I was reading my New York Times this morning when I saw what had to be the most ludicrous article in recent memory. It was a plea for Obama to uphold the rule of law and the dignity of the Constitutional process. I assumed this to be a fairly standard hypocrisy put out by a Republican, in the same way that Democrats didn’t care about the sovereignty of the Senate until that was their only majority bastion. But when I saw the byline, my jaw dropped…it was by John Bolton and and John Yoo.
Those names may or may not be familiar to you. Bolton is just another run-of-the-mill incompetent, who Bush appointed to the UN Ambassadorship because he (Bolton) believed it was a travesty. But John Yoo is something else. John Yoo served as legal counsel to the President from 2001-2003, and spent his time in the Bush Administration laying the legal framework for torture, warrantless spying, the abandonment of the Geneva Convention, and so many others. He is, according to the precedent set by the Nuremburg Trials, a war criminal.*
The article is an archly pompous diatribe about the necessity to restore the sovereignty of the Senate by not approving treaties by simple majorities. They go so far as to say that if Obama thusly ratifies the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or the Law of the Sea, “his actions would pose a serious challenge to American principles of law and democratic governance.”.
John Yoo, let me remind you, is well-established on the record, many times, for insisting that in fact, the Constitution doesn’t matter. His legal opinion was that the Fourth Amendment simply didn’t apply when the Executive Branch said so. He also was the genesis of the “Unitary Executive Theory”, which holds that in wartime, the Constitution does not apply to the President, in as many words. For John Yoo to be lecturing us on American principles is an act of simply breathtaking chutzpah.
Just remember, kids: Torture is all-American. But there is no greater threat to our freedom than the Law of the Sea.
-Alex Copulsky, Books & Arts Editor
*: Not hyperbole; we tried the German Justice Department lawyers who served up the rationale for denying the Geneva Convention protection to prisoners, by defining them as terrorists. Those that didn’t kill themselves were locked up as war criminals.