Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security

by Dean Reuter, John Yoo

Overview

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States went to war. With thousands of Americans killed, billions of dollars in damage, and aggressive military and security measures in response, we are still living with the war a decade later. A change of presidential administration has not dulled controversy over the most fundamental objectives, strategies, and tactics of the war, or whether it is even a war at all.

Confronting Terror sets the stage for a reasoned and robust discussion of the future with a collection of new essays examining the meaning of 9/11 and the law and policy of the war on terrorism. The contributors include principled supporters and critics of the war on terrorism alike, from former Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Michael Mukasey to Alan Dershowitz and former long-time president of the ACLU Nadine Strossen.

Confronting Terror presents stark differences of opinion on issues, such as the president’s authority to detain, the assertion of state secrets, the limits of surveillance, the use of unmanned drones and targeted killing, the treatment and interrogation of detainees, the Patriot Act, and the peculiar nature of our foe. More surprising, perhaps, are the areas of agreement, particularly the fact that the policies of two very different presidents are remarkably the same. In surveying these views, Yoo and Reuter hope to clarify the debate, both for our society and for those responsible for waging the war.

Contributors include John D. Ashcroft, Bob Barr, Michael Chertoff, Alan Dershowitz, Viet D. Dinh, Richard Epstein, Victor Davis Hanson, Arthur Herman, Charles Kesler, Andrew C. McCarthy, Edwin Meese III, Michael B. Mukasey, Theodore B. Olson, A. Raymond Randolph, Dean Reuter, Anthony D. Romero, Paul Rosenzweig, Laurence Silberman, Nadine Strossen, Marc Thiessen, Jonathan Turley, and John C. Yoo.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594035623
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	08/30/2011
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.24(h) x 1.11(d)

About the Author

Dean Reuter is a senior staff member of the Federalist Society, the premier conservative/libertarian legal group in the country.

John Yoo is law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former Bush Justice Department official. He is most recently the author of Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power (2010).

Table of Contents

Introduction Dean Reuter 1

In Memory of Barbara K. Olson Theodore B. Olson 9

The Obama Response to September 11 Victor Davis Hanson 23

9/11 in its Historical Context Arthur Herman 37

War V. Crime: Breaking the Chains of the Old Security Paradigm Michael Chertoff 51

A Unified Defense against Terrorists Edwin Meese III Paul Rosenzweig 65

Reforming the Intelligence Community The Honorable Laurence H. Silberman 77

The Imperfect Reconciliation of Liberty and Security Richard A. Epstein 89

Torture and Democratic Accountability: An Oxymoron? Alan Dershowitz 103

Nuremburg Revisited and Revised: The Legitimation of Torture in the United States Jonathan Turley 115

Stopping the Terrorists Marc Thiessen 129

Confronting the Animating Ideology of the Enemy Andrew C. McCarthy 143

Interrogation John Yoo 157

Fear: The Tail Wagging the Post-9/11 Policy Dog Bob Barr 173

Liberty, Security, and the USA Patriot Act John D. Ashcroft Viet D. Dinh 187

Protection of our National Security-Revisited Michael B. Mukasey 201

Access to Justice in the "War on Terror" Anthony D. Romero 215

Problematic Post-9/11 Judicial Inactivism: Immunizing Executive Branch Overreaching Nadine Strossen 229

The Guantánamo Mess The Honorable A. Raymond Randolph 241

Our Fighting Faith, Ten Years Later Charles R. Kesler 263

Conclusion John Yoo 277

Author Biographies 291

Acknowledgments 303

Endnotes 305

Editorial Reviews

Reuter and Yoo have brought together the war on terror’s most controversial issues in one definitive collection. As our country continues to move forward in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, these original short essays present dramatically different views on targeted killings, surveillance, interrogation, the Patriot Act, civil liberties in wartime, the Constitution’s separation of powers, and more. These are brilliant scholars, judges, and some of the public officials who were at the center of events at the time of 9/11 and its aftermath. Readers will find agreement, conflict, and rich insight in this volume. It is a must-read for people of all political and ideological stripes.

-U.S. Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Former Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee

The editors have put together a first-class book of essays debating the stubborn legal and policy issues, involving the balance between national security policy and personal liberty, that remain contested ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The choice of essayists is balanced, the essays themselves lucid and accessible, the essayists well-known experts, and many of them insiders with unique insights to offer based on rich practical experience. This is a book of practical reason rather than armchair academic speculation.

-Richard Posner, Federal judge and author of Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency (2006)

From the Publisher