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TechnoratiIn response to mounting criticisms of its ongoing employment of John Yoo, UC Berkeley School of Law's Dean William Orrick issued a Memorandum -- entitled "The Torture Memos and Academic Freedom" -- citing the "near absolute" values of academic freedom and tenure to explain why the law school will not dismiss Yoo nor even initiate an inquiry into whether action ought to be taken against him. There are all sorts of interesting exchanges regarding those questions -- from academics such as Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong, Marty Lederman, and Henry Farrell. The comment sections to those posts are well worth reading as well.
Some of those commentators argue -- persuasively -- that mere citation to "academic freedom" does not resolve the question, since Yoo is charged not merely with advocating repellent ideas (something that should never result in dismissal), but far beyond that, was acting as an architect of an actual torture regime. Others raise the concern that Yoo should be entitled to full due process, that all facts ought to be fully investigated and disclosed before one can determine what, if any, action is appropriate. I think all of those concerns are valid, though ultimately, what matters most is that some important American institution -- somewhere -- meaningfully demonstrate that perpetrating systematic torture and committing war crimes renders one beyond the pale in the United States. It shouldn't be up to Berkeley to enforce that precept by itself, but if no other institutions are doing so, then (after a full and careful investigation), Berkeley should.
But I want to focus on a slightly different problem -- namely, the danger of turning John Yoo into a scapegoat through unwarranted focus on him. Yoo's defense that he was merely offering legal opinions, not making any policy decisions, is absurd, since, as he surely knew at the time, the purpose of those opinions was to enable and legally authorize savage and illegal acts. But it is true that he did not act alone, or with supreme authority -- really, he lacked authority to implement any policies at all. And it's also true that he could not have accomplished anything without the highest officials in our government at least implicitly encouraging and supporting what he was doing.
In this regard, turning John Yoo into the poster child for the torture regime misses the point and relieves other, at equally deserving officials of responsibility. John Yoo was not a mastermind but a mere instrument -- a tool -- in the Bush administration's arsenal to abolish existing constraints on our treatment of detainees and to implement torture methods. These recent reports that Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Powell, etc. -- with the knowledge and approval of Bush -- actively "choreographed" these torture methods leave no doubt about any of that, and even before that, that was abundantly clear. Yoo was not the cause of any of this, but merely responded to instructions from the White House that he create a legal framework to enable what those officials decided they wanted to do:
Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.
Yoo wasn't opining in a vacuum. He knew that these techniques were already being used and that the highest level of our Government wanted him to create legal protections for what had happened and to enable more of what they wanted to do. He bears substantial culpability, but certainly not exclusive or even principal culpability. But beyond just that, there is something deeply misleading -- disturbingly self-justifying -- about the stampede to depict John Yoo as some kind of singular, isolated aberration. It's redolent of the scapegoating of Lynndie England and her low-level Abu Ghraib colleagues for what was official government policy. The responsibility for the torture regime does not rest with John Yoo or even just isolated Bush officials. It's far more collective than that.
As a country, we have repeatedly endorsed what John Yoo enabled. In addition to abolishing habeas corpus, the 2006 Military Commissions Act (.pdf) "insulated government officials from liability for many of the violations of the War Crimes Act they might have committed during the period prior to 2006," as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin put it. It also vested vast discretion with the President to determine what constitutes "torture." Nonetheless, it was passed by an overwhelming Congressional majority, with substantial bipartisan support, without even a filibuster being attempted, and with the blessing of alleged "torture opponent" John McCain. It still has not been even partially repealed.
As a country, then, our democratic institutions -- without much outcry -- literally amended the War Crimes Act, retroactively, to declare that those who violated it, those who committed war crimes, would be free from investigation or prosecution. The Abu Ghraib scandal was disclosed in early 2004 and George Bush was re-elected. Accounts of systematic abuse at Guantanamo and elsewhere were known before then as well.
Directing moral outrage uniquely at John Yoo and demanding that he be removed from Berkeley, while highly understandable in one sense, poses the danger that this broader responsibility will be obscured and that real accountability need not take place. If we don't have the political will to prosecute our highest political officials for war crimes or even remove them from office -- and we unquestionably did not and do not -- how can we simultaneously insist that John Yoo is beyond the pale? For better or worse, what John Yoo did, while revolting and radical, was within what became -- and still is -- the American political mainstream in the years after the 9/11 attacks.
None of this is to oppose an investigation (a real investigation, with full due process) by Berkeley into whether Yoo should be dismissed from his position due to his active participation in war crimes and other conduct that would warrant dismissal under Berkeley's rules. But discussion of things like the "Yoo Memos" has started to have the effect of obscuring the fact that those were really "Bush Memos" and, ultimately "American Memos." Some of the particulars of the Bush administration's conduct were revealed only in the last couple of weeks, but the general contours have been known for a long time and most of the country, and almost all of its political and media establishment, acquiesced. Forming a lynch mob against John Yoo -- as though there is sudden shock at his isolated, unconscionable behavior -- shouldn't be used as a tool to bury that fact.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.
© Salon.com
56 Comments so far
Show AllIn the mid to late 1960 Yoo would not have had enough students to fill a toilet stall.
I disagree with Mr. Greenwald.
I believe that by investigating Yoo for the Torture Memos, gets the ball rolling on other, much needed, investigations.
If the Washington cabal is aware that one of their, "tools" is under scrutiny and being investigated for contributing to war crimes, at a university, this can open the door for congressional hearings for the rest of the war criminals (bush, cheney, wolfowitz, rice, rumsfeld, etc.).
