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FBI Edits Mission Statement: Removes Law Enforcement As 'Primary' Purpose
schwit1 writes with news that the FBI has altered their declared primary function from "law enforcement" to "national security." From the article: "Following the 9/11 attacks, the FBI picked up scores of new responsibilities related to terrorism and counterintelligence while maintaining a finite amount of resources. What's not in question is that government agencies tend to benefit in numerous ways when considered critical to national security as opposed to law enforcement. 'If you tie yourself to national security, you get funding and you get exemptions on disclosure cases,' said McClanahan. 'You get all the wonderful arguments about how if you don't get your way, buildings will blow up and the country will be less safe.'"
If their motto was about "Law enforcement" they'd at least have to put up the pretense that they are not only objectively enforcing the law, but that they are subject to the law as well. 'National Security' however, gives a whole new sense of self interest to their stated motivations. After all, since when has the Committee for State Security in any non-free nation taken any action that was not in its own best political interests? If anything, I applaud this change as it's a better description of their more recent activities.
This is counter-factual and counter-historical. Republicans have always been about expanding both law enforcement and national security programs, including intelligence gathering, at the expense of civil liberties. This has been true going all the way back to Lincoln. It wasn't liberals planting spies among hippies, environmentalists, and other protesters.
The factual history is that conservatives have always bludgeoned liberals over the head with the "you're weak on security" club. With the rise of neo-liberalism in the 1990s Democrats figured out that if they just stopped protesting conservative law enforcement and defense programs, and went along, that Republicans couldn't claim superiority on domestic and national security issues. This is why Clinton and Obama have passed ridiculous law enforcement laws, invariably at the behest of a GOP-controlled Congress.
An expansive and powerful police state is the epitome of the conservative, Republican political platform. And this platform has been passively accepted by the Democrats too, because they know it's a losing battle. American society is ridiculously conservative. It's almost always been this way.
The GOP and DNC are not in collusion. There are very real differences in policies. But the American body politik is also crazy conservative. It's why communism spread like wildfire in Europe but couldn't get so much as a toehold in the United States, even among poor laborers. (Yes, we had the Wobblies, but they were quite tiny relative to other unions, which were all vehemently pro-capitalist, just like today.)
It was a MASSIVE economic intervention none-the-ess which is something the GP said Republican's didn't do. The Bush administration indulged in massive picking of winners and losers during the whole crisis.
Lehman, Bear Sterns, WaMu and Merril Lynch losers.
Citi, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo massive winners thanks to Republican help.
You notice that the Republican Treasury Secretary came from Goldman Sachs and was one of the people responsible for lobbying to allow banks to leverage up to 30-1 so they would be doomed the second a crisis hit? And when the crisis did he he funnelled billions in tax payer money through AIG to keep his old firm from collapsing?
If Republicans were the free marketeers they claim to be AIG, Citi and Goldman Sachs would be dead now.
@de_machina