Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice Review

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Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice ReviewThis is a good solid work about law and justice in the Bush Administration. It's a story of good and evil, law and lawlessness, trust and distrust. You might want to consider first reading Robert Conquest's fine book The Great Terror, which is about the purges, the show trials, law and justice under Stalin. Much is different, of course, but there are some uncomfortable parallels. Perhaps the most striking thing in The Great Terror was that under Stalin, being suspected of anti-Soviet activities was a serious crime. This is not the same as actually being guilty of such activity, but rather just the fact that you had been suspected (even if totally innocent, as the vast majority were) earned you a trip to the cellars to be shot, or a death sentence in the labor camps. Bush's Law makes it clear that suspicion earns punishment in one form or another.
Bush's Law emphasizes the use and misuse of national security letters, the bypassing of the normal legal safeguards, the punishments for Justice Department and FBI people who "weren't on the team". Loyalty becomes the paramount virtue: "meine ehre heist treue" (my honor is loyalty). The book talks about the firings of the US Attorneys: being "loyal Bushies" was crucial to being kept on, and the dissembling explanations by Gonzales and the White House made a mockery of the traditional image of blind justice with a scales in one hand and a sword in the other. The book describes how Gonzales explored the possibilities of prosecuting journalists under the Espionage Act of 1917. You get the strong impression that a free press was considered a greater threat to America than al Qaeda.
For a book on a similar subject, try Clive Smith's Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side. The focus here is limited to Guantanamo: the treatment of the prisoners, the lack of hearings, the regarding of lawyers for the detainees as the enemy. It's a very depressing book, and it packs a very powerful punch indeed. Taken together, Bush's Law is primarily about the threats to Americans when laws are routinely broken and the Constitution is regarded as an annoyance, Smith's book is an extension: without the safeguards, without some judges and the free press standing up, the next steps could lead to Guantanamos, and then another few steps perhaps to the Soviet system where the law is whatever authority says it is, and justice is meaningless. What Bush's Law describes is not new: we might do well to ponder on John Mitchell (Nixon's Attorney General) who had serious discussions about the possibility of kidnapping war protesters and sending them to secret Soviet-style gulags. We can also think about the death threats Lichtblau describes, and the suggestions that he and other reporters be arrested, tried for treason, and hanged. There are those who believe that the war on terror justifies any suspension of civil liberties and justifies any actions by those in authority. Such people are not alone: Stalin, Hitler, and Mao had large numbers of adherents who felt the same way. So--a good book, replete with heroes and villians galore.Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice Overview

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