About the Book
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States went to war. With thousands of Americans killed, billions of dollars in damage, and aggressive military and security measures in response, we are still living with the war a decade later. A change of presidential administration has not dulled controversy over the most fundamental objectives, strategies, and tactics of the war, or whether it is even a war at all.
Confronting Terror sets the stage for a reasoned and robust discussion of the future with a collection of new essays examining the meaning of 9/11 and the law and policy of the war on terrorism. The contributors include principled supporters and critics of the war on terrorism alike, from former Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Michael Mukasey to Alan Dershowitz and former long-time president of the ACLU Nadine Strossen.
Confronting Terror presents stark differences of opinion on issues, such as the president's authority to detain, the assertion of state secrets, the limits of surveillance, the use of unmanned drones and targeted killing, the treatment and interrogation of detainees, the Patriot Act, and the peculiar nature of our foe. More surprising, perhaps, are the areas of agreement, particularly the fact that the policies of two very different presidents are remarkably the same. In surveying these views, Yoo and Reuter hope to clarify the debate, both for our society and for those responsible for waging the war.
Contributors include John D. Ashcroft, Bob Barr, Michael Chertoff, Alan Dershowitz, Viet D. Dinh, Richard Epstein, Victor Davis Hanson, Arthur Herman, Charles Kesler, Andrew C. McCarthy, Edwin Meese III, Michael B. Mukasey, Theodore B. Olson, A. Raymond Randolph, Dean Reuter, Anthony D. Romero, Paul Rosenzweig, Laurence Silberman, Nadine Strossen, Marc Thiessen, Jonathan Turley, and John C. Yoo.
About the Author :
Dean Reuter is a senior staff member of the Federalist Society, the premier conservative/libertarian legal group in the country.
John Yoo is law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former Bush Justice Department official. He is most recently the author of Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power (2010).
Review :
Reuter and Yoo have brought together the war on terror's most controversial issues in one definitive collection. As our country continues to move forward in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, these original short essays present dramatically different views on targeted killings, surveillance, interrogation, the Patriot Act, civil liberties in wartime, the Constitution's separation of powers, and more. These are brilliant scholars, judges, and some of the public officials who were at the center of events at the time of 9/11 and its aftermath. Readers will find agreement, conflict, and rich insight in this volume. It is a must-read for people of all political and ideological stripes. -U.S. Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Former Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee The editors have put together a first-class book of essays debating the stubborn legal and policy issues, involving the balance between national security policy and personal liberty, that remain contested ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The choice of essayists is balanced, the essays themselves lucid and accessible, the essayists well-known experts, and many of them insiders with unique insights to offer based on rich practical experience. This is a book of practical reason rather than armchair academic speculation. -Richard Posner, Federal judge and author of Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency (2006)
