Politics

George W. Bush’s enduring shame: The twisted legal rationales we can’t escape, a dozen years later

A recently disclosed John Yoo memo that helped grease the skids to war with Iraq may have helped President Obama avoid war with Iran. Or perhaps it’s just a bit of epic trolling. Or maybe a bit of both. Whatever the case, it should not go unremarked in the wake of Obama’s success in preserving the Iran deal against GOP opposition in Congress, because of how it illuminates the broader landscape of U.S. foreign policy battles over the decades. Whether or not it played any role—or figures in possible future lawsuits—it underscores both how dark and twisted GOP foreign policy and defensive secrecy demands have been, and how Democrats have been much more eager to adopt the GOP’s rationales when they hold power than to challenge them when they do not.