"Arrogance is not fitting for a fool"

OK, it's a line from one of my kids' Veggie Tales movies, but it's fitting in this case. In the movie, it's aimed at Haman as he plots to send his enemies to the Island of Perpetual Tickling. In real life, it's the New York Times, and Editor Bill Keller, who are the arrogant fools as they plot to send their enemies to the Island of Perpetual Ridicule and Failure.

(I know, it's a stretch, but it worked when I thought of it.)

And exposing the foolish arrogance is Andy McCarthy, who, I have to say, rocks. I've said it again and again and again and again (and a couple more than that), but it's true.

His column in today's NRO is the latest example of classic Andy McCarthy: a clear-thinking conservative who recognizes that the only way we will defeat the forces of evil, those who would kill Americans because they are Americans and for no other reason, is through thorough intelligence (emphasis mine, because this is the key issue with the Times' decision to publish information that helps our government track terrorists):

How do you get such intelligence? Your options are few. The terrorists you capture, you squeeze until they break. Since your laws and protocols forbid physical coercion, you must employ psychological pressure — relentless detachment and loneliness that may render a battle-hard, hate-obsessed detainee hopeless enough and dependent enough on his interrogators to tell you the deepest, deadliest secrets. So you move your captives to places where they will be isolated, and forlorn, and … eventually — maybe after a very long time — moved to tell you what they know about their fellow savages.

Otherwise, you use your technological wizardry to penetrate their communications. You use your mastery of the global web that is modern finance to find the money and follow it — until you can pierce the veiled charities and masked philanthropists behind the terror dollars. Until you strangle the supply lines that convert hatred into action.

All the while, you never underestimate your enemies. You know they are clever, resourceful, and adaptive. You know they study you, just as you are studying them. More effectively, in fact. After all, when you find their vulnerabilities, there is still due process. When they find yours, there is murder. Mass murder.

Life or death. Which one it will be turns solely on intelligence and secrecy. Can you find out how they next intend to kill you, can you stop them, and can you prevent them from knowing how you know … so you can stop them again?

So what to do with the Times and its relentless anti-Bush crusade, which includes a willingness to print any tidbit that might conceivably embarrass or hurt the adminstration's efforts? What to do with the Times' rationale for printing this information?

Is there some illegality going on in the government’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program? No, no laws have been broken. Is there some abuse of power? No, there seem to have been extraordinary steps taken to inform relevant officials and win international cooperation. Why then? Why take action that can only aid and comfort the enemy in wartime?

Because, Keller haughtily pronounced, American methods of monitoring enemy money transfers are “a matter of public interest.”

Really? The Times prattles on about what it claims is a dearth of checks and balances, but what are the checks and balances on Bill Keller? Can it be that our security hinges on whether the editor of an antiwar, for-profit journal thinks some defense measure might be interesting?

And, McCarthy continues, what to do with a group of government employees willing to break the law in order to further the Times' agenda? Isn't there a public interest in "public officials [who are] endangering American lives," whose willingness to reveal classified information displays "both a profound offense against honor and a serious crime"?

Yeah, right:

National-security secrets? All fair game. If it’s about how we detain, or infiltrate, or defang the monsters pledged to kill us, the New York Times reserves the right to derail us any time it finds such matters … interesting.

But the media’s own sources? That, and that alone, is sacrosanct. Worth protecting above all else.

National-security secrets, after all, are merely the public treasure that keeps us alive. Press informants are the private preserve of the media.

And they’re just more important than you are.

Don't fool yourself by thinking the Mainstream Media is acting in our country's best interest. Keller and his cohorts may be foolish enough to believe such rubbish, but their arrogance is showing through.