Moreover, as Mr. Green states, no one is investigating the other alleged war criminals. He is correct on this point, but only becasue the democratic leadership has willingly dismissed their constitutional duty to investigate these war crimes.
By Berkley doing nothing, it sends the message to Washington that it's ok to advocate torture.
Another point that Mr. Green missed is the fact that Yoo, himself, has been interviewed several times, in which he clearly and emphatically agrees with his own memo, on the torture issue. He makes a good case for torturing people and appears quite satisfied with himself for laying out the groundwork for torture.
Is this the kind of instructor we want teaching at prestigious universities?
Even worse, is this the kind of intstructor we want teaching, "law" at a prestigious university?
Sakhan, neoconservatism means never having to say you're sorry, but such obstinacy has its price.
The neocons I've known personally are miserable people, both to others and to themselves. They don't lead happy lives. An inability to admit mistakes and learn from them, and the resulting inevitable disasters that attitude attracts, keeps them in a state of prolonged immaturity and narrowmindedness.
Suffice it to say they aren't exactly 'party people' as they are rarely invited to any, except those put on by other neocons, which are deadly boring affairs of drunkenness and cruelty fueled by good Scotch. Their friends tend to be people who owe them something and therefore must stay in line, and their marriages tend toward the 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' model proving, once again, that money doesn't buy happiness, nor even civility.
Most of all, the intelligent neocons, somewhere internally, know they are playing a losing game but, like a degenerate gambler, can't leave the table until they're flat broke. It's as good a definition of mortal hell as any I have seen.
Has Yoo ever managed to say, "sorry, I was wrong: torture is criminally wrong."
Have Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz et al ever said, "Sorry, I was wrong."
Over here Blair not only would not say sorry, he tried to justify going into an aggressive war by citing his belief (whatever meaning that has for him). To this list add Hilary Clintons, who, in addition, experienced yet another belief in thinking she had come under sniper fire.
An excellent piece by Mr. Greewald! So very well put--the American Memos.
Let us hope Berkeley comes to its senses and discovers some measure of dignity and pride.
I don't think that Berkeley should fire Yoo for his IDEAS...or even for the fact that his 'ideas' are really not ideas, but talking points, and or for the fact that the history and analysis in his briefs is specious. They shouldn't have hired him in the first place, knowing what he wrote and what he was, but they did. Defense of academic freedom means that the only grounds for firing tenured faculty are failure to perform one's appointed duties and moral turpitude. Since Yoo's immorality pred-dates Boalt's hiring him, there aren't grounds for firing him. (Nor, for the record, were there grounds for firing Ward Churchill, though he is a real jerk.)
I do think that there are grounds for getting Yoo disbarred, and I will happily support efforts to that effect. Once he's disbarred, other things would follow.
I am a Cal alum (three times over). The last time I was sent a fundraising letter, I replied to it at length pointing out that I was not willing even to consider supporting an institution that chose to hire Yoo and to assiduously defend him.
Perhaps if enough alums share the sentiment and take the same action, there would be less enthusiasm for defending Yoo, and he would leave Berkeley for the hole he richly deserves to occupy.
banjoman (April 13th, 2008 7:27 am) the experts on interrogation say that torture doesn't work -- since people will say anything to stop the pain, most of the 'confessions' elicited are useless and waste the time of our agents as they try to track down and verify the false data. Better to exercise more subtle and tried-and-true methods, such as interrogating the subject and winning him or her over to your side. This is not 'goody goody crisis coulselors' or 'time out on the couch' it's tough psychological interrogation, but absent the physical pain of torture.
Also, doesn't the fact that we have tortured innocent people bother you even a bit?
Obviously the moral dimensions of torturing human beings doesn't faze you, but what about the practical aspect? You cannot prove that we have tortured anyone and stopped an attack.
My father served in WWII, and my uncle in Korea; both of them were outraged at the torture that the Japanese and North Koreans used on our troops, some of the same methods being used by BushCo today.
We were the 'Good Guys' at one time because we didn't commit barbarities and followed the rule of law with our POWs. Should we abandon our values because you are cowering under the bed scared of another terrorist attack? Home of the brave, huh? Aren't we supposed to be fighting to preserve our values and spread them to the rest of the world? Is this how you accomplish that -- by torturing people the same way our enemies did?
No matter whether his higher-ups approved or requested his memos, Yoo is a war criminal.
File an ethical complaint with both the state that issued Yoo's license to practice law and the bar association for the state where he now teaches. Seek to have him disbarred and see if the school still thinks he is fit to teach then.
The grounds for disbarrment? It is one thing to advise a client as to how to avoid prosecution for past crimes committed. It is quite another thing to actively assist in committing future crimes which is what Yoo did for Bush.
Banjoman,
I'll bet if I poured "a little water" down your animal nose, I could get you to admit to being a member of any number of terrorist groups, and to confess to all kinds of plots, especially if I didn't care if you lived or died, or if anyone else cared about your condition. You're the one who should get real and learn something about how competent interrogators acquire valid working intelligence data.
Definitely NOT your friend, nor are you mine!
I am fed up with hearing all these pro con arguments re this torture issue. there is no debate, it is wrong, morally. My conclusion is that Yoo/me/we are all complicit in the same way the the population during the Nazi regime was. We sit and watch and do nothing but talk and talk and talk. Inaction to do something against this govt. is as criminal as the actions this government is perpetrating. Talk seemingly is getting us nowhere. The Clash said in their song Guns of Brixton "when they kick in your front door how you gonna go? with your hands on your head, or on the trigger of your gun" seems we get closer to that choice day by day with this inaction. I guess we deserve what we get from this point on. It is very distressing and depressing all of this. That is all.
kudu
It is pretty simple: either the laws of the republic are enforced for all or they are not.
