Democracy held hostage: “In light of the complexity and likely duration of this conflict, it is essential for the Bush administration to build a deeply entrenched public consensus – and this can’t be done by lying, hiding information, short-circuiting civil liberties or any of the other old ‘national security’ techniques of suspending democracy. Consensus, instead, must come over time from thorough and open debates, as Feaver recognizes: ‘Many of these debates will be specious, but not all will be. Indeed, the Second Cold War may be harder to fight than the last one, leaving ample room for responsible disagreements among reasonable people. We will have to nurture those debates, learn from them, and forge the best possible policy in an extraordinarily difficult political climate.’”

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