Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror

While still an avid Bush-hater, after reading this book, my views are tempered with a better understanding of the laws of war, the difficulty of meting out justice to terrorists and the reasons why one might be tempted to implement a national security court. The book is a non-partisan, thoughtful analysis of these topics and I highly recommend it.

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.

This is the best currently available treatment of the legal issues attendant to holding and interrogating prisoners in the war on terror. It stakes out a middle road between unchecked executive autonomy and unworkable judicial review. It benefits from detailed examination of actual evidence and the stories of many detainees, to make the point that our standard criminal justice system is not capable of dealing with terrorists presenting an imminent danger, captured on foreign soil, but that an unchecked executive branch system will likewise result in unacceptable error in detaining some individuals who do not present a threat. The solution is clear and workable standards imposed by the Legislative branch, an noted by another reviewer.

First rate logic. The author has wrapped a very keen mind around a very difficult subject area and produced a highly readable book that is nothing less than a public service.

Benjamin Wittes, a former editorial writer for the Washington Post, has written the indispensable book on reforming US policy on detainees at Guantanamo. His exhaustive reading of everything that has been said, by the government, by the detainees themselves uncoerced in open hearings, so to give the best available portrait of the men at Guantanamo today - not those who were there in the first years, but those who are there now - is worth the price of the book. His policy prescriptions are well thought out, moderate, temperate, and are a special call to Congress to stop sniping from the sidelines and actually decide what to do. I do not think that anyone can have a serious opinion about what to do about detainee policy without reading this book.