Unequal enforcement is unequal status under the law.
Siouxrose
I think all that we are seeing with the Bush administration is based in a drive for power. And it may be they are using historical models like the Roman Empire at times for how they approach gaining power. They seek out people they can control with a particular ideology and then use them ...For example Colin Powell. He is a man who has certain standards about obeying within the political/military system and he is black and has or had some personal charisma. He was used at the UN to give the justification for the war by giving the lies about the uranium tubes. But Blacks have not been swayed to support the Bush administration by Powell or Condi and now Powell is discredited for his lies (even if the lies were unwitting).
They have also used the Christian religion and have been able to silence those Christian leaders who oppose them by not allowing those opposing points of view on the national media. The Christian religion's philosophical base can be more easily used to support pacifism than militarism or nationalism.
These somewhat hidden leaders want to gain power with a military while ignoring the needs of the American people. But now their over reaching drive for power has weakened the military also.
In effect they are turning the US into a third world nation.
They are positioning sympathizers throughout the political systems and they are not going away after Bush leaves office.
The fact that Yoo was only one part in the torture machine does not excuse his action. It just means he should have plenty of company in his prison cell as he awaits his turn in the Hague.
The piece made one other point: that to some degree there was complicity on the part of the public, as slight majporities support torture at least under some circumstances. However, I would point out that the opinions of most of us don't actually enable the torture of real human beings, unlike Yoo's memo. And secondly, the average person is fairly easily manipulated by deliberate propaganda, ie the television show 24 which created vivid scenarios, week after week, of exactly the rare circumstances that would seem to justify torture. People like banjoman thus come to imagine that this sort of thing happens all the time and that tortured individuals are giving up information that saves us from hideous terrorist attacks. The reality? Experts say very little useful information comes from torture. The real purpose (aside from indulging the proclivities of twisted individuals allied with power) is in letting out the information that torture is going on, thus intimidating potential enemies from taking action, persuading ideological opponents that it would be better to keep one's head down. In other words, torture does not protect us from terrorism--torture IS terorism.
Presumably, a professor at Berkeley can be held to higher standards than banjoman.
A few years ago John Scalia, the Supreme Court justice, came to speak at the law school of the university from which I graduated. We organized a demonstration protesting this because of the role he played in handing the White House to the creature.
We had a few hundred people demonstrating but we never saw him because he used another entrance.
The subject of his talk to the law school was...
LEGAL ETHICS.
What a bitter JOKE that was!
If this Ward Churchill is they same fella I saw on FSTV, that guy deserves it.
20 or so good enemas couldn't clean up that whining wacko's act. He's a real nutjob. Be honest with yourself. He's only out there for the almighty dollar. You know it's true.
your friend, banjoman
Greenwald makes valid points: we are all complicit, and academic freedom requires that Yoo not be dismissed.
Nevertheless, a fair and reasonable solution to the problem would be for the Berkeley Law School to stage a mock trial of John Yoo for war crimes, every year until Yoo retires.
Being fired was good enough for Ward Churchill; it's good enough for John Yoo, as well.
If pouring a little water in some animal's nose got info that saved you and/or yours, I just bet your tunes would change. And how......
There's a good chance, a very good chance that it already has.
What's your suggestion? A team of goody goody crisis coulselors? Time out on the couch? Get real, boys, get real!!!
your friend, Banjoman
What if a Berkeley professor endorsed Stalin's torture of German prisoners during WWII or, worse, German treatment of Jewish insurgents from the Warsaw Ghetto during the same conflict? How long before that professor was bounced from his or her job and an outcast in the academic community?
Yet I've watched John Yoo, via C-Span, 'debate' other law professors and ACLU lawyers over the fine points of whether torture works and whether it is Constitutional, without any personal opprobrium of Yoo himself. This is how far we've come from the settled questons of the Nuremberg Trials -- whether to torture or not is a matter for debate.
Regardless of what Berkeley does, pehaps it's time academia treat Yoo just as they would a professor who denied the Holocaust or endorsed torture by the Nazis.
Thoughts_Into_Action (April 12th, 2008 2:01 pm), good point regarding Ward Churchill.
Mordechai Shiblikov (April 12th, 2008 2:32 pm), I agree and would add that the Myth of the Liberal Media is reinforced by the so-called flagship of the LM, The NY Times, hiring PNAC founder and prime instigator of the Iraq invasion Bill Kristol as a columnist. Kristol should be on trial for General Crimes Against Human Decency.
Frank1569 (April 12th, 2008 3:34 pm), good points as well. Yes, Berkeley students should at least ostracize Yoo, refusing to attend his classes, if not quit the school entirely. Yoo can practice the free speech his former employers apparently want to jettison in front of an empty classroom.
Gail (April 12th, 2008 4:56 pm) wrote: "A 'mere instrument' who could have resigned from his position as many others have in this Bush administration."
True, but then the Attorney General is legally charged with enforcing the laws of the US instead of protecting the Executive Branch, but Michael Mukasey, who should have already resigned as Eliot Richardson did during Watergate, has taken the position that his job is to make sure the president and his staff aren't disturbed by Congress. As has been said here, there is only one solution for such gross perfidy -- impeachment -- but it's not even on the radar of most of the Senate and House.
As always, there is going to be a horrible blowback to Bush's insistence on torturing even those who later turn out to be innocent. As with the 9/11 attacks, it is the American people who will, unfortunately, suffer the brunt of this blowback. History, except the strained drivel written by the hired 'scholars' at the Bush Library, will not deal with this crew kindly.
No wonder Cheney is putting up a fortified multi-million dollar compound in Dubai and Bush is investing in a vast guarded estate in South America -- they will need it.
However, there will be no room for the Yoos, Feiths and Addingtons and their ilk in either place -- they will be left behind, so to speak, to face the righteous -- and rightful -- wrath of the world.
David Grayling
I happen to share you weariness with the human condition, but it won't do for any of us to individually set ourselves above it. I don't assume you set yourself above so, but I understand there is a desperate drive in some of us to indulge such fantasy.
We are, even the most thoughful and sensitive of us, flawed creatures whether by some intended design, or by utter cosmic accident, or by some other reason, no one knows. We can not even halfway trust what we are as our own senses seemingly tell us; and far less possibly can we know whence we came or why, or where if any place we go to, after the groping shows and noise lay what we call dead, our current form.
Crueller still is that, if we think too intensively on these scary imponderables, we tend to lose what little it is that we may have of a Ground.
Having looked at the website linked to your screen name, I see a deeper than usual thinker, feeler, who I assume to be 'you.' It might be quite useless for me to say to you: There are other well-intending people who have apprehensions, senses, similar to yours. But let it be said anyway, in the hope it may come to mean something we can better live by and die by.
God, humans are tedious! Reading these comments fills me with disgust for mankind. 'This whole barrel is rotten' is right on!
I think even cockroaches have more morality than humans.
The point is not for UC Berkeley to fire Yoo for his opinions - much as California Governor Reagan wrongly tried to have Herbert Marcuse fired from UCSD in the early '70's. For chrissakes, free speech only has meaning when it protects unpopular opinions.
A more defensible tak would be to have the broader community of legal/constitutional scholars and other interested parties who understand Yoo's wholly indefensible, unconstitutional stretch of Executive power, mark him, intra-professionally, as the bogus legal mind he is; then have the press give life to this professional counterpoint -- and then let Yoo's employment fate with Berkeley fall where it may.
It's disturbing to see how easily Left wing McCarthyism bubbles up on a site dedicated to progressive values.
militantliberal - You're right, of course - this is the "banality of evil" thing again - there were many people who participated in the evil not just willingly, but also eagerly. (Personally, I'd be very interested in finding out by what acrobatic tricks of reasoning such people could justify their participation in that.) Those who were executed after Nuremberg deserved what they got. Yoo won't get his just d's, though - he's sort of a Hess for this regime, isn't he?
I'm not interested in spreading myths about anything - I just want the same standards applied here.
But I've also listened to a fair number of stories told by people who lived through/survived those other times, simple people, Jew and Gentile, who were forced at gunpoint to do things they found morally repugnant - some really heartbreaking stuff - to survive or protect their families.
Little Brother - this whole barrel is rotten.
siouxrose Thank you for making the distinction - it's important to separate/distinguish antisemitic attitudes from grief over Israel's political actions. I do believe that if the Palestinian mess were finally cleared up equitably, most of this "terrorism" would go away.
Joseph Goebbels was probably never responsible for the death of anyone by his own hands except in passing cyanide pills to his wife and children, but he probably would have been convicted and executed for war crimes at Nuremberg if he hadn't already committed suicide himself before the trials.
John Yoo may not have himself actually participated in the torture of so called prisoners of "terrorism", but having invented the legal sanctions for the practice of water boarding and other horribly abusive behavior toward prisoners by US governmental institutions, he should certainly be considered a war criminal for having done so and should be subject to prosecution for doing so by either US national or or by world international judicial institutions.
UC Berkeley can have no excuse for continuing the employment of such a criminal.
The main target has to be the GOP not the foot soldiers. For the long term future of America the GOP has to go through the painful process of renewal and that happens while in opposition. The Bush administration recycled so many old warriors it was never going to deliver what was promised in 2000.There is a gut feeling with voters to cut loose from the past and don't let the GOP machine dodge the bullet.
Interesting piece, but it helps to get the basic facts right. The Dean's name is Christopher Edley, Jr.
What a crock. UC Berkeley is ready to capitalize on Yoo's notoriety for his contribution to the fascist machine, while it attempts to declare purity on the principle of academic freedom. You can imagine a student's confusion, can't you? Lesson given: It's a complex game to achieve something in the "Golden State" so you better learn the great dance of contradictions. Besides, controversy has long been a good draw at California universities. Let's just face reality about the left wing of the capitalist beast. Let's not sweep the gold under the rug in the towering castles of Friedmanite capitalism.
I may be wrong, but I don't think Glenn is positing a false either/or vis-Ã -vis Yoo and his masters in the corrupt chain of command. It's more a caution not to have Yoo put forth as another patsy, at worst taking a hit for the team as still another "bad apple", and serving to support a "case closed" mentality.
But Yoo is a bad apple, and I don't quite get the appeal or merit of the ante-Nuremberg defenses presented here, which seem to dismiss or excuse Yoo too readily. I fully agree that he cannot be treated as the be-all and end-all of the story, but in no way should he be tossed back into the water. He is an amoral piranha, after all; he knew or should have known that he was greasing the hinges of the gates of Hell, and his living happily ever after shouldn't be a priority.
Yet Prof. Finkelstein was denied tenure for his views about Israel and Palestine.
____________________________
Ironically, his principal critic, detractor, opponent and nemesis, Alan Dershowitz, is famously pro-torture. Wheels within wheels!
great article. and the reason the american people doesn't take on the real culprits is that it lacks the moral spine.
