The Smerconish Podcast · Episode 2108 · November 10, 2026 · 1 hr 10 min

Can We Agree: War On Terror

This is the audio version of "Can We Agree?" Episode #7. "Can We Agree?" is the program that asks whether two brilliant minds from opposite corners of an argument can find any common ground on the questions that matter most to Americans today. After 25 years of War on Terror, was the freedom America surrendered worth the security gained? Six weeks after the September 11 attacks, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Patriot Act. Since then, there has been no second 9/11. But the powers built to hunt Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda never went away: Secret surveillance, National Security letters, and a president’s claim to wage war on his own say-so. They have passed from president to president, in both parties. Facing off in this edition of “Can We Agree?“ to debate whether the liberty traded for post-9/11 security has been worth it: -Radley Balko has spent 25 years reporting on policing and the drug war, at Cato, Reason, and the Washington Post. His reporting helped get a man off Mississippi’s death row. Today he writes the newsletter The Watch. In the New York Times this September, he wrote, “the powers previous presidents amassed are now being turned against us.” -Andrew McCarthy spent 17 years as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, where he convicted the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman and 11 others in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case. Today he writes for National Review, and he has defended the Patriot Act for more than two decades. This September, he wrote: “The war part of the War on Terror has proved a counterterrorism success.” Both say this administration has crossed legal lines. Where they split is why. Can they agree? Original air date on YouTube: 6 November 2026.