Michelle Malkin has been whipping her sheep into a frenzy again. The outrage du jour is the New York Times’ exposure of the Treasury Department’s program to monitor international bank transactions. Malkin has asked her readers to photoshop WWII propaganda posters that warned against exposing military secrets.

It’s a neat trick. First, the exercise equates the fight against terrorism with WWII. Second, it equates the Times’ practice of letting people know what their government is doing with divulging troop movements to the enemy. And since the Times knowingly revealed the existence of the Treasury Department’s program, Malkin is implying that the Times engaged in outright treason.

In fact, Malkin spells out the treason charge, for the benefit of her slower readers:

The New York Times and their traitorous, leaking sources have done it again.

In other words, Malkin and the Bush administration are just recycling the old fascist canard that freedom from the press is more important than freedom of the press. Fortunately, that act is beginning to get old as the American people become less fearful. A majority of Americans are not paranoic or dimwitted enough to fall for that line of reasoning.

Imagine how paranoic you’d have to be to believe that a loose affiliation of stateless radicals is as much a threat to us as the axis powers of WWII. The axis powers launched a war that killed 50 million people, outright murdered 10 million more, and overran and annexed a series of countries. If Malkin thinks that the terrorists really constitute that level of threat, why hasn’t she found her way down to the recruiting station?

Imagine how stupid you’d have to be to believe that al-Qaeda operatives have been wiring money all over the world, blissfully unaware of the fact that those transactions could be monitored and traced. If that’s the case, one has to ask why the whole network hasn’t been rounded up by now. And it’s worth noting that a Bush official boasted of monitoring international transactions back in 2001 — during a nationally broadcast interview.

Earth to Malkin: what made the Treasury Department’s program newsworthy was not the fact that transactions are being monitored. What made it newsworthy was the fact that the Treasury Department has been looking through the database of a European bank consortium, including records of Americans’ transactions, without obtaining warrants.

The fact that various international police agencies examine financial transactions was already well known.

As I’ve said, I don’t really have a problem with the program itself. As I understand it, the program does not overtly violate the law. The potential for an invasion of privacy is present, but the data gathered isn’t as readily abused as the data gathered through the warrantless wiretapping program. And since the monitoring of financial transactions represents a significant impediment to terrorist activity, I’m willing to support the program in the absence of evidence of abuse. But revealing the existence of the program is a far cry from divulging military secrets.

In the past, there have been various projects to alter propaganda posters to lampoon the Bush administration, and it’s worth taking another look at them now. Also, Michelle Malkin is an Idiot has some brand-spankin’ new posters.

Also, don’t miss my all-time favorite, Kirk Anderson’s original propaganda posters.

(via MetaFilter and MalkinWatch)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Media, Fascism, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.