Are we not men of laws?

No.  We are, apparently, Devo.

I’m with Glenn Greenwald on this one. In today’s Washington Post, David Rivkin and Lee Casey argue that there should be no domestic efforts to prosecute U.S. officials for any crimes they may have committed (under domestic law and under treaties to which the U.S. is a party) in purported furtherance of the “War on Terror.” As Greenwald points out, Rivkin and Casey have previously criticized international efforts to prosecute U.S. citizens for crimes committed in purported furtherance of U.S. interests because “‘[I]t is up to American . . . authorities to determine whether any offense was committed.’”

The logical inference to draw from these arguments is that U.S. officials are entirely unencumbered by any legal restraint as long as they believe they are carrying out what they consider the best interests of the nation. Greenwald writes:

The implication of their argument — which is now the conventional Beltway view — is too obvious to require much elaboration. If our political leaders can’t be held accountable for their war crimes and other serious felonies in foreign countries or international tribunals, and must never be held accountable in the U.S. either (because to do so is to “pour acid into our democratic machinery”), then it means that American political officials (in contrast to most other leaders) are completely and explicitly exempt from, placed above, the rule of law. That conclusion is compelled from their premises.

At least to me, it’s just endlessly perplexing how anyone — let alone our political class in unison — could actually endorse such absolute lawlessness for political leaders. Didn’t our opinion-making elites learn in eight grade that the alternative to a “nation of laws” was a “nation of men” — i.e., the definition of tyranny? Those are the only two choices. It’s just so basic.