John Yoo opposes a U.S. War

You read it here first. Or, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, second. In today’s WSJ, Yoo actually speaks out against a war. Yoo, remember is the Berkeley law professor who believes that the U.S. president has way more power than the Constitution appears to give him and that he can rightfully use this power to order the torture of people.

No, he doesn’t oppose the current war. He probably won’t oppose the next war. But he does oppose, apparently, the War of 1812. Here’s what he wrote:

But the historical record on this is not heartening. During the reign of the Jeffersonians, the progenitors of today’s Democrats, the congressional caucus chose the party’s nominee. It was a system that yielded mediocrity, even danger. Congressional hawks pushed James Madison into the War of 1812 by demanding ever more aggressive trade restrictions against Great Britain and ultimately declaring war — all because they wanted to absorb Canada. It ended with a stalemate in the north, the torching of the U.S. capital, and Gen. Andrew Jackson winning a victory at the Battle of New Orleans.

20 thoughts on “John Yoo opposes a U.S. War”

  1. In order to comment we would have to give the ” no salvation outside the Republican party ” Fox News dead-heads a history lesson..And who has time for that?

  2. In 2204: the latest edition of the War Street Journal reconsiders the 2003 attack on Iraq and deems it “regrettable” (and also the prelude to the wars of 2010-2076 and – more controversially – the crash of world population in the late 21st century.)

    After this obscure earth-bound journal has been translated to Mandarin, citizens of the Planetary Confederation start radioing in letters to the editor…

  3. Hey, in that War of 1812, North, namely Canada sent its troops all the way to the U.S. capital and burnt the ‘White House’ black. Probably in anticipation of Barack Obama…

  4. The Presidential Mansion didn’t become the White House until they used a coat of white paint to hide the fire damage.
    And the Brits landed by boat.

  5. Just like a slimy Trotskist neocon, John Yoo says that the Jeffersonians were “the progenitors of today’s Democrats”. Of course that’s BS.
    The last Jeffersonian president was the great Grover Cleveland, a man who’s name causes modern Democrats as well as neocons to shriek in horror because he was a strict constructionist, fiscal conservative and non-interventionist (foreign and domestic).

    A friend of Cleveland wrote him in 1907 lamenting the decay of the Party of Jefferson and exposed the new progenitor of the progressive Democrats as it still is today.

    He wrote:
    “I see no indications that the Democratic party as you and I knew it is ever to be restored. Under normal conditions a party should arise from the masses of the people to defend the necessary doctrine of strict construction of the Constitution and the use by the coordinate branches of the Federal Government of the powers delegated to them, and no others. But conditions are not as they were when we were young. The press of the country no longer discusses constitutional questions ; the spirit of socialism in its many forms is abroad amongst the masses of the people, and any movement arising from them is more likely to carry the doctrines of Karl Marx than those of Jefferson.”

  6. one question I like to ask neo cons is if there were any US wars they oppose, either in theory or at the time. usually they name one of clintons misadventures, kind of a cop out i think. they rarely say stuff like Mr Yoo here.

  7. One has to hand it to the Bush Administration , a kind of Merde Touch Writ Large. They have brought numerous Sunbeams For the Unitary Executive out of the bowels of obscurity and made them media and government Pop Stars. It’s like “Revenge of the Nerds” was their Articles of Incorporation.

    But, to be sure, they could never have pulled off this running plunge into a Peter Principle Amateur Hour without the dutiful ministrations of the mainline media. John Yoo pontificating on the War of 1812 is like Daffy Duck expounding upon Buddhist Meditation. Maybe the newspapers should just dispense with writers altogether and simply have the first five people they meet on the street write the headline news as they see it.

