Below is today’s column in USA Today on the death of Osama Bin Laden.
The death of Osama bin Laden has left the United States with a type of morning-after effect. For 10 years, an ever-expanding war on terror has been defined by one central dark figure: Osama bin Laden. It is perhaps not surprising that in a celebrity-driven society, even our wars seemed personality driven. For many, Iraq was about Saddam Hussein. Afghanistan was about Osama bin Laden. With both of these defining figures gone, however, it is time to take account of what has been lost, and what has been gained.
For civil libertarians, the legacy of bin Laden is most troubling because it shows how the greatest injuries from terror are often self-inflicted. Bin Laden’s twisted notion of success was not the bringing down of two buildings in New York or the partial destruction of the Pentagon. It was how the response to those attacks by the United States resulted in our abandonment of core principles and values in the “war on terror.” Many of the most lasting impacts of this ill-defined war were felt domestically, not internationally.
Starting with George W. Bush, the 9/11 attacks were used to justify the creation of a massive counterterrorism system with growing personnel and budgets designed to find terrorists in the heartland. Laws were rewritten to prevent citizens from challenging searches and expanding surveillance of citizens. Leaders from both parties acquiesced as the Bush administration launched programs of warrantless surveillance, sweeping arrests of Muslim citizens and the creation of a torture program.
What has been most chilling is that the elimination of Saddam and now bin Laden has little impact on this system, which seems to continue like a perpetual motion machine of surveillance and searches. While President Dwight D. Eisenhower once warned Americans of the power of the military-industrial complex, we now have a counterterrorism system that employs tens of thousands, spends tens of billions of dollars each year and is increasingly unchecked in its operations.
Just as leaders are unwilling to take responsibility to end the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, we face the same vacuum of leadership on civil liberties. Whether it is groping at airports or warrantless surveillance or the denial of rights to accused terrorists, our security laws will continue to be justified under a “war on terror” that by definition can never end. There will always be terrorism, and thus we will remain a nation at war — with all of the expanded powers given to government agencies and officials.
If bin Laden wanted to change America, he succeeded. Bush officials were quick to claim that our laws and even our Constitution made us vulnerable to attack — even though later investigations showed that the attacks could have been prevented under existing laws. Despite the negligence of agencies such as the FBI and CIA in allowing the attacks, those same agencies were given unprecedented power and budgets in the aftermath of 9/11.
President Obama has continued, and even expanded, many of the controversial Bush programs. His administration moved to quash dozens of public interest lawsuits fighting warrantless surveillance. Both Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have refused to investigate, let alone prosecute, officials for torture under the “water-boarding” program — despite clear obligations under treaties for such action. The Obama administration has continued military tribunals and the Caesar-like authority of the president to send some defendants to real courts and some to makeshift tribunals. The administration recently instructed investigators that they can ignore constitutional protections such as Miranda rights to combat terror. Once the power of the FBI and other agencies were expanded, no one had the courage to order the resumption of lost civil liberties or the return of prior limits on government power or surveillance. It is not the lack of security but the lack of courage in our leaders that continues the expansion of this security state.
The death of bin Laden is not the marker of an end of a period but a reminder that there is no end to this period. For those who have long wanted expansion of presidential powers and the limitation of constitutional rights, bin Laden gave them an irresistible opportunity to reshape this country — and the expectations of our citizens. We now accept thousands of security cameras in public places, intrusive physical searches and expanding police powers as the new reality of American life. The privacy that once defined this nation is now viewed as a quaint, if not naive, concept. Police power works like the release of gas in a closed space: expand the space and the gas fills it. It is rare in history to see ground lost in civil liberties be regained through concessions of power by the government. Our terrorism laws have transcended bin Laden and even 9/11. They have become the status quo. That is the greatest tragedy of bin Laden’s legacy — not what he did to us, but whatwe have done to ourselves.
Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, is a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors.
I would like to share the reason I have been comparing the Bin Laden affair with the killing of Admiral Yamamoto. It has been 68 years since Capt. Tom Lamphier and Lt. Rex Barber shot down Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when the news came over the radio they had “gotten” Yamamoto. My gut reaction then was exactly the same as my gut reaction this week when I heard the news they got Bin Laden. A déjà vu moment.
Each of these two men were the architects of the two biggest foreign attacks on the US since the British set fire to the White House. I do not revel in the death of either, but the news they could do no more damage was a moment frozen in time for me. We only have a few of those moments in our lifetimes.
OS,
“There is one more dimension to the criticism of Obama …”
Yes, you are correct. Actually, that’s a much larger factor for the constant criticism thrown at him than just being a Democrat.
The Right is just seething over this …
Bob, I noticed that typo after I posted, but figured everyone would know what I meant. Brain and fingers not working together and my dyslexia kicked in.
Bob, they kill enemy combatants in raids and attacks. Had he come out with his hands up, perhaps they would have cuffed him and taken him prisoner at which time the rules of the Geneva Convention come into play. Can we all agree that the chance of that happening were somewhere between nil, none and zilch?
There is a rough equivalent to the killing of Yamamoto and Bin Laden. There is no exact equivalent to either anywhere, but it is the best I could do on short notice.
Scalia? Did someone say Scalia?
Per The AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
The key words are “necessary and appropriate.”
Stamford Liberal: There is one more dimension to the criticism of Obama than the fact he is a Democrat. I am more senstive to this since I am from the South, but there remains the unspoken thing: He is one of those scary brown people. A day does not pass that I don’t hear some comment out on the street about that n*****r in the White House.
So, he is one of “those people” with a double whammy against him; he is a Democrat and he has brown skin.
