The authoritarian reflex of the Bush administration
Hausknecht, Murray
THOSE WHO STILL remember their high school biology lessons will recall how a simple reflex works: touch a hot stove and "instinctively" your hand jerks away; it is automatic—no thought involved....
...So, for example, "Guantanamo"—Washington's claim that it can hold closed hearings there and deny lawyers' access to clients and to evidence fits into "state secrets," and both are joined to "Geneva Conventions...
...At the core, then, of the administration's vision of the world is the belief that a democratic society is incapable of defending itself in situations like those we face today...
...There is, in addition, the frightening fact that the dangers terrorism poses do not come from outside the nation's borders alone...
...is evidence of China's increasing reliance on state secrecy laws to tighten control over information...
...An ideology that proclaims the necessity of the authoritarian reflex as a defense against terrorism is itself a threat to democracy...
...As in any nation, it charges government with defending the lives of its citizens from terrorists and other enemies...
...Although most animal behavior is instinctive, almost all of human behavior is learned and requires thought even when life is threatened...
...In reality, however, the administration's authoritarian actions are based less on these practical-sounding considerations than on a more deep-seated ideological principle...
...A democratic society places a heavy burden on its government...
...But it is always latent in democratic societies: the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Abraham Lincoln's attempt to suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War, and the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II are well-known examples...
...In a typical example, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Senate's majority whip, said of the Democrats, "They will wave the white flag in the war on terror," and others, in and out of Congress, DISSENT / Winter 2007 n I 5 COMMENTS & OPINIONS accused critics of the administration of "appeasement" and being ready to "cut and run...
...Sometimes, as in the case of Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada, the metaphor becomes a reality.* This definition (and the reference to Grenada) is essentially a version of the definition that appears in Murray Hausknecht, "At First Glance," Dissent, Spring 1984...
...16 n DISSENT / Winter 2007...
...If we assign the keyword "state secrets" to these stories and allow some other keywords— Patriot Act, Guantanamo, torture, military tribunals, surveillance, Geneva Conventions, among others—to jog our memories of government action since September 11, 2001, it is clear that the "state secrets" response is not an anomaly...
...STILL, DOES ALL of this mean that today's authoritarian reflex produces something different from the episodic responses of the past...
...when lives and the very existence of the nation seem to be endangered, if not always clearly so, it is difficult to question the legitimacy of authoritarian actions...
...But a democratic government has an additional burden: it cannot act in the name of self-defense with measures that subvert its very reason for existence—protecting the liberty as well as the safety of its citizens...
...A good part of this is the usual vitriolic language of election campaigns that wraps the cloak of patriotism and implicit appeals to American machismo around problematic policies...
...Justifying authoritarian reflexes by appeals to the inherent powers of the presidency is different from an argument that, at the very least, stresses the temporary nature of those policies and actions— evils that will be abandoned once the present perils are overcome...
...In formal terms, the authoritarian reflex may be understood as a maximum use of state power as an immediate, "instinctive" response of a regime or administration to a challenge to its policies or even to a mere questioning of its authority to pursue those policies...
...Whether AT&T is collaborating with the government is a secret of the highest order," said...
...COMMENTS & OPINIONS The authoritarian response is, of course, the defining characteristic of totalitarian and authoritarian societies...
...It's not about our analysis or finding a preponderance of evidence...
...It is not an easy task...
...Since at least 1987, when Dick Cheney wrote, as author of the House of Representatives' minority report on the Iran-contra affair, "[M]uch of what President Reagan did in his actions toward Nicaragua and Iran were constitutionally protected exercises of inherent Presidential powers," the vice president has consistently maintained that those powers trump any attempt to limit them...
...In The One Percent Doctrine, Ron Suskind quotes him as saying, "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response...
...The probability of that outcome depends on another, perhaps more important, consideration...
...it is, metaphorically, a reaching for the gun when a threat to authority or a perceived lack of full commitment to policies appears to exist...
...Thus, the authoritarian reflex is pragmatically justified...
...The claim that "inherent Presidential powers" legitimate authoritarian policies and actions is now embraced as part of the Republican Party's ideology,* an ideology that stresses such other principles as the ever-present need to reduce taxes, the evils of big government, and the virtues of free enterprise...
...Because "certainty" is rarely, if ever, present in human affairs, Vice President Dick Cheney believes that our response to a perceived threat must be like a simple reflex: without "analysis...
