Bush: 'I Am the Law'

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122205N.shtml

 

Bush: 'I Am the Law'

By Max J. Castro

Progreso Weekly

 

22-28 December 2005 Issue

 

" L'état, c'est moi. " I am the State: " That's what the 17th

century French monarch, Louis XIV (1638-1715), told the Parliament of

Paris after some of its members dared to question funding for the war

against Spain.

 

" La Loi, c'est moi; I am the Law: " That is what George W. Bush, so

anti-French, so unlike the Sun King and yet so monarchical, has in

effect told those who question the president's right to do whatever he

wants under the guise of the " war against terrorism. " Or, Bush being

Bush, he would probably say: " Me, I'm the law, that's me, the law is me. "

 

Bush, aided by a handful of partisan lawyers willing to twist and

bend legality in every direction or even to turn it on its head to

suit convenience, has sought legal cover to subvert or ignore the law

at every turn. Political appointees such as former White House Counsel

and current Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez and former Justice

Department lawyer John Yoo have been more than willing to deliver

tortuous legal opinions meant to give Bush carte-blanche and prevent

any future liability for top officials and anyone else involved in the

" war on terror. "

 

Bush's legal enablers have been a busy and shameless bunch.

International law regarding the justification for war? No problem, go

to the UN Security Council to seek authorization. And, if the Council

declines to approve war? Invade anyway and invoke violations of

Security Council resolutions as the legal basis for military action.

 

The Geneva Conventions? No sweat: Its provisions have been

rendered " quaint " by the " war on terror. " Then coin a new category,

label prisoners in this war " enemy combatants, " and argue that for

them no rules apply and anything goes.

 

The Convention Against Torture? Taking candy from a baby: Claim

that it only applies to interrogations conducted in the United States.

Then send them to other countries for the third degree. Just in case,

redefine the terms. Torture is what we say it is; if they don't have

that near-death experience, if they don't see the white light, it

isn't torture. And, even if they die under torture, understand that

was legal too because if the Commander-Chief says it is legal, then it is.

 

OK, but haven't we already heard it all when it comes to the Bush

administration's Orwellian ways and its disregard for the law, from

secret prisons to extraordinary rendition to indefinite detention to

denial of the right to habeas corpus?

 

No: With Bush another week always means a new and more disturbing

revelation. Until now the administration's numerous transgressions

have involved violations of international law. International law? The

Administration has had substantial success in selling the American

people on the idea that international law is irrelevant at best and,

at worst, an obnoxious interference with U.S. sovereignty. Meanwhile,

on the domestic front, the President has relied on a compliant

Congress and a deferential judiciary to legitimize bending the laws

and the Constitution, manly through the Patriot Act.

 

Now comes news of a new entry in the annals of the Bush

administration's illegalities, a secret program to spy on Americans in

violation of the Fourth Amendment. The New York Times revealed last

week that in 2002 Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA)

to monitor international calls involving Americans located on U.S.

soil. Congress, awakened from its slumber by the administration's

brazen overreaching, put the brakes on the reauthorization of the

Patriot Act.

 

It is not as if the government lacks the tools to protect the

nation under the rule of law. Twenty-five years ago, in the wake of

revelations about illegal spying by the Nixon administration, the

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed to clarify the

boundaries of the permissible. The act created a special court, known

as the FISA court, which decides on requests for surveillance

involving intelligence. The FISA court acts in secret and can grant a

warrant within hours of its request. Moreover, it can grant warrants

retroactively; the government can start listening 72 hours before a

warrant is approved. According to news reports, during its history the

FISA court has received over 19,000 requests for warrants and denied

just 5.

 

But neither the lopsided odds in favour of the government nor the

cloaked, expedited nature of the proceedings of the FISA court were

good enough for this administration. That Bush felt it necessary to

circumvent the minimal scrutiny of what is essentially a rubber-stamp

court demonstrates better than anything what this administration has

sought all along: an absolute license to do whatever it pleases in the

conduct of its " war on terror. "

 

Once again, there were administration lawyers willing to justify

it all by arguing that the President could do just about anything in

times of conflict. As the New York Times reported, " the same Justice

Department lawyer, John Yoo, who helped write the twisted memo on

legalizing torture, wrote briefs supporting the idea that the

president could ignore the law once again when it came to the

intelligence agency's eavesdropping on telephone calls and e-mail

messages. "

 

Wrote Yoo: " The government may be justified in taking measures

which in less troubled times could be seen as infringements of

individual liberties. " Countered the New York Times editorial: " Let's

be clear about this: illegal government spying on Americans is a

violation of individual liberties, whether conditions are troubled or

not. "

 

Indeed, if rights could be suspended whenever the government

considered the times to be troubled, the Bill of Rights would lose all

meaning. Times are often troubled. History shows that the " troubled

times and war argument " has been invoked whenever there has been a

shameful trampling on individual liberties. It was used to justify

illegal spying on opponents of the Vietnam War. It was invoked during

the Cold War to rationalize the outrages of McCarthyism. It was used

during World War II to confer a veneer of legality on the massive

violation of rights perpetrated by the internment of the Japanese.

 

Bush already has begun a campaign to invoke the " war on terror "

and the spectre of 9/11 to justify the trampling of the fundamental

Constitutional right contained in the Fourth Amendment's prohibition

of unreasonable searches and seizures. The president is hoping that,

once again, the right-wing media and the see-no-evil lawyers and

intellectuals will come to his rescue. They are already trying their

best to do it.

 

Yet, perhaps this time the American people will not be deceived by

the latest of this administration's many fallacies. It's just possible

that, as has happened before in the course of American history, the

tide is turning and the silence is in the process of being broken.

 

Fifty years ago, in the wake of the prolonged detainment of

Japanese Americans, Eugene Rostow of Yale Law School broke with the

war-induced atmosphere of hysteria and complicity that characterized

the attitude of too many lawyers, intellectuals and ordinary citizens

when he wrote: " The war power is the power to wage war successfully …

But it is the power to wage war, not a license to do unnecessary and

dictatorial things in the name of the war power. "

 

Amen.

 

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