David Cole: "Less Safe, Less Free"
Georgetown law professor and award-winning author David Cole critiques the Bush administration's “preventative paradigm” in the "war on terror” in his new book Less Safe, Less Free, which will be released this week.
Dean Harold Koh of Yale Law School applauds the book:
This compelling, necessary volume demolishes the doctrine of preemptive self defense as a dangerous oxymoron, whose acceptance will surely render us less safe, less free, less American, and less able to lead globally through the rule of law.
Cole and Jules Lobel published an article adapted from the book last week in The Nation, entitled “Why We’re Losing the War on Terror.” They write:
In the name of the "preventive paradigm," thousands of Arab and Muslim immigrants have been singled out, essentially on the basis of their ethnicity or religion, for special treatment, including mandatory registration, FBI interviews and preventive detention. Businesses have been served with more than 100,000 "national security letters," which permit the FBI to demand records on customers without a court order or individualized basis for suspicion. We have all been subjected to unprecedented secrecy about what elected officials are doing in our name while simultaneously suffering unprecedented official intrusion into our private lives by increased video surveillance, warrantless wiretapping and data-mining…
The real problems arise when the state uses highly coercive measures -- depriving people of their life, liberty or property, or going to war -- based on speculation, without adhering to the laws long seen as critical to regulating and legitimizing such force.