...The administration's persistent conflation of the Iraq War with the "war on terrorism"—"The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad," according to George W. Bush in his Oval Office speech of September 11, 2006—serves to blur the distinction between conventional wars and metaphoric ones...
...Metaphoric wars with no discernible endpoints encourage a fatalistic acceptance of authoritarian reflexes as necessary for survival...
...none represented a turn to a continuing authoritarian politics subverting democratic political institutions...
...What we are dealing with is a picture justifying the label of "authoritarian reflex...
...Past authoritarian responses were episodic...
...terrorists, who are not easily distinguishable from the rest of the population, are at any given moment preparing to strike from within as they have in the past...
...But something else is also at play: to criticize wiretapping without warrants or the claimed legitimacy of indefinitely imprisoning "enemy combatants" without trial is to question the basic assumption that democratic rights are both irrelevant and dangerous in our present circumstances...
...it must be accepted as a necessary condition for national survival—it is the way we must live now and in the foreseeable future...
...one-person bodies are better for decision, energy, secrecy and dispatch...
...The episodic responses of the past almost always occurred at times of conventional war, and when the war ceased the authoritarian response ended...
...But, yes, there is a difference...
...0 UR KEY WORDS refer to policies and actions that rest on claims that they are a legitimate exercise of presidential power...
...On the thinking behind the "inherent Presidential powers" claim see the excellent report by Jane Mayer, "The Hidden Power," the New Yorker, July 3, 2006...
...and the internment of Japanese Americans terminated at the war's end...
...firefighters enter burning buildings to save the lives of others...
...Two years later, just before being appointed as secretary of defense by George H.W...
...As it had in April, the government said the very premise of the lawsuit could not be established without disclosing state and military secrets...
...That vision partially accounts for the Republican rhetoric preceding the November 2006 congressional elections...
...The "war on terror," however, is a metaphoric war...
...only authoritarian responses can save us...
...The reflex is distinguished by a relative lack of inhibition or restraint on the use of power...
...to shirk it represents a failure of courage and lack of faith in democracy...
...This may not be true of our present situation...
...Bush, in an essay, "Congressional Overreaching in Foreign Policy," for an American Enterprise Institute conference, Cheney wrote, "Collective bodies are important for deliberation...
...it is like one jigsaw puzzle piece that is part of a complete picture...
...Conventional war, whether civil or between nations, has a recognizable end: one regime is replaced by another...
...It is obvious, a matter of common sense really, that they must be hunted down with all the power the state can muster before they strike again...
...Yet the examples also demonstrate an important fact of our history: the Alien and Sedition Acts were quickly repealed...
...The rhetoric is not simply part of "politics as usual": it is a defense of the authoritarian reflex...
...San Francisco, June 23: A Justice Department lawyer pressed a federal judge on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit against AT&T over a government 14 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 surveillance operation...
...For a major figure in the administration this is not a new claim...
...Two news stories provide essential clues to the answer: Beijing, June 14: The trial of a researcher for The New York Times...
...War or the threat of war is always a powerful stimulus to authoritarian reflexive responses...
...MURRAY HAUSKNECHT iS a sociologist who writes frequently for Dissent...
...A powerful government agency, the State Secret Bureau, has absolute authority to decide whether disclosed information is a state secret .. . .Courts have no power to challenge these rulings . . . .the authorities can limit contact between lawyers and their clients, deny access to evidence and hold closed hearings (New York Times, June 15, 2006...
...But, what about that response...
...Congress, in short, must give way in matters of foreign policy to the "decision, energy, secrecy and dispatch" the presidency commands...
...Lincoln failed to kill habeas corpus...
...it's about our response...
...like the "war on drugs," it is an endless war because "terror" is an abstraction with no enemy government and army that can formally concede defeat...
...The first thing that must be said is that we are far from sliding down a slippery slope to authoritarian government—overstatement, like metaphor, has its own perils...
...THE SEEMING similarity of today's authoritarian reflex to past responses is deceptive...
...a peace treaty is signed...
...To even suggest giving serious thought to the problem of preserving political and civil liberties in the face of the acknowledged dangers of terrorism is not only irrelevant but is itself a dangerous idea...
...The recent "one percent doctrine" is a restatement of this same longheld conviction...
...In short, there is a real danger that the authoritarian reflex will become embedded in the political culture...
...The present article may be read as an elaboration of the previous comment...
...an assistant attorney general (New York Times, June 24, 2006...
Vol. 54 • January 2007 • No. 1
