Part of the reason I spent several years telling foolish \u201cconservative\u201d defenders of Bush\u2019s \u201cI will keep you safe if you just let me have insane amounts of unaccountable power\u201d claims is that, as I noted before, what these defenders were defending were these propositions<\/a>:<\/p>\n here\u2019s a handy summary of those positions, as drawn from the Bush administration\u2019s arguments in court, the Justice Department\u2019s torture memos, and various public statements. Cheney believes that:<\/p>\n 1. The president has total authority, subject to no review by any court, commission or anyone else, to decide to whom the Geneva Conventions \u2014 a treaty obligation of the United States \u2014 applies and in what circumstances. I\u2019m probably forgetting a point or two, but these are all among the positions that Cheney and his cronies have taken and that the Bush administration defended at least for a time, until the Supreme Court finally started weighing in. We can save some time in future discussions like this one if we just start with these propositions and see who\u2019s willing to defend them. As I said earlier, if you\u2019re not willing to, then you actually disagree at least with Cheney and probably with Bush, because these have been their positions. And, also as I said earlier, if you defend these propositions you should do so in the full knowledge that \u201cthe president\u201d referred to in them \u2014 and therefore the one who would now be in a position to use these powers as he sees fit \u2014 is not Bush, but one Barack Hussein Obama.<\/strong> Be sure you\u2019re OK with that before you try to tell us how great Dick Cheney and his ideas about torture are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Y\u2019see, O Defender of \u201cGive Bush Unaccountable Power So He Can Keep My Cowardly Skin Safe\u2013and Accuse Anybody Who Opposes This of Saying \u2018Bush is Hitler'\u201d, the point was always: Bush was *not* Hitler. He was merely a short-sighted fool\u2013like you. The problem is precisely that Bush was never going to be in power forever. Rather, he was going to leave office\u2013and establish a precedent for others to follow.<\/p>\n And so *now*, all of a sudden, the people who were screaming to grant insane lawlessness to war criminals on the theory it would keep them safe are griping because the beneficiary of Bush\u2019s \u201cWhen the President wants to do whatever he should be free to do so\u201d are suddenly having second thought about the whole \u201cczar\u201d idea<\/a>. Golly! Who could possibly have foreseen *that*!<\/p>\n The Prophet Chesterton remarks on our tired democracy:<\/p>\n If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That is the bargain we entered into after 9\/11, when we accepted the preposterous proposition: \u201cWe are in an existential struggle for our very existence as a civilization!!!!! So\u2026. go shopping and let us handle it.\u201d Obama is just reaping where Bush sowed. Everybody believes Caesar\u2019s omnipotent power will fix things and keep us all safe. The only difference is that Righties believe it will establish the Great Society in Afghanistan and Lefties think it will do it in the US.<\/p>\n
2. The president has similarly total, unreviewable authority to arrest and detain anyone, for any period of time, on any grounds the president thinks may be in America\u2019s national-security interest. He himself defines what counts as \u201csecurity\u201d and at how many removes from actual military operations the suspect in question may be. (Thus, for instance, if decides that criticism of himself is enough to cast suspicion on someone, he may have that person detained without the right to petition a court to review the grounds of his imprisonment.)
3. The president\u2019s prisoners can include not just foreigners or those captured \u201con the battlefield\u201d or while bearing arms, but anyone picked up anywhere, including U.S. citizens and\/or people arrested within the borders of the United States.
4. Prisoners can also include teenagers as young as 14, based on claims of foreigners that they had some kind of terrorist involvement when they were as young as 11. (Actual case, I\u2019m not making this up.)
5. While detained, prisoners can be held incommunicado and\/or at secret locations and denied access to counsel.
6. They can also be subjected to treatments that the United States government itself has historically defined as torture. CIA agents or contractors who inflict such treatment should have total immunity from further investigation or prosecution in all cases, even if a prisoner dies as a result of it.
7. If any formal proceeding is ever brought against a prisoner, he may be subject to any penalty, including death, based on evidence he is not allowed to see or rebut, and\/or based on statements extracted from him, or from someone else, under the treatment methods mentioned in #6.
8. Meanwhile, the president has unreviewable authority to order the wiretapping of anyone he deems a threat for any reason, without having to submit the order, even after the fact, to review even by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. (Again, if the president decided that criticism of the president itself posed some kind of security threat, however indirectly, then he could order wiretapping on that basis, and no judge or court would have a right to know that he had even done it.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n