  8. I sure have a lot to learn, and maybe unlearn, about the War of 1812, as it is called.

  9. …I for one believe that John Yoo is a Liar, a Political Prostitute and a Scoundrel that embodies at once all that is Subjective, Corrupt, and Sadistic in his Authorized Perversions of The Law. Yet one more Soft Assed Sycophant and Coward who not only holds self evident facts to be a threat to National Security; but one presently whining, equivocating, and to wit: Subtly attempting to revise his malefactions, and the ignominy they threaten to impose upon a nominally free people. This simply because he, along with others of his bent, have found themselves trapped in the wrong latitudes of History…I cannot suffer, and I will not suffer such people in silence. Moreover, if he doesn’t like it? He is welcome to put his pen to mine…All the sonsofbitches are.

  10. Could you imagine if Saddam were stopping US cargo ship, kidnapping American citizen crew members and then forcing them into slaverly in the Iraqi navy? If he were doing that, i’d have been all for the war.

    And that’s pretty much what the Brits were doing to American citizens prior to the War of 1812, and yet Yoo thinks there was no reason for THAT war.

    Saddam was no threat, did nothing to any American, yet Yoo thinks starting a war with him was a great idea.

    What a dumb f%8K

    1. Hankest writes:

      Saddam was no threat, did nothing to any American, yet Yoo thinks starting a war with him was a great idea.

      I’m not saying that going to war with him was a great idea. However,I don’t know if you are totally accurate. Saddam did, indeed, send money to the families of suicide bombers in Israel. Many of those who were killed by suicide bombers have been American citizens. He was also the leader of the only country in the entire world that told America that we got what we deserved on 9/11/01. (and no, I’m NOT saying he personally had anything to do with 9/11) He also violated and made a mockery of the peace treaty he signed, ending the first gulf war. And last but not least, he plotted to assassinate a former President of the United States, George H.W. Bush.

  11. There once was a man named Yoo

    Whose statements were mostly poo.

    His warmongering pap

    Was always on tap,

    In the form of rolls in the loo.

  12. This John Yoo is no better educated, intelligent or any more pragmatic than Alberto Gonzales. As I see it the congresspersons have been sticking their noses up these Third Country assholes for so long they now think like a bunch of monkeys! They make excuses to break the law, then they want to argue about it, and come up with insanities their own people, or ours, would not tolerate!

    Their own people can’t stand these subhumans we don’t want them, as they are completely useless! Their countries are prospering and progressing and the U.S. congresspersons are more than willing to turn this United States into a Goddaumned “Pigsty!” just to make them feel that they finally found home, so that the U.S. politicians can show these mickey-mouse thinking buttholes how nice these cretin who are still sheltered under our American roofs, really are! Then it’s all a waste of our U.S. tax dollars which they don’t have the means to earn! -Al Koppel.

  13. It is indeed terrible (in a funny kind of way) for the US to have received such morons although I must confess here in Latin America we are more than relieved to have gotten rid of lumpen like Albero Gonzales and that other Yoyo. Since you’ve made them your own, keep them. Maybe that’s also a way for the US to start paying for its callousness and crimes abroad.

  14. A word on the Jackson victory More than 2,000 British had been killed or wounded and several hundred more were captured. The American loss was eight killed and 13 wounded. He was ole Hickory and he got rid of the first FED.

  15. …Like the original Unitary Executive, French King Louis XIV of “I am the State” notoriety; Yoo’s approach to the Law is that through the subjective applications of intelligently worded rationales and unilateral, unconstitutional judgements: He, is the Law.

  16. Yoo is hired to justify decisions already made with a veneer of “constitutional” argument.

    He looks at the Constitution cursorily and finds passages X and Y that appear to be open to the argument required.

    He gives his opinion.

    The opinion is used to establish that a legal consultation was made and that the administration is acting in good faith Constitutionally.

    Question: how, using exactly the same tactics, might one come up with legal charges with which to prosecute John Yoo?

    In short, if this is going to be the game, how would a John Yoo prosecute a John Yoo criminally and/or civilly?

  17. Would any of the detainees tortured have a civil case against John Yoo? Using–ca va sans dire–John Yoo’s imagination?

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