On December 29, 2009 the New York Times plugged torture lawyer John Yoo’s book Crisis and Command in a friendly interview by Deborah Solomon. Solomon begins by describing his book as “an eloquent, fact-laden history.” I think of the interview as an aid to those who try to lose weight by purging. See for yourself.
Alison Kilkenny gets to the heart of the matter in her commentary at her blog on this:
“Q: [from Deborah Solomon] Do you regret writing the so-called torture memos, which claimed that President Bush was legally entitled to ignore laws prohibiting torture? A: [Yoo] No, I had to write them. It was my job. As a lawyer, I had a client. The client needed a legal question answered.
“And so we reach the crux of the problem. Yoo saw his role as a merchant providing a product for his 'client' instead of the actual purpose of a lawyer, an individual fluent in the language of law who offers legal advice. His job was not to creatively interpret the law, changing and bending the rules, to fit whatever batshit crazy plan Dick Cheney breathlessly asked for during late night 'wish list' sessions. Breaking the rules in that way is called breaking the law.
“Yoo’s job was to tell Bush and Company when they were breaking the law. By failing to do so, and then actively trying to cover-up Bush era crimes with seriously shady reasoning, Yoo became an accomplice to these crimes.
“Q: But isn’t a lawyer in the Department of Justice there to serve the people of this country? A: Yes, I think you are quite right, when the government is executing the laws, but if there’s a conflict between the president and the Congress, then you have to pick one or the other.
“What a great message to teach aspiring government lawyers! If it ever comes down to serving the people, or the wishes of one insane authoritarian leader, put your money on the person with the most nukes.”
***
Yoo sees his job as an attorney to do what his “client” wants. The fact that he was a government attorney whose client is supposed to be the LAW, doesn’t seem to have crossed over into his frontal cortex.
And this man teaches law at Berkeley!
But then, his perspective here IS the dominant one today where being a merchant, or mercenary, is what we’re told is what we should all do. If everyone acts like a merchant or mercenary, well, then everything will be hunky dory. The free market takes care of everything, doesn’t it?
See World Can’t Wait Director Debra Sweet’s comments on this interview too.
If you want to learn more and want to see John Yoo fired, go to FireJohnYoo.org.
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Comments
Yoo just simply didn’t get it…and apparently still doesn’t. He seems to share that quality with Dick Cheney…who continues to promote the bullshit that got us into the mess we are in. To his credit, George W. seems to realize that his best bet is to simply shut up and fade into obscurity.
I still think the best course of action is to hold off trying to handle this systemic problem by prosecuting this this pile of trash and throwing them into prison at the moment…mostly because I see that as a sure path to “you did it to us; we’re gonna do it back to you” kind of retribution piled upon retribution. I understand you see things differently…and I acknowledge that you may be right.
My guess: We will not stop excesses of this sort no matter what we do. Power does tend to corrupt…and it seems the people most likely to gain power in a democracy are also the most corruptible in the gene pool.
The fact that this man is teaching law is an abomination.
When I saw this yesterday all I can think is how gross this is. But, if you're going to be a war criminal trying to get away with the crimes you've committed you gotta have a well defended ego. All the more reason there needs to be an outpouring from the people demanding accountability.
Frank, when grave injustices are committed if they are not prosecuted, then this makes them acceptable and guarantees that they will be continued.
First of all…if they are not prosecuted…it does not necessarily follow that it makes them acceptable. They can…and have been…condemned sufficiently to say that the American people DO NOT consider them acceptable. To suggest that the only way we can demonstrate that they are unacceptable is by prosecuting is gratuitous.
As for guaranteeing that they will be continued…well, “grave injustices” are prosecuted all the time…and they still continue. The prosecution or non-prosecution of an item of grave injustice does not “guarantee” anything…in either direction.
Right now, the powers that be have deemed the good that may come from not prosecuting outweighs the good that may come from prosecuting. I consider that to be a reasonable judgment.
Only history can tell us if the tactic worked or not…and maybe even history will not be a reasonable indicator.
In any case, since it appears to me that no conviction will ever be obtained…can ever be obtained… against people like Yoo or Cheney…I see no benefit to be gotten from prosecuting at this time.
If we had not had Nuremberg and had not prosecuted the Nazi war criminals for their actions, then where would we have been in the years and decades after WW II? It is true that prosecuting atrocities doesn't guarantee that atrocities will end, as history has shown. But the failure to prosecute atrocities and allowing those practices to be institutionalized, which is exactly what Obama has done, not just by sins of omission, but by his actions in enshrining it and carrying it even further (e.g., stating that he will hold people indefinitely EVEN IF they have been found not guilty in a court of law), DOES GUARANTEE that we will live in a society that most people would shudder to consider if they really confronted that fact.
There are so many potential criminals to choose from in the former Bush administration, but if I had to pick two slam dunk convictions, it would have to be Yoo and Alberto Gonzales.
From Dec. 04, 2009
"Just over half of Americans (54 percent) say torture is at least sometimes justified to gain important information from suspected terrorists, compared with 44 percent who said so 10 months ago."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24118.htm
Someone should teach frank that there is a program called google, as he hop-scotches around these forums voicing contentions that are totally antithetical to fact.
I really wish you hadn’t brought the Nazi’s into this…but you did…and I consider even the proximity of this insertion to your argument to be inappropriate.
We are not enshrining this stuff…Obama is trying to work his way out of a mess he inherited…and is trying to do it in a way that does not alienate a significant segment of our population. We are already fractured enough as a society…no need to add further, unnecessary breakage.