Only the Canadian mentioned Jay Bybee, who signed said Yoo memo. Credit must be given where credit is due. Who is Yoo? I don't know, but Bybee was/is a very old hand at Bushco "legal activities." Yoo got a teaching job; Bybee got a judge job. Just try and fire ol' Jay.
Try to excuse him all you want but this fact remains: he will be forever tainted. Did he repudiate the memo and apologize for his involvement in it? If he was a tool and he truly didn't believe in what he wrote he could easily say so. I can hear it now, "That would violate attorney-client privilige!" So when it comes to his clients he follows ethics, but when it comes to the law it's anything goes.
I stand by my opinion that if John Yoo were a Nazi lawyer wrtiting the exact same memo under the exact same circumstances he would have been executed as a war criminal.
I think John Yoo ought to be punished in some manner, however, I agree that it shifts the focus away from the real culprits: the Bush Admin. with the assistance of Congress. What we ought to pay greater attention to is the Military Commissions Act, which in effect insulates these criminals. To me, that is the most disturbing and angering aspect. With the help of the Congress, the Bush Admin. literally gets away with torture, genocide, and treason.
What child's testicles would Jesus crush?
Ask yourself that, all you right-wing Bush- and Yoo-supporting "Christian" hypocritical motherfuckers.
Hell is going to be a very crowded place when all the Americans who support this fascist regime finally kick the bucket. You support torture? You burn in hell. It's that fucking simple.
CURMUDGEON: Your posting reminds me of C.S. Lewis' "The Screw Tape Letters." I had difficulty reading it. It boggles the mind how persons can direct mental imagery at hateful things with such levels of enthusiasm as to suggest they have DONE those things to know them so intimately.
COLLEEN: Thank you for your post. My background is Jewish, but like most progressives I do NOT condone the aggressive policies of Israel. Too many on C.D. mistake "The Jewish people" for what Israel is doing. In parallel, while I am an American, I hardly agree with ANYTHING that's been done in terms of US foreign and domestic policy in probably 28 years!
THOUGHTS INTO ACTION: Great post.
DIXIE: I believe the notion of "prestige" is still active. To wealthy right wing families (and universities require that green stuff!) having Yoo on the faculty, given his "pedigree" counts for a lot. It's that ancient "selling out to power" over higher moral convictions thing.
MEDUSA: Good post.
Try this tongue in cheek defense of YOO by one of our Canadian brothers. Please read it ALL to get the point.
http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/2476/1/
In Defense of John Yoo
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 10 April 2008
Follow the Leader: In Defense of John Yoo
by Chris Floyd
John Yoo has been getting a bit of guff in the liberal media recently for some legal memoranda he wrote a while back defending the president's right -- and duty -- to protect the American people from terrorism. This criticism is as short-sighted as it is pernicious -- and we are here today to defend this good and faithful public servant against the unwarranted calumnies that have besmirched his name.
Fortunately for the security of our Republic, the far left's attempt to turn Yoo's patriotic labors into yet another persnickety"moral outrage," a la Abu Ghraib or My Lai or Wounded Knee, hasn't really taken off.
The usual suspects -- Washington Post, New York Times -- have put out a few stories, usually buried, quoting a few so-called legal "experts" wringing their hands -- while sitting comfortably on the backsides that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have kept safe for them all these years -- about Yoo's allegedly "unconcionable document."
And of course, some of the radical far left socialist "bloggers" like Scott Horton -- who used to work with the "father of the Commie A-bomb," Andrei Sakharov (need we say more about Horton's pinkish tint?) -- have been throwing the usual BDS hissy fits about how Yoo's memoranda constitute part of a "joint criminal enterprise" on the part of the Bush Administration, whose members, says Comrade Horton, had to know that "these memoranda would result in serious harm, including assault, torture and death, to protected persons in the custody of the United States."
[Hey Scott – enough with the Atticus Finch act already! This ain't good old Tom Robinson you're sticking up for here -- it's worthless scum who hate our freedoms and want to kill us all. Let's see what you say about the "rule of law" when some Islamofascist is killing your wife and breeding 15 more Islamocommies with your enslaved daughter, eh? You'll be sorry you tied our interrogator's hands then, won't you? You'll be wishing we'd had a bit more of the eye-gouging and acid-throwing and waterboarding and strappado and beating nearly to the point of death or organ failure -- and crushing the testicles of children -- that Yoo has stoutly defended as the president's prerogative, won't you?]
In fact, some extremist terror-symp America-hating moonbats have even gone so far as to say that the Bush Administration memoranda and directives on enhanced interrogation literally constitute a form of perverse pornography, lingering in great, obsessive detail over the specific methods of pain and humiliation that can -- and should -- be inflicted upon a captive. This "pornography of power," say the fifth columnists, is characterized not only by its fascination with violent, punishing contact with human flesh (preferably naked), but also -- perhaps chiefly -- by its maniacal insistence that the captives be rendered completely helpless, without the slightest shred of legal cover or due process to shield them from interrogators -- and their well-informed superiors -- who have been absolved in advance of any culpability for their actions.
All of this remarkable outpouring of traitorous filth is being laid directly at John Yoo's door. Indeed, General Secretary Horton and the rest of the pinkblogger Politburo are demanding that Yoo -- now a rightly honored professor of law at one of the nation's most respected educational establishments -- be disbarred for his alleged "complicity" in this "criminal conspiracy"; a conspiracy which according to Commissar Horton includes such other outstanding defenders of America's freedom as Doug Feith, Stephen Cambone, Steven Bradbury, Michael Chertoff, Alice Fisher, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, I. Lewis Libby, Jay Bybee, Jim Haynes, Richard B. Cheney, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, William Boykin, and Major General Geoffrey Miller, among others.
