DAHLIA LITHWICK has an interesting, if somewhat depressing take on civil liberties and the terror war. Here’s the “money graf” as Welch and the other journos call it:

In a recent Gallup Poll, 60 percent of Americans said that the president is “about right” in restricting our civil liberties to fight terrorism, and 25 percent say he hasn’t gone far enough. Why is the public willing to accept this secrecy and arrogation of power? Well, because we’re terrified, for one thing, but also because we have come to believe that increased security usually requires sacrificing civil liberties. While this is true, the converse is not. Giving up civil liberties—any and all of them, indiscriminately—does not necessarily bring security. We will not be safer from terrorism if the government restricts our right to vote. And we are not necessarily safer because the state has done away with the right to judicial review.

This is absolutely right, as far as it goes, but it’s not clear that Lithwick is being hard enough on the authorities. Dumb press coverage on the “tradeoffs” between security and civil liberties has given the impression that somehow civil liberties are the coin with which you purchase security. But it doesn’t work that way. Some security measures may limit civil liberties. (Most effective ones — such as killing terrorists overseas — won’t.) But most sacrifices of civil liberties won’t produce security — they’ll just represent bureaucratic opportunism that does nothing to make us safer. I said this in a column on September 14 and subsequent events have proven it true.