In the meantime, my comments of earlier bear repeating:
First of all…if they are not prosecuted…it does not necessarily follow that it makes them acceptable. They can…and have been…condemned sufficiently to say that the American people DO NOT consider them acceptable. To suggest that the only way we can demonstrate that they are unacceptable is by prosecuting is gratuitous.
As for guaranteeing that they will be continued…well, “grave injustices” are prosecuted all the time…and they still continue. The prosecution or non-prosecution of an item of grave injustice does not “guarantee” anything…in either direction.
Right now, the powers that be have deemed the good that may come from not prosecuting outweighs the good that may come from prosecuting. I consider that to be a reasonable judgment.
Only history can tell us if the tactic worked or not…and maybe even history will not be a reasonable indicator.
In any case, since it appears to me that no conviction will ever be obtained…can ever be obtained… against people like Yoo or Cheney…I see no benefit to be gotten from prosecuting at this time.
For one thing, the "dummying down" of education begun during the Reagan years sure did work! Ask any teacher (such as myself) who's been teaching for at least 10-15 years. We ALL say the same thing: today's young people don't know any history (too boring!), get their information from TV, couldn't define "Fascism", the system we now live under.....and isn't that an ideal environment for evil men to do what they choose to a population that doesn't know anything other than that they "live in a great, free nation", which was never true, anyway. What a country!!!
From Dec. 04, 2009
"Just over half of Americans (54 percent) say torture is at least sometimes justified to gain important information from suspected terrorists, compared with 44 percent who said so 10 months ago."
Even if he understood how to use google, any FACT that does not conform to frank's bloviations is incomprehensible to him.
Safe-Bet: Yep.
Soap Box Amy: I relate. I do. We're engaged, in fact, in a fight right now over higher education in California in which those who administer the system want to bring the wonders of NCLB to higher education.
Robin: On trial for crimes against humanity!
Mark raises an interesting and important point that bears upon Frank's perspective. Political leaders, partly by virtue of being leaders and the credibility attached to them because of their office, and partly due to their ability to get their framing of events broadly propagated throughout the society, affect what the public thinks profoundly. Now that our leaders - in both parties - have endorsed the open practice of torture and indefinite detention, they have been able to convince many in the society that this is only proper. They have succeeded, in other words, in convincing all too many Americans that atrocities are ok.
Now, on the one hand, this isn't entirely new in that if you look at American history, as Amy implies, you see that committing atrocities date from the start - in the slave trade and in the treatment of Native Americans - and on through the various wars and so on.
On the other hand, the open breach of cardinal principles of the law IS new. It is an exceedingly dangerous, exceedingly terrible, development. Frank doesn't want to bring in the Nazis, but those who fail to study history, as they say, are condemned to repeat it.
What, in brief, has Obama said about the torturers, that Frank finds so convincing? He said during the campaign that he would restore habeas corpus, that he would close Gitmo, and that he would end torture. He also said that Bush and Cheney's transgressions got less so in the last several years of their term and that the people responsible for torture were very few. Every single one of these statements is a bald faced lie.
Since I continue to disagree with your recommendations about how we ought to proceed, you apparently were unable to accept it in the spirit in which it was offered.
I’ll try not to make this mistake again…although I am almost compulsive about acknowledging good offerings even from people with whom I am in substantial disagreement.
I am one of those people who think the world would be a better place if people who disagree with each other try to meet amicably when an opportunity arises.
But I’ll do my best to resist doing it with you in the future.
When frank said that americans do not consider torture acceptable, and I cited a study from a reputed journal that showed that american support for torture had INCREASED by ten percent in the last ten month, frank got all butt-hurt, as the study with attributions directly contradicted his OPINION.
frank has a very big problem distinguishing between opinion and fact, which is one of the reasons he never uses URLs to back up his contentions.
Recently he made a defense of the logic of Japanese WWII internment camps with the comment that those, so interred, may have been spies.
When, I similarly, posted an article from a historical review pointing out that there were only ten cases of subversion brought during the period in contention, and all were brought against caucasian americans, he slunk away with his tail between his legs, with nary a response, to leave his droppings on someone else's post.
As I said earlier, frank's problems stem more from his aversion to facts, than his sociopathic tendencies.
CA: Nice of you to drop in.
Amanda: It's ok to love the post title. : )
Padraig: Good to hear from you. And interesting about Sri Lanka.
Mark: Without facts, where are we?
Frank, if you're there, I invite you to consider what I've said: I wasn't engaging in a personal attack on you, as the comments thread should make clear. I was simply elaborating upon a point that you raised yourself and expressed my position on it. Is that not allowable? Please consider how we will ever get to the truth if we don't pursue things in such a manner.
Nicely put. Nail-on-head, so to speak. I think you just encapsulated the entire Bush philosophy and defined the criteria that determined who they picked as policy-makers: conscienceless sycophants who saw every decision as either in the political arena or the marketing arena. They never acknowledged "public service" except when "public" was defined as "rich, white, and corporate".
BTW, Frank's gig is defending Obama. To Frank it doesn't matter what Obama does, he couldn't have realistically done anything else and Frank has lots of reasons why that's so. Some of them are even true. But in a discussion about consequences, Obama doesn't allow that there can be any because "we want to look forwards, not backwards" so Frank has to find reasons to justify that stance no matter how weak and vulnerable it may be.
Sometimes I actually feel sorry for him. He believes in the man, and if his belief blinds him to certain facts, at least he's loyal. You gotta give him that. That's something in the face of all Obama's broken promises and slavish copying of Bushian policies. It must be hard and it must hurt sometimes to have your loyalty continually trashed like that. Too bad we didn't get a better man for Frank - for all the Franks - to be loyal to. He deserves one.