Should read: UCMJ
Otteray Scribe: “FFLEO, equating Bradley Manning and Bin Laden is a Fallacy of False Equivalence. As I explained in another thread, that is the fallacy of defining distinct and conflicting items in similar terms, thus equating items that are not, in fact, equal.”
Actually comparing bin Laden to the empire of Japan would be a false equivalency.
Further when you said:
OS: “Osama bin Laden declared war on the western world and its culture. It was a global war. He was taken out, just as we went after Admiral Yamamoto and other high value targets in previous wars.”
To be clear, OBL’s declaration of war is not equivalent to our declaration of war against Japan; nor was it similar to the existing states of war with Germany and Italy as a result of the Tripartite Act. Yamamoto was shot down during a genuine state of war; not a mere rhetorical device used to justify expansions of executive power.
Per Bradley Manning, you said:
OS: “Bradley Manning is a US soldier and US citizen, subject to the UMJC and the US Constitution. Bin Laden is/was a foreign national and any conflict with him is subject to the Geneva Convention, not the ordinary laws of US courts.”
Actually, bin Laden, as an enemy combatant, would be subject to the UMJC as well.
Mike Spindell: “Really? How much of a legal system do we have with Scalia on SCOTUS? How much of a legal system do we have when SCOTUS made GW Bush President? …”
Mike,
You do know that you can’t justify a wrong by citing precedent of other wrongs; right? It’s good that you bring up Scalia since that man ripped my heart and soul out when he did what you described above. Let’s just say that the way he twisted the minds of the masses was so repugnant, that while watching the scene in the film “Hannibal” where Anthony Hopkins is feeding Ray Liotta his own brains, I commented loudly to the person I was sitting with in the theater — “That’s Scalia!”
But I digress.
Keeping with the topic of movies, the film that did express the moral & legal dilemma facing those attorneys who could not simply be realists and ‘accept’ the court’s ruling was “High Noon.”
Melodramatic? Hardly.
As Mike Appleton correctly observed: “In the real world, a true commitment to the rule of law under Kantian principles demands a large dose of existentialist stubbornness.”
There’s simply no choice in the matter. Thus when Will Kane in High Noon explains why he has to go back and face Frank Miller, he says…
Will: “I’ve got to, that’s the whole thing.”
The law affords no room for whim or caprice. And you’ve ended this debate by acknowledging such to Mike Appleton by saying:
MS: “Mike A. you are no doubt correct which is why I never could have made it as a lawyer. My approach to life is to trust my gut. I react to things viscerally, even though informed by my thought processes tempered by my experiences.”
I’m well aware of the decline for respect of law and order in from the post Watergate paranoia era to present, but that is in no way a license to abandon the law whenever we find it inconvenient. That’s simply resigning yourself to live in Hadleyville U.S.A.
OS,
“I want to know why the same people who are now complaining about legal technicalities over raid on Bin Laden’s compound did not raise the same questions of Bush when Saddam Hussein’s two psychopath sons were killed in a similar raid.”
I completely agree. Particularly since those who are now complaining were the one’s calling anyone who criticized McFlightsuit and his misadventure in Iraq as traitors, unpatriotic and unAmerican …
Well, I think one part of it has to do with the fact that, once again, a Democrat did what a Republican said he would and couldn’t (I guess taking his eye off the ball doesn’t factor into it). Their hatred of Obama – and Democrats in general – runs so deep that there is nothing, absolutely nothing Obama or a Democrat can do that is worthy enough for genuine praise. Just genuine criticism.
For the record, although I am a longstanding registered Republican, I did not vote for Bush and I opposed the invasion into Iraq and Afghanistan. I served in the U.S. Army during the Viet Nam Era, although I strongly opposed that conflict.
Former Fed,
I agree with you that Congress needs to grow a pair and demand that they pass a Declaration of War before any President goes to war, but the cat is out of the bag for Afghanistan. Congress could stop funding, but that won’t happen in our lifetimes!
Korea was not a declared war, so it was called a “police action.” Vietnam was fought following the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Reagan went into Grenada and we invaded Panama and kidnapped that country’s President. Bush 41 launched the first Gulf War and Bush II the second. Then Afghanistan.
From where I sit, the 2001 resolution by Congress makes more sense than some of the others. We were facing a guerrilla war on an international front. I fail to understand singling out Obama for special criticism for going after Bin Laden. This sounds more like sour grapes than a legitimate gripe.
I want to know why the same people who are now complaining about legal technicalities over raid on Bin Laden’s compound did not raise the same questions of Bush when Saddam Hussein’s two psychopath sons were killed in a similar raid.
FFLEO The last time congress formally declared war was 1941. Why do you single out Obama? You can vote against him next year.
rafflaw,
Yes, that was my point, there has been no *formal* Congressional declaration of war, which is why–as you know–we have instead been in endless “military engagements authorized by Congress.” Those engagements are forevermore open-ended in the black hole that is the ‘Global War on Terror’ and its accompaniment—the ‘Patriot Act’.
In one of the Greenwald posts I linked above, he provides links to the similar material to which Swarthmore mom provided (thanks).
Hail King Obama, Hail.
Swarthmore,
Thanks for the update. Although, I wish congress would rescind it so we would leave Afghanistan.
OS,
great catch.
Former Fed, unfortunately, I don’t think we have had a Congressional declaration of war since WWII or Korea, have we? The Gulf of Tonkin resolution was “authorization” for the debacle in Vietnam and all of the other skirmishes have been outright Executive power grabs or resolutions from congress and/or UN resolutions.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/yes-the-operation-to-kill-osama-bin-laden-was-legal-and-constitutional/ The resolution that OS referred to passed 420-1 in the house and 98-0 in the senate and has never been repealed.
FFLEO: Her you go:
Anonymously Yours,
Has Congress official declared war?