Well, I call BS on these bat-brains. John Yoo is not to "blame" for these torture memos. And neither is Mr. Addington or Mr. Feith or Mr. Gonzales or any of the other honorable, hard-working public officials caught up in the far left's mile-wide net of "conspiracy." John Yoo served at the pleasure of George W. Bush: the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, and the Chief Executive of our Republic. John Yoo wrote those memos at the request and direction of the White House and the Pentagon. Even Comrade Horton himself makes this crystal clear:
"According to the official narrative, the Bush Administration turned to the Justice Department for legal guidance on what could be done to give interrogators the latitude they were demanding in dealing with prisoners taken in the war on terror. However, not a single element of the official narrative is entirely true. The interrogators were not "pushing for broader authority." Indeed, the pushing was all coming out of the White House (from Vice President Cheney, to be specific), and the intelligence professionals were actually pushing back. Moreover, torture was being used almost from the start of the "war on terror." Special operations units operating under the authority of Dr. Stephen Cambone, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, had been authorized to use torture techniques from the opening of the war, and they used them with gusto.
In another article, the Commie nuke-enabler quotes British crypto-Muslim Phillipe Sand's article in Vanity Fair with further details:
"The real story, pieced together from many hours of interviews with most of the people involved in the decisions about interrogation, goes something like this: The Geneva decision was not a case of following the logic of the law but rather was designed to give effect to a prior decision to take the gloves off and allow coercive interrogation; it deliberately created a legal black hole into which the detainees were meant to fall.
"The new interrogation techniques did not arise spontaneously from the field but came about as a direct result of intense pressure and input from Rumsfeld's office. The Yoo-Bybee Memo was not simply some theoretical document, an academic exercise in blue-sky hypothesizing, but rather played a crucial role in giving those at the top the confidence to put pressure on those at the bottom. And the practices employed at Guant·namo led to abuses at Abu Ghraib."
The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. Addington, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, and Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse.
Hah! To paraphrase their great hero, Vladimir Lenin, if you give the Pinko Taliban enough rope, they will always hang themselves. The evidence laid out in their own propaganda rags clearly shows that the enhanced interrogation techniques -- which, as we all know, are the only things standing between us and the horde of super-potent overbreeding Muslims who have already taken over Europe -- were laid out at the direct order of those at the very top level of our freely elected democratic (small D, thank God!) government. John Yoo always was -- and always will be -- nothing but the faithful factotum of those who hold the power in our system.
So let's quit kicking John Yoo around, all right? He was only following orders. He did what he was told. He carried out the arbitrary will of our Leader, without question, without hestitation, without any quibbling over the rule of law. And isn't that the American way?
If you have some kind of problem with the President of the United States being able to order his flunkies to throw acid on a naked, chained-up captive -- who might have been sold into custody by a bounty hunter or rounded up in a random sweep or denounced by a business rival or snatched off a city street for having the wrong name, the wrong religion, the wrong skin; if for some reason it bothers your delicate liberal sensibilities that the President of the United States claims the power to hold any person on earth for as long as he likes, on no evidence or charges at all, and then slit the captive's ear or piss down his throat -- or grind the testicles of prisoner's five-year-old child under a bootheel; if you're such a big girl's blouse that you get all wiggly at the thought of the President of the United States claiming the arbitrary, unchecked power to kill any person on earth that he -- or his designated agents -- declares an "enemy combatant" or even a "suspected terrorist" -- then don't blame John C. Yoo. For God's sake, have the balls to put the responsibility squarely where it belongs: on the President of the United States, George Walker Bush, and the Vice President of the United States, Richard Bruce Cheney. Have the guts to demand their impeachment, now -- yes, now, right in the middle of a presidential election campaign, right in the middle of their last year in office -- for the capital crime (by U.S. law) of torture.
If you believe that what the Bush Administration has done is torture, then you have no other choice. And any elected officials in the national government -- including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- who do not call for the immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney on these charges, and the subsequent prosecution of their myriad minions who carried out their orders, are implicity condoning these crimes and acting as willing accomplices for them.
But as we see, no Democratic leaders are calling for impeachment; in fact, time and again, they specifically and adamantly rule it out. What's more, they are not even launching any formal, full-scale, high-profile investigations of the "torture memos" and the entire apparatus of enhanced interrogation, indefinite imprisonment and rendition that the leftist jihadis liken to the gulag -- even though they control both houses of Congress and could make life a living hell for the Bush Administration and John McCain, the loyal little lapdog who hopes to follow in the Leader's footsteps. But it is obvious that, deep down, the Democratic leaders agree with the President's actions and policies; they recognize the deep wisdom behind the aggression in the name of liberty in Iraq, the surveillance in the name of freedom at home, and the torture in the name of civilization that the Leader has made a hallmark of our enlightened age.
How then do they differ from the honorable John Yoo? They too are countenancing, assisting and following the arbitrary will of the Leader. They too look at the murder of a million innocent civilians in Iraq and refuse to treat it as a crime. They too look at the torture of helpless, uncharged, unprotected captives and refuse to treat it as a crime. Oh, they may preen and posture, they may lay some hot and heavy rhetoric on the rubes out there; but they DO nothing. And these are crimes which they actually have the power to investigate and prosecute.
Where then is the actual moral difference between these progressive paragons and John Yoo? He is simply more honest about his bootlicking servility to abitrary, brutal – and avowedly, unashamedly unconstitutional -- power, that's all. He has the courage of his lawless convictions. What do those Democratic leaders who claim allegiance to the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States have? The cowardice of their ambitions.
