The left side of the blogosphere has taken recent comments by Newt Gingrich and ran with them for red meat criticism. The comment at the center of the controversy, in context, were as follows:
“This is a serious, long-term war,” the former speaker said, according an audio excerpt of his remarks made available yesterday by his office. “Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people.”
Liberal news outlets online have reported this as Newts desire to take away free speech, though, besides Ed from Captains Quarters Blog we had a hard time finding mainstream conservative bloggers (usually ready to eat their own) who were equally outraged. Right wing blog, The Jawa Report cheered Newts remarks with the following:
Gingrich is not talking about establishing the thought police, a censorship board, and a speech Gestapo. Nor is he even proposing enacting draconian hate speech laws, the kind of speech prohibitions that liberals often support. In the same article, Gingrich also talks about doing away with McCain-Feingold—that is, to increase the capacity for political debate.
Gingrich is only proposing to curtail the speech of our enemies. Not imagined enemies. Real people who, literally, encourage young Muslims to go to Iraq to fight your neighbors. Real people who want you dead.
You live in a bizarro world if you think it is okay to kill our enemies, but not take away their tools of propaganda. It seems like an odd moral system to suggest that speech is a higher priority than life. Especially when the life and speech in question is the life and speech of the enemy.
To paraphrase Lincoln, the First Amendment is not a suicide pact.
It should also be noted that the First Amendment does not apply to the battlefield. The cyber jihadis themselves consider the internet a weapon of war and themselves combatants in this fight. This is why they formed the “Global Islamic Media Front”, “The Jihad Media Brigade”, “The Alfajr Media Center”, and “as Sahab”. To recruit. To train. To coordinate. To fight us. To kill us.
So they claim they are combatants. They claim the media, especially the internet, is a weapon. Yet you wish to protect this propaganda because you have some odd attachment to the First Amendment which trumps all other concerns?
WWGD? (What would Goebbels do?)
I believe the WWGD is a legitimate question, but one that most have avoided in this war. In past wars, we have had no problem censoring people. Especially our enemies. And the domestic forces that support them. I doubt any of us would have a problem targetting Joseph Goebells Ministry of Propaganda for a bombing raid during the height of WWII. Had Goebells not committed suicide, I doubt any would raise objections for trying him as a war criminal. Even though he did nothing more than speak.
Nor did any of us have a problem when the leaders of the German Bund were rounded up and their papers and presses shut down.
Sure, censorship has been abused in the past. But the potential to abuse a power is not a sufficient reason to withhold it. Otherwise, governments would have no power.