.

Now let's try to get our hands on this figure. Ever take an economics course? Ever take an accounting course? Cost has two factors to it called fixed cost and variable cost. Fixed cost is explained as cost incurred that does not change and are considered hard to lower and comes as the cost of operating a business, in our case National Defense. Variable cost is cost that fluctuates daily and with certain events. One needs to add Fixed Cost and Variable Cost together to get a Total Cost. For our purposes, Fixed Cost of War in Iraq and Afghanistan (War on Terror) + Variable Cost of War in Iraq and Afghanistan (War on Terror) = Total cost of War in Iraq and Afghanistan (War on Terror).

So our War on Terror (Iraq War + Afghanistan War + plus just maintaining a Defense Department) has a cost of $495 Billion dollars.

We have a standing Military. We have equipment for our standing military, and we have support for our standing military. Whether we are fighting a war or not, we would have all of these associated costs. (FIXED COST) Now we have this war on Terror. Due to this war we have to ship equipment to the war. We have ammunition (bullets, missiles, Unmanned Ariel Vehicles that have missiles called Predators, bombs, cruise missiles, etc). We also have to replace vehicles that have been damaged or "taken out." We also have to establish support for our warriors that are now farther away. All of this has associated costs which we label Variable Cost. Add them up and we have Total Cost of War on Terror.

Let's us understand our fixed cost. 850,000,000 personnel in the military. Each receives a salary to defend us. Each is given a set of uniforms, each is trained for a specific MOS (Military Occupational Specialty), each is issued a rifle or something to fight with and each is fed and housed. We can see very quickly that the fixed cost of running our defense is enormous. It is actually about 4.3 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). During WW2 it was 38 percent of our GDP. (Yes there is no decimal point in this percent) Just to try to get a handle on these costs. I recently read that the USS Reagan cost $127 million per day to operate.

So my question and I can't find the answer is how much of Variable Cost is our War on Terror costing us? It is not fair to present the total cost because we would have to pay for our military whether it is at war or not. The true cost of the War on Terror is only the additional Variable Cost. Why is it we never are given that figure?

Oh! By the way Americans spend $1 billion on chewing gum per year, and this past year Americans spent $41 billion on our pets. Current U.S. aid to Africa is expected to be $ 9 billion. Just for perspective.