"John Yoo was not a mastermind but a mere instrument —a tool — in the Bush administration's arsenal to abolish existing constraints on our treatment of detainees and to implement torture methods."
A "mere instrument" who could have resigned from his position as many others have in this Bush administration.
Was Yoo's life threatened if he didn't agree to stay on and write opinions to justify and legally authorize savage and illegal acts? If not, then I can't see any other reason for him agreeing to perform the function of a puppet employee - unless he himself actually believes that torture is justified.
Is he a puppet or does he tuly believe in torture? Either scenario would raise a flag that he is lacking integrity or a human conscience.
Well let's just take this Dean of the law school and make his written statement for ALL FUCKING PROFESSORS to have freedom of speech for ANYFUCKINGTHING they say or write. If this piece of shit completely absent of conscience can get this "free ride" from the Dean of the law school, well then, let's just grab David Horowitz and hang him from their goalposts as a statement that the "Liberal era" in academia is over once and for all.
Medusa is spreading a myth about the Holocaust. The Nazis who participated did not have guns to their heads. In "The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945", by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, the authors note that doctors who visited concentration camps to select 30,000 "sick" prisoners for the T-4 program (for eliminating the "hereditarily ill") went about their work quite happily. In their view, and this is true for SS members too, they were performing "racial hygiene", a service to the German people.
Yoo can advocate for torture, for an imperial presidency, and for the skewed readings of the Constitution on which his dubious positions are based; that's all free speech. When as a member of the legal arm of the government under whose authority and by whose force people were in fact tortured, Yoo is accountable for his legal dereliction. Free speech and accountability are about different uses of language altogether, in the same sense that the legal opinion offered in Yoo's torture memos has an entirely different force than the opinion he broadcasts in print at the WSJ or elsewhere. Dean Orrick is being completely disingenuous about that obvious distinction, protecting a man in Yoo who was a pliant enabler of law-breaking of the worst sort. GG is right though that this rot goes all the way to the top and however deeply implicated Yoo is in the creation of a torture regime, he is not ultimately the one who is responsible for it. Still, Yoo should not be teaching law at UC Berkeley or anywhere else. He is a disgrace.
The fire tenured faculty all the time --for being communists, leftists,anti-Israel, pro-American Indian,
This Yoo guy is a Nazi bastard and deserves firing.
"DePaul (Univ.) issued a statement that described Finkelstein as a "prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher""
Yet Prof. Finkelstein was denied tenure for his views about Israel and Palestine.
Oh, but legitimizing torture is not grounds for dismissal, just a matter of 'academic freedom'.
You can claim that they were "Bush memos" or "American memos" but in point of actual fact, they were Yoo memos. Yoo was designated by the Bush administration to find reasons that would legally justify the obviously criminal act of torture. At that point, Yoo had a decision to make; refuse to advise his clients to break the law or tell them that, in his opinion, it was all right. Flying in the face of legal ethics, he chose the latter and for that reason alone he should be disbarred. Tenure be damned. Is this the sort of attorney you want teaching in a reputable law school?
The International Military Tribunal, which oversaw the proceedings at Nuremberg: individuals have an obligation to disobey orders which violate international law."
A great example: James Comey refusing to do the illegal bidding of Fredo Gonzales. Ascroft, of all people, too.
Sure, Yoo is a member of the cult, and would pen a memo legally justifying the murders of all people not named Yoo if Cheney/Bush told him to. He's a nut and should be held to public account for his quiet insanity.
And so should Bush and Cheney and Rummy and Rice and Powell and Rove and every other member of this twisted, anti-American cult. Ultimately, however, Yoo is technically right: no one above or below him was compelled to accept his warped opinions.
But, as we've seen, cultists who do what they're told receive medals, multi-million dollar book deals and cushy jobs in the high seven figures. Hell, Bush's original Sec of the Army was Thomas White, formerly Vice-Chairman of Enron Energy Services. And Ascroft got a $52 million no-bid "monitoring" contract (lawbreakers monitoring lawbreakers!) See how it works?
The student body of Berkley can solve the immediate problem themselves: stop attending Yoo classes, and stop paying for them. The especially radical should transfer out of the school right away. (Faculty could stand up as well, but they won't, because the cult will make sure "they never work in this town again," this town being America.) UoC will then have to kick him - right into the arms of Insert Name Of GOP Think Tank Here.
In other words, no matter what happens, Yoo will not suffer any consequences. Though, he should probably stay off of small planes for a while...
If I were a law student who had Yoo as my professor, I would have trouble believing anything he had to say; not just because of his apparent love of torture but because his reasoning was so SLOPPY. A large number of prominent lawyers from liberal to conservative have proclaimed his reasoning unsupportable in the law. I wonder why Berkley or any other law school would want a professor whose reasoning and understanding of the law was so compromised. Rather than talking about his appalling ability to produce memorandum to support torture, how about focusing on his obvious incompetence as a lawyer? I wouldn't want him teaching me on ANY legal subject - let alone constitutional law.
"I was only following orders." "I'm not the supreme authority." "It's the system, not me." didn't work for the Nazis. Those excuses shouldn't work now. And Yoo has a lot more freedom of personal morality than many of those Nazis did - many of them really did have a gun to their heads. (Before you start screaming about Holocaust and "justification", I'm not justifying it; but you must see that at this point there is a contrast to be drawn.) What possible excuse from this vile excrescence can be acceptable when a moral choice is still available to him? His behaviour is far from isolated - that's one of the problems, but you have to start somewhere.
