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Confronting The Wizard Of Oz: National Security, Expertise, And Secrecy, David Cole
Confronting The Wizard Of Oz: National Security, Expertise, And Secrecy, David Cole
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Aziz Rana’s account of the takeover of American national security by experts, and of the public’s acceptance of that state of affairs, offers an important and novel perspective on what ails us in national security today. In this Comment, I suggest that while Rana is correct to identify our deference to experts as a central aspect of the problem, the problem is more complicated. First, the phenomenon of elite control over foreign and security policy questions is not new, but likely dates back to the founding—when elites ruled not based on expertise but on the basis of status, class, and …
Where Liberty Lies: Civil Society And Individual Rights After 9/11, David Cole
Where Liberty Lies: Civil Society And Individual Rights After 9/11, David Cole
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Had someone told you, on September 11, 2001, that the United States would not be able to do whatever it wanted in response to the terrorist attacks of that day, you might well have questioned their sanity. The United States was the most powerful country in the world, and had the world’s sympathy in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Who would stop it? Al Qaeda had few friends beyond the Taliban. As a historical matter, Congress and the courts had virtually always deferred to the executive in such times of crisis. And the American polity was unlikely to object …