Blawg Book Highlighter #29: Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century
Columbia University law professor Philip Bobbitt is a rare breed of Democrat. While he, like many of his Democratic counterparts, supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he is different than most in that his support hasn’t wavered. He still thinks it was the right thing to do. He just thinks it was done the wrong way.
In his new book, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century, Bobbitt doesn’t take sides and he doesn’t mince words. He is in no way pro-Bush, concurring with most of his fellow Democrats that the Bush administration bungled the war on terror. But he doesn’t outright dismiss Bush, either, and, in fact, mostly agrees with the neocon principles of pre-emptive war and even the necessity for curtailing many civil liberties.
Where Bobbitt finds fault with the Bush administration is for thumbing its nose at the law and for, at least initially, trying to define the war on terror in the same way that wars in history have been defined. “We need to change our ideas about terrorism, war, and even victory itself,” he argues.
The Bush administration’s failure was that it tried to fight a war – a war that Bobbitt agrees is a real war and one that needs to be fought – by circumventing the law rather than working with Congress to change the law and by not preparing the American public for a long, drawn-out war.
As Harvard law professor Niall Ferguson writes in his review of the book for the New York Times, “The administration’s fatal mistake was its failure to understand that these things could be achieved by appropriate modifications of the law. By doing what indeed was needed, but doing it outside the law, the administration undermined the legitimacy of American policy at home as well as abroad. Bobbitt is emphatic: all branches of government must act in conformity with the Constitution and the law.”
Ferguson is an unabashed convert to Bobbit’s position, calling Terror and Consent “quite simply the most profound book to have been written on the subject of American foreign policy since the attacks of 9/11 — indeed, since the end of the cold war. I have no doubt it will be garlanded with prizes. It deserves to be.”
Other leading reviewers have also heaped praise. Publishers Weekly calls the book: "[A] complex and provocative analysis of the West's ongoing struggle against terrorism. Terror and Consent merits wide circulation and serious consideration." And Booklist says, "Bobbitt aims for the big picture and succeeds . . . Not just another book about terrorism, this is a complete theory of constitutional evolution and a sophisticated set of far-reaching policy prescriptions."
Bobbitt’s debut, The Shield of Achilles, won the Robert W. Hamilton Book Award and was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The Times Literary Supplement, The Economist, and The Guardian. In addition to being a Professor of Law at Columbia University and Distinguished Lecturer and Senior Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, Bobbitt has served in a number of posts in the U.S. government, including as associate counsel to the President, legal counsel to the Senate Select Committee on the Iran-Contra affair, the counselor on international law at the State Department, and several senior positions at the National Security Council.
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Randy Richardson is an author, humorist, former journalist, and a lawyer. His fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of Chicago's storied Wrigley Field, won the Writers Marketing Association's “Fresh Voices” Book Award and the Illinois Woman's Press Association's Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest. He writes the Dad Libs column for SanityCentral.com and is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine. In his day job, he is an attorney for the Social Security Administration’s disability appeals branch. At night and during lunch breaks, he serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association (chicagowrites.org) and works on his second novel while a 4-year-old tugs on his legs. Visit his website at www.lostintheivy.com.
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