If he doesn't have a decent conscience of his own, perhaps he should borrow Berkeley's - if they have one...or ours, if we do.
Assuming John Yoo "bears substantial culpability, but certainly not exclusive or even principal culpability," necessarily renders him blameworthy for acts done, since by admission he "bears substantial culpability." To assert only those bearing "exclusive or even principal culpability" are blameworthy excludes institutional culpability where responsibility is dispersed to such an extent, none can claim primary responsibility. Arguing such entails,
"You hire a lawyer to use the law in your behalf, to advocate for your interest. Yoo provided a service which he offered and was in no sense an instigator of the policy. If he agreed or disagreed is unimportant."
Personal responsibility as a human being is now exculpated by human beings agreeing to exculpate it. Left unexplained is how each can exculpate responsibility as a human being by simply mutually agreeing to exculpate it, when they individually retain the responsibility during the process of agreeing. No, rot is rot, and Yoo is guilty of it.
In question is whether Yoo is liable to dismissal for his blameworthy actions. Certainly Cal Berkeley should not have hired the monster, but having done so, and not being an adjudicatory entity, it seems wrong to punish Yoo for actions done prior to employment. I have similar difficulties with policies barring employment for prior criminal convictions. To not adhere to such a standard authorizes employers to investigate the entirety of one's life.
The fact that UC Berkeley, of all places, put the 2003 Spanish Inquisition Prize winner on its law faculty is a demonstration of exactly how far Bushism has insinuated itself into our society. There are plenty of honest conservatives who could've filled that slot. Yoo is not merely some mouthpiece-for-hire, paid to turn the constitution into a Stalinist tract. He is an enemy of democracy and human dignity and should be shipped off to a reopened Spandau Prison where he will either swing from a rope or serve life in prison w/o possibility of parole and in solitary confinement.
You hire a lawyer to use the law in your behalf, to advocate for your interest. Yoo provided a service which he offered and was in no sense an instigator of the policy. If he agreed or disagreed is unimportant.
It is the Justice department which screened their lawyers for their ideological preference that is at issue.
This Justice Department is ideologically bent on legitimating monarchical power to the executive under the myth of 'commander in chief' in an administration of perpetual war. Empire is the shorthand for 'perpetual war', the peace of empire.
Pax Amerikana is a policy of a Pentagon in the hands of corporate interests, especially munitions, telecoms, and financial networks.
Mr. Yoo is a media event...nothing more.
"perpetrating systematic torture and committing war crimes renders one beyond the pale in the United States."
Maybe, but the United States isn't the US academy. At least he didn't say anything against Israel--which is what can REALLY get a professor in deep do-do.
I think I agree with most of this essay, but it takes Greenwald a while to come to the point: John Yoo wasn't engaged in free speech. He was legally advocating torture - something that is not legally supported. Yoo was doing a job for pay, kind of like a mob lawyer, but less honorable.
The seeming high-mindedness of Berkeley's chancellor might be praised, except, once again, it wasn't speech that Yoo did. Yoo abetted a crime.
Contrast Yoo's kid-gloves treatment with the treatment of Professor Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado. Churchill lost tenure when he exercised his speech rights in saying that "little Eichmanns" died in the Twin Towers that were destroyed during the 9-11 attacks.
Ironically, Yoo is one of those little Eichmanns. Churchill was referring to bureaucrats who enable terrible crimes around the world - and that's a definition that certainly fits Yoo.
No, there's really no high-mindedness happening here. And yes, the true criminality lies with the lawless Bush administration (and a compliant Congress). Greenwald may be right in saying that Yoo is being made out as the sacrificial lamb - and that's not exactly right. Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez and crew must meet the fate of those convicted at the Nuremburg trials, i.e., swinging from a rope. They must be shipped to the Hague for war crimes trials - assuming that laws have any meaning anymore.
Naively, in the past, i believe that institutions of higher learning operated with higher standards. universities have become extensions of corporate america.
This article actually changed my mind about Yoo's situation at Berkeley, and I think Greenwald is absolutely right that it would be hypocritical to dismiss Prof. Yoo while a Congressional district right across the Bay is still represented by Nancy Pelosi, who endorsed the whole program of torture way back in 2002, before the rest of us had even seen the first pictures from Abu Ghraib.
I wonder if Professor Yoo teaches Constitutional Law.
Berekely's employ of Yoo says a lot about the UC system and Berkeley w/ all it's DoD contracts in particular.
Gee-doesn't Berkeley run the Lawrence Livermore Labs?
Efffffff Yoo and Berkeley too! GoSFSU.
"He knew that these techniques were already being used and that the highest level of our Government wanted him to create legal protections for what had happened and to enable more of what they wanted to do. He bears substantial culpability, but certainly not exclusive or even principal culpability."
yes I agree
"None of this is to oppose an investigation (a real investigation, with full due process) by Berkeley into whether Yoo should be dismissed from his position due to his active participation in war crimes and other conduct that would warrant dismissal under Berkeley's rules."
yes I agree
Imo this has all been about power, money and oil and there are firewalls built around the people who are behind the decisions. Yoo is one of those firewalls.
I also believe that a firewall has been created with right wing jews, and that Israel is also being used as a scapegoat. ( Although Israel has made some extremely poor decisions about the Palestinians and has some human rights issues)
But none of this corruption within the Bush administration imo has been done to protect Israel. This has all been about taking power and creating an empire. And they were setting up a system where they could take even more power even when Bush left office with the instituting of an imperial presidency.