What do you think?
Rate this book
Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror
Benjamin Wittes offers the first nonpartisan critique of a crucial front in America’s war on terror—the legal battles fought by and among the Bush administration, the U.S. Congress, and the Supreme Court
Six years after the September 11 attacks, America is losing a crucial front in the ongoing war on terror. It is losing not to Al Qaeda but to its own failure to construct a set of laws that will protect the American people—its military and executive branch, as well as its citizens—in the midst of a conflict unlike any it has faced in the past. Now, in the twilight of President Bush’s administration, Brookings Institution fellow Benjamin Wittes offers a vigorous analysis of the troubling legal legacy of the Bush administration as well as that of the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court. Law and the Long War tells as no book has before the story of how America came to its current impasse in the debate over liberty, human rights, and counterterrorism and draws a road map for how the country and the next president might move forward.
Moving beyond the stale debate between those fixated on the executive branch as the key architect of counterterrorism policy and those who see the judiciary as the essential guarantor of liberty against governmental abuses, Wittes argues that the essential problem is that the Bush administration did not seek—and Congress did not write—new laws to authorize and regulate the tough presidential actions this war would require. In a line of argument that is sure to spark controversy, Wittes reveals an administration whose most significant failure was not that it was too aggressive in the substance of its action, but rather that it tried to shoulder the burden of aggressiveness on its own without seeking the support of other branches of government. Using startling new empirical research on the detainee population at Guantánamo Bay, Wittes avers that many of the administration’s actions were far more defensible than its many critics believed and actually warranted congressional support. Yet by resisting both congressional and judicial involvement in its controversial decisions, the executive branch ironically prevented both of those branches from sharing in the political accountability for necessary actions that challenged traditional American notions of due process and humane treatment.
Boldly offering a new way forward, Wittes concludes that the path toward fairer, more accountable rules for a conflict without end lies in the development of new bodies of law covering detention, interrogation, trial, and surveillance. Sure to discomfort and ignite debate, Law and the Long War is the first nonideological argument about a controversial issue of vital importance to all Americans.
Six years after the September 11 attacks, America is losing a crucial front in the ongoing war on terror. It is losing not to Al Qaeda but to its own failure to construct a set of laws that will protect the American people—its military and executive branch, as well as its citizens—in the midst of a conflict unlike any it has faced in the past. Now, in the twilight of President Bush’s administration, Brookings Institution fellow Benjamin Wittes offers a vigorous analysis of the troubling legal legacy of the Bush administration as well as that of the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court. Law and the Long War tells as no book has before the story of how America came to its current impasse in the debate over liberty, human rights, and counterterrorism and draws a road map for how the country and the next president might move forward.
Moving beyond the stale debate between those fixated on the executive branch as the key architect of counterterrorism policy and those who see the judiciary as the essential guarantor of liberty against governmental abuses, Wittes argues that the essential problem is that the Bush administration did not seek—and Congress did not write—new laws to authorize and regulate the tough presidential actions this war would require. In a line of argument that is sure to spark controversy, Wittes reveals an administration whose most significant failure was not that it was too aggressive in the substance of its action, but rather that it tried to shoulder the burden of aggressiveness on its own without seeking the support of other branches of government. Using startling new empirical research on the detainee population at Guantánamo Bay, Wittes avers that many of the administration’s actions were far more defensible than its many critics believed and actually warranted congressional support. Yet by resisting both congressional and judicial involvement in its controversial decisions, the executive branch ironically prevented both of those branches from sharing in the political accountability for necessary actions that challenged traditional American notions of due process and humane treatment.
Boldly offering a new way forward, Wittes concludes that the path toward fairer, more accountable rules for a conflict without end lies in the development of new bodies of law covering detention, interrogation, trial, and surveillance. Sure to discomfort and ignite debate, Law and the Long War is the first nonideological argument about a controversial issue of vital importance to all Americans.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published June 19, 2008
8 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Wittes
22 books43 followersBenjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and co-writes the influential Lawfare blog (http://www.lawfareblog.com/), which is devoted to non-ideological discussion of the "Hard National Security Choices,” and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines. Benjamin Wittes was born November 5, 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated from Oberlin College in 1990. He recently earned a black belt in taekwondo.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Read
February 6, 2011Somehow, it seems to me tacky to rate my own books. So I'm not going to...
December 8, 2018
This book was published in 2008 and ostensibly is outdated on some aspects of its core Bush-era topics: habeus law, rendition, surveillance, and warmaking. In the age of border militarization, negation of migrant asylum rights, immigrant detentions, and the so-called '100 mile constitution-free zone' around the borders of the country, however, Law and the Long War makes for fascinating and accidentally exuberant commentary on current events.
I found this book necessary reading in order to understand the legal frameworks within which we are operating in the context of immigration -- if habeus law is active in Guantanamo for 'enemy combatants,' then how is it not available to immigrants with or without documentation who are disappeared by ICE or held anonymously in tent jails on US soil?
The book does not address these issues, of course, since they did not exist in this form in 2007. But the gaps in law that led to extralegal renditions, torture, and warrantless wiretapping then are the same gaps in law -- or enforcement -- that lead to an entirely different set of constitutional aberrations today.
In the context for which the book was written, Benjamin Wittes wrote a very thoroughly researched and thoughtfully constructed book that covers a host of interrelated issues around the power of the presidency, the Congress, and the courts to define the US stance on detention of combatants, declare wars that don't look like wars, to surveil populations of people with or without warrants, to define and execute torture, and to render detainees to allied countries for interrogation, however defined.
This is an important summation of all of that. Additional reading will be necessary to catch fully up to current status on many of these topics. Both Congress and the courts have spoken on these topics since the book's publication---Boumediene v. Bush was decided after the book's publication, for instance, and the Obama administration immediately reconfigured the US stance on torture when it came into office (though it never was able to close Guantanamo, as Wittes predicts in this book).
The author has written further on some of these topics. _Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform_, a collection edited by Ben Wittes, was released in 2009. _Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor after Guantamo_ came out in 2010, and _Speaking the Law: The Obama Administration's Addresses on National Security Law_ (co-written with Kenneth Anderson) appeared in 2015.
I found this book necessary reading in order to understand the legal frameworks within which we are operating in the context of immigration -- if habeus law is active in Guantanamo for 'enemy combatants,' then how is it not available to immigrants with or without documentation who are disappeared by ICE or held anonymously in tent jails on US soil?
The book does not address these issues, of course, since they did not exist in this form in 2007. But the gaps in law that led to extralegal renditions, torture, and warrantless wiretapping then are the same gaps in law -- or enforcement -- that lead to an entirely different set of constitutional aberrations today.
In the context for which the book was written, Benjamin Wittes wrote a very thoroughly researched and thoughtfully constructed book that covers a host of interrelated issues around the power of the presidency, the Congress, and the courts to define the US stance on detention of combatants, declare wars that don't look like wars, to surveil populations of people with or without warrants, to define and execute torture, and to render detainees to allied countries for interrogation, however defined.
This is an important summation of all of that. Additional reading will be necessary to catch fully up to current status on many of these topics. Both Congress and the courts have spoken on these topics since the book's publication---Boumediene v. Bush was decided after the book's publication, for instance, and the Obama administration immediately reconfigured the US stance on torture when it came into office (though it never was able to close Guantanamo, as Wittes predicts in this book).
The author has written further on some of these topics. _Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform_, a collection edited by Ben Wittes, was released in 2009. _Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor after Guantamo_ came out in 2010, and _Speaking the Law: The Obama Administration's Addresses on National Security Law_ (co-written with Kenneth Anderson) appeared in 2015.
November 18, 2018
I really enjoyed this book. Written in 2008, prior to the election of President Obama, it describes the need for a comprehensive legal framework for the combating global terrorism. Ten years later many proposed policies have not been enacted and the need for a legal framework persists. Wittes' prominence today as a Trump critic drew me to this book, but in the end, I finished with a more nuanced view of Bush administration policies. A must read for fans of the National Security Law Podcast.
February 21, 2010
I bought this book because I was intrigued by its claim to be a serious, scholarly, thoughtful -- and most of all, non-partisan -- look at American national security law in a post-9/11 world. I was skeptical, but Benjamin Wittes, a Brookings Institution fellow and writer for The New Republic and The Atlantic, manages to do the impossible -- objectively analyze the most controversial national security issues of our time: the role of our three branches of government in fighting terrorism, Guantanamo Bay, detention, civilian versus military trials for detainees, interrogation law, FISA and electronic surveillance.
Effectively shredding both traditional conservative and liberal arguments about the policies and issues listed above, Wittes outlines the serious deficiencies in relying either on executive power or judicial review to manage the war's legal framework. Wittes instead presents his case for Congress to take the lead in crafting an entirely new legal regime for the war in which we now find ourselves.
Wittes' writing is scholarly and at times can be a bit dense, but considering the weight of his subject matter he does a pretty good job of making this book readable.
Law and the Long War is definitely a must-read for anyone on either the left or right who is interested in finding lasting solutions to the difficult legal questions that remain nine years into this conflict.
Effectively shredding both traditional conservative and liberal arguments about the policies and issues listed above, Wittes outlines the serious deficiencies in relying either on executive power or judicial review to manage the war's legal framework. Wittes instead presents his case for Congress to take the lead in crafting an entirely new legal regime for the war in which we now find ourselves.
Wittes' writing is scholarly and at times can be a bit dense, but considering the weight of his subject matter he does a pretty good job of making this book readable.
Law and the Long War is definitely a must-read for anyone on either the left or right who is interested in finding lasting solutions to the difficult legal questions that remain nine years into this conflict.
February 6, 2009
The law of terrorism is a difficult topic to broach, no matter what your political affiliation, and given the history of the last eight years since 9/11, it has become even more difficult. However, even as a non-lawyer, Wittes provides some interesting and compelling ideas. His evaluation of what has happened provides engaging discussion of not only how the Congress and President Bush have tried to grapple with the new and difficult issues presented by terror in a globalized world. Terrorists don't fall under the normal classifications of enemy soldiers, who are acting as instruments of the state, nor do they quite seem to qualify as criminals, and therefore for all the rights and procedures that come with the US criminal procedure regime.
SO what system of law do you apply? Obviously, detainees for terrorism cannot be kept incommunicado indefinitely, but neither can they be treated as common criminals. A hybrid system? And lead by whom: the executive or the Congress? And why hasn't the judiciary taken a more leading role in preserving the basic human rights of detainees.
No easy answers, but Wittes does a good job of examining what has happened to date, and what might be the course of action Congress (who he believes should take the lead) might take in the future to remedy some of the failings of the Bush Administration.
SO what system of law do you apply? Obviously, detainees for terrorism cannot be kept incommunicado indefinitely, but neither can they be treated as common criminals. A hybrid system? And lead by whom: the executive or the Congress? And why hasn't the judiciary taken a more leading role in preserving the basic human rights of detainees.
No easy answers, but Wittes does a good job of examining what has happened to date, and what might be the course of action Congress (who he believes should take the lead) might take in the future to remedy some of the failings of the Bush Administration.
May 12, 2013
n "Law and the Long War," Benjamin Wittes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, sets out to determine just where our crucial post-9/11 policies fit in our constitutional framework and legal traditions. Along the way, he tries to define the proper role of our three branches of government amid the changing circumstances of a war unlike any other we have fought in our past. He does an admirable job in both endeavors.
October 10, 2024
Fantastic analysis that sheds light on a discussion I was only vaguely aware of at the time. Unfortunately trying to pry the meaning out of Mr Wittes' prose reminded me of picking up rocks in a newly plowed field full of manure in July. Four stars only, for being super dense and giving me multiple headaches.
July 5, 2012
Starts out well looking at the difficulty of finding a good balance between law, executive privilege, and constitutional freedoms. No easy answers- just lots of questions. I didn't finish-- too in depth for me.
April 13, 2009
Definitely makes the point that there's more than enough blame to go around (not just the president, but notably Congress and the Supreme Court), and what you see on the news is never the whole story.
Want to read
July 27, 2009I'm sure this book will annoy me but it was remaindered at my local bookstore and very cheap and I'd seen Wittes on a Cspan panel with Charlie Savage, so.
December 25, 2009
Balanced, thoughtful, and impeccably researched account. I highly recommend this book.
June 11, 2011
Analysis of Bush Administration failings in legal prosecution of the war on terror, suggests policy principles for the way forward. an excellent book.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews