Who is John Yoo?
In the article “Is John Yoo a Monster?” Esquire magazine provides a lovely, intimate look at the man who played the single biggest role in shaping the Bush administration’s policies on torture.
One thing I like about the article is that I would use the words “lovely, intimate look” and “policies on torture” in the same sentence while describing it. Such beautiful extremes, there — the kind of paradox that might smash preconceptions, forcing us to arrive at fresh conclusions.
Some background about the guy:
At Steve’s Korean B.B.Q., Yoo talks about his parents. They were teenagers during the Korean War, a serious pair who both became doctors and moved to the U. S. out of gratitude and a love of democracy. “They saw the United States as saving their country, and I agree with them,” he says. “It did save their country. And then it let people in. It was extraordinarily generous. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the generosity of the United States.”
He grew up in the elite Main Line area of Philadelphia and went to a prep school where he wore a suit and tie and learned Greek and Latin. He seems to have been a natural-born conservative, attracted even as a teenager to Ronald Reagan’s message of anticommunism, low taxes, and small government, values that resonated with the immigrant dream of personal freedom. But he was never angry or righteous about it. “He was completely open and tolerant of everyone,” says Gordon Getter, a prep-school classmate. “He had a genuine sense of humor,” says Thomas Schwartz, one of his professors at Harvard. “He would argue and people would get mad at him, but he never seemed to take it personally.”
Of further interest:
He turns out to have lots of unexpected quirks. He’s pro-choice. He thinks flag burning is a legitimate form of free speech. He thinks the government is “wasting a lot of resources” in the war on drugs. He thinks the phrase “war on terror” is misleading political rhetoric. He’s cowriting an article that makes a conservative case for gay marriage. “Our argument is, the state should just stay out of these things, because it doesn’t hurt anybody.” And he’s definitely alarmed by the more theocratic Republicans. “When Mike Huckabee says he wants to amend the Constitution so that it’s consistent with God’s law, that scares the bejesus out of me.”
I like this man.
This is the man whom the President of the United States hired to provide real-time legal advice — in effect, to predict what the Supreme Court would say, and do it fast enough that the President could make immediate national security decisions.
That’s a tough job.
I’m half-way through the full article so far, and enjoying it immensely. This is journalism at its best: intimate and thought-provoking.
Good find! More great passages:
“Do you often come here to mock the hippies?”
“I don’t come here specifically for that. I try to multitask.”
He likes living among liberals, he says. “Liberals from the sixties do a great job of creating all the comforts of life — gourmet food, specialty jams, the best environmentally conscious waters.”
Not that anyone is listening. Yoo has become the focus of national anger about every excess in the war on terrorism, and minds are made up. But dismissing him as a monster just means that we don’t have to think about why he did what he did. Grant him his good intentions, entertain the possibility that he did it to save lives, recognize the honor in his refusal to hide, and his story becomes a cautionary tale about the incremental steps that can lead a nation to disaster.