Steve Chapman on the War on Terror:

Crime is a serious national problem that used to be even worse. At the height of the mayhem, more than 24,000 Americans were murdered annually—a Sept. 11, 2001, attack every six weeks. Yet even when the toll was at its worst, we insisted that police respect the constitutional rights of suspected criminals. We maintained the limits on the power of the president and other law enforcement officials to investigate and imprison people. For the most part, we kept our perspective.

After the World Trade Center came down, by contrast, we let ourselves be convinced that many restrictions were an unaffordable luxury. Any concern for civil liberties was met with the retort: "We're at war." And in war, anything goes.

Whole thing here.