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Defending American Values from a President Run Amok
by Glenn Greenwald
Book Reviewed by:
I first moved to Manhattan in 1991 to attend law school at New York
University, and lived and worked there for the next fifteen years. Manhattan
was my home and place of work on September 11, 2001. On that day,
Manhattan felt like a nightmarish mix of war zone, police state, and anarchy
all rolled into one. I don't know anyone whose outlook on politics
wasn't altered in some meaningful way on that day. But soon we realized
that our country, its institutions, and its people are strong enough to
withstand
any terrorist attack or any group of terrorists, and, for those who had
not lost friends or family, life seemed to return to normal more quickly
than anyone could have anticipated.
This is not to say that I was not angry about the attacks. I believed that
Islamic extremism posed a serious threat to the country, and I wanted an
aggressive response from our government. I was ready to stand behind
President Bush and I wanted him to exact vengeance on the perpetrators
and find ways to decrease the likelihood of future attacks. During the following
two weeks, my confidence in the Bush administration grew as the
president gave a series of serious, substantive, coherent, and eloquent
speeches that struck the right balance between aggression and restraint.
And I was fully supportive of both the president's ultimatum to the Taliban
and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan when our demands were
not met. Well into 2002, the president's approval ratings remained in the
high 60 percent range, or even above 70 percent, and I was among those
who strongly approved of his performance.
What first began to shake my faith in the administration was its conduct
in the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested in May 2002 on U.S.
soil and then publicly labeled "the dirty bomber." The administration
claimed it could hold him indefinitely without charging him with any
crime and while denying him access to counsel.
I never imagined that such a thing could happen in modern America—
that a president would claim the right to order American citizens
imprisoned with no charges and without the right to a trial. In China, the
former Soviet Union, Iran, and countless other countries, the government
can literally abduct its citizens and imprison them without a trial. But that
cannot happen in the United States—at least it never could before. If it
means anything to be an American citizen, it means that we cannot be
locked away by our government unless we are charged with a crime, given
due process in court, and then convicted by a jury of our peers.
I developed an intense interest in the Padilla case. It represented a direct
challenge to my foundational political views—that we can tolerate all sorts
of political disputes on a range of issues, but we cannot tolerate attacks by
the government on our constitutional framework and guaranteed liberties.
My deep concerns about the Padilla case eroded but did not entirely
eliminate my support for the president. The next significant item on the
president's agenda was the invasion of Iraq. While the administration
recited the standard and obligatory clichés about war being a last resort,
by mid-2002 it appeared, at least to me, that the only unresolved issue was
not whether we would invade but when the invasion would begin.
During the lead-up to the invasion, I was concerned that the hell-bent
focus on invading Iraq was being driven by agendas and strategic objectives
that had nothing to do with terrorism or the 9/11 attacks. The overt
rationale for the invasion was exceedingly weak, particularly given that it
would lead to an open-ended, incalculably costly, and intensely risky preemptive
war. Around the same time, it was revealed that an invasion of
Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein had been high on the agenda of
various senior administration officials long before September 11.
Despite these doubts, concerns, and grounds for ambivalence, I had
not abandoned my trust in the Bush administration. Between the president's
performance in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the swift removal of the
Taliban in Afghanistan, and the fact that I wanted the president to succeed,
because my loyalty is to my country and he was the leader of my country,
I still gave the administration the benefit of the doubt. I believed then that
the president was entitled to have his national security judgment deferred
to, and to the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted
his judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the
invasion of this sovereign country.
Copyright by Glenn Greenwald. All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Working Assets Publishing (www.workingassetspublishing.com).
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