Jane Harman (D-CA) is one of the most hawkish House Democrats. She even showed up at the launch party for a new neocon outfit called The Foreign Policy Initiative back in March. So this seems significant:

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), often hawkish on national security issues, is lining up with liberal Democrats against any further combat troop increases in Afghanistan.

Harman, a longtime Intelligence Committee member, told a Brookings Institution gathering today that any further increases “wouldn’t be well received” on Capitol Hill.

Harman’s view is that the Obama administration should deal with government corruption, and build up Afghan forces, before Congress is asked to pay for more U.S. troops. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U,S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has asked for 40,000 additional troops.

Combined with David Obey’s views I hope this is a sign that members of Congress are going to start seriously looking at questions of cost and overall impact on the national interest. It’s not really General McChrystal’s place to restrain himself in the quantity of resources he asks for. Probably ever senior level manager of any public or private sector endeavor thinks his bosses should give him more money and personnel to work with. But it’s the job of Congress and the White House to reach an overall judgment about all the considerations in play.

The fact that Jane Harman wound up on a wiretap was always a bit, shall we say, odd and disturbing. And Laura Rozen paints a picture wherein it definitely looks abusive—Porter Goss screwing around perhaps in order to protect his corrupt subordinates.

Whatever the case may ultimately prove to be, I think this demonstrates what should long have been obvious, namely that broad surveillance powers are incredibly likely to be used for abusive domestic political purposes. Obviously, there are potential tactical national security gains to be made by letting the NSA and FBI just do whatever they want. But in a strategic sense, what happens when you allow secret unrestrained surveillance power is that harmful abuses wind up swamping legitimate uses of the authority. Unfortunately, back when debates where taking place about illegal surveillance, it was only the hippie bloggers making this point. All Republicans and all “responsible” Democrats like Jane Harman understood that anyone worrying about abuse needs to put a tinfoil hat on.

Now that it looks like Harman has been the target of abuse, I’m hoping she’ll lead a campaign for the sort of broad reforms that can help ensure this doesn’t happen again. But I fear she’ll lead a narrow campaign aimed at simply sending the message “don’t f**k with Jane Harman.”