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THE MATADOR’S CAPE

The Matador’s Cape delves into the tangled causes and devastating consequences of American policy at home and abroad since 9/11. In a collection of searing essays, the author explores Washington’s seemingly chronic inability to bring “the enemy” into focus, detailing the ideological, bureaucratic, electoral, and (not least) emotional forces that have warped America’s understanding of, and response to, the terrorist threat. He also shows how the gratuitous and murderous shift of attention from al Qaeda to Iraq was shaped by a series of misleading theoretical perspectives on the end of deterrence, the clash of civilizations, humanitarian intervention, unilateralism, democratization, torture, intelligence gathering, and wartime expansions of presidential power. The author’s breadth of knowledge on the War on Terror leads to conclusions about present-day America that are at once sobering in their depth of reference and inspiring in their global perspective.

After receiving his Ph.D. from Yale in 1976, Stephen Holmes taught briefly at Yale University before becoming a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1978. He then moved to Harvard University’s Department of Government, where he stayed until 1985, the year he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago