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"Law Wars" is the name that the editors of the New Rambler gave to my review of Charlie Savage's great new book, Power Wars.
My review begins:
Earlier this week, Time magazine published reviews of Charlie Savage's new book, Power Wars, by me and former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer. As I read it, "the story strongly implies that mainstream American politics don’t support fundamental rethinking of counterterrorism policies.
For some time now, Lawfare and the Hoover Institution Press have been serializing our book on the Obama Administration's speeches on legal policy and national security. Now, we are pleased to announce Hoover has released an edition in hard copy, complete with a handy compendium on what we call the canonical national security law speeches of the administration.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817916547/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=17...This morning the Associated Press reported that South Korea, Japan and the United States will be signing their first three-way intelligence-sharing pact as part of an effort to address the growing North Korean nuclear threat.
Some years ago, I happened to be in London mid-November and had lunch with a dear friend, my long-time editor at the Times Literary Supplement. I noted he wore a small felt flower--a poppy, I realized--in his jacket lapel and asked him about it. He smiled somewhat ruefully and said, it's true, Americans have never thought of Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, the way the British do--or anyway, used to, he added, because even in Britain and France, historical memory of the Great War has faded.
By contrast, in America we celebrate Veterans Day on November 11--all American veterans.
As many Lawfare readers know, John Witt has recently published a book called Lincoln’s Code. The book is about, among many other things, the history of the laws of war in the United States, especially in its first century, and the persistent tensions between idealism and pragmatism (my terms, not John’s) in crafting and complying with the laws of war. Gary Bass has an enthusiastic review here. I
Shane Harris at Washingtonian has this snarky little piece about what Mark Owen aka the "squealing SEAL" can do to stay out of prison---since the Pentagon has decided that the book does, in fact, reveal classified information and is debating whether to take legal action. It begins:
Dear Mark Owen (a.k.a.
Amy Zegart of the Hoover Institution, author of several terrific books on intelligence, now has a regular column on intelligence matters at Foreign Policy that should be of great interest to Lawfare readers. Her first piece uses the kerfuffle over the publication of No Easy Day,
Shane Harris at Washingtonian has this review of ex-Navy SEAL Matt Bissonette's book on the Osama bin Laden raid. It begins:
“Let me be clear, I do not consider this to be my story,” writes retired Navy Seal Mark Owen in his firsthand account of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, No Easy Day, published Tuesday.
In a characteristically thougtful essay over at Slate, and building on themes in his new book, Jack returns to a familiar argument--that the extent to which the Obama Administration has embraced military commissions is a telling example in continuity with, and validation of, the policies of the (later part of the) Bush Administration.