Defending Against Terrorism
John Yoo states his case:
In these extraordinary circumstances, while our military put al Qaeda on the run, it was the duty of the government to plan for worst-case scenarios -- even if, thankfully, those circumstances never materialized. This was not reckless. It was prudent and responsible. While government officials worked tirelessly to prevent the next attack, lawyers, of which I was one, provided advice on unprecedented questions under the most severe time pressures.
Judging from the media coverage of Justice Department memos from those days -- released this week by the Obama administration -- this careful contingency planning amounted to a secret plot to overthrow the Constitution and strip Americans of their rights. As the New York Times has it, Bush lawyers "rush into sweeping away this country's most cherished rights." "Irresponsible," harrumphed former Clinton administration Justice Department officials.
Read the whole thing. (h/t Ann Althouse)
posted by VermontGuy @ 6:33 AM
10 Comments:
Straw man. The idea is not that he was aiming to overthrow our constitutional protections while evilly twirling his mustaches, it's that he would have allowed and blessed such an overthrow if worse had come to worst. Constitutional protections that are voidable are worthless.
To answer CG's question from another thread, my statement that I wouldn't hire him to do doc review was not hyperbole. Either he is wholly unethical or capable of remarkable self-deception, either of which would disqualify him from my trust in any capacity where I had to rely on his work.
Every administration has plans as to what to do under emergency circumstance, including declaring martial law. The constitution is not a suicide pact. The difference here was the last administration actually ahd to seriously contemplate what would happen if we were directly under attack and most of our leaders had been killed. Don't forget that last plan was either going to the White House or the Capitol.
Every administration has plans as to what to do under emergency circumstance, including declaring martial law.
You should read the memos. This was planning for what the president could do without declaring martial law. That suicide pact trope is the first, cheap excuse used by everyone who wants to have things their own way.
The constitution is not a suicide pact -- but abandoning what we stand for and engaging in the extremely shortsighted policy of torturing the world's citizens might be.
We have never officially supported torture. We certainly did a lot rougher interrogations back in the days we used to fight white people in our wars. As far as what the world thinks about it, it's just an excuse to go against us (since our enemies do much worse). Our prison at Guantanamo was a lot better than most prisons around the world, including Europe, but the propaganda continued. This is all about about PR, not substance.
We have never officially supported torture. We certainly did a lot rougher interrogations back in the days we used to fight white people in our wars.
Sources, please. My understanding is that our strategy toward German POWs in WWII with potential intelligence value was to try to win them over with reason and civilized treatment. The worst I can find is that when 7 million were captured almost all at once, German POWs were kept outdoors during "a cold, wet spring." Harsh indeed. And Japanese officers who had waterboarded our downed pilots were convicted of war crimes and sentenced to hard labor.
Anonymous #3 is just making excuses. It was well-known in WWII that you would prefer to be captured by the Americans and we were and continued to be admired worldwide for our humane treatment of people. We have done ourselves incalculable damage by giving up the highground. I will always prefer to operate from strength rather than cowardly desperation (which is where torturers operate).
We still deserve that reputation. Unfortunately people lie about us all the time, which is the real damage. The enemy we fight knows they'll be treated well if captured (which encourages them). Also, we can't turn those we've captured over to where they came from since they'll be treated worse.
Lately, the more horrifying has been finding out when they're telling the truth about us.
The offenses at Abu Ghraib were illegal and punished, not our policy. The "torture" elsewhere was in three separate cases of high value targets who didn't rise to the level or POWs and who wouldn't talk otherwise. This is nothing compared to how we regularly treated hundreds of thousands of others with no due process in previous wars, how our enemy regular treats anyone, even civilians, in their war against us, or how Europeans treat many of their detainees in regular prisons. The opposition to the U.S. is puffed up based on lies and lack of understanding.
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