How Would the Left Respond to Mumbai-Style Attacks in the U.S.?

John Yoo was interviewed by the Orange County Register the other day. The article generated a little pushback on the left (see Harper's, TalkLeft, Think Progress, ACSBlog and Washington Independent).

Jeralyn at Talk Left was not happy, "This interview is a joke." No doubt she'd like Yoo in the dock for his "torture memos."

But Yoo's a good guy. He's got a piece up this morning at the Wall Street Journal, "Yes, We Did Plan for Mumbai-Style Attacks in the U.S.":

Suppose al Qaeda branched out from crashing airliners into American cities. Using small arms, explosives, or biological, chemical or nuclear weapons they could seize control of apartment buildings, stadiums, ships, trains or buses. As in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, texting and mobile email would make it easy to coordinate simultaneous assaults in a single city.

After 9/11, we had a responsibility to consider all possible threats.
In the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on New York City and Washington, D.C., these were hypotheticals no more. They became real scenarios for which responsible civilian and military leaders had to plan. The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law, because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War. Could our armed forces monitor traffic in a city where terrorists were preparing to strike, search for cells using surveillance technology, or use force against a hijacked vessel or building?

In these extraordinary circumstances, while our military put al Qaeda on the run, it was the duty of the government to plan for worst-case scenarios - even if, thankfully, those circumstances never materialized. This was not reckless. It was prudent and responsible. While government officials worked tirelessly to prevent the next attack, lawyers, of which I was one, provided advice on unprecedented questions under the most severe time pressures.

Judging from the media coverage of Justice Department memos from those days - released this week by the Obama administration - this careful contingency planning amounted to a secret plot to overthrow the Constitution and strip Americans of their rights. As the New York Times has it, Bush lawyers "rush into sweeping away this country's most cherished rights." "Irresponsible," harrumphed former Clinton administration Justice Department officials.

According to these critics, the overthrow of constitutional government in the United States began with a 37-page memo, confidentially issued on Oct. 23, 2001, which concluded that the September 11 attacks triggered the government's war powers and allowed the president to use force to counter force. Alexander Hamilton saw things differently than critics of the Bush administration. He wrote in Federalist 74: "The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength, and the power of directing and employing the common strength forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority."

Read the whole thing, here.

Yoo demonstrates his critics' misunderstanding of the Founders' intent on executive power during wartime, and he suggests they've distorted and decontextualized his writing to benefit their far-left antiwar agenda. He adds that should the administration go along with the political antiterror witch-trials being pushed by congressional Democrats, the U.S. will be less prepared for potential domestic Mumbai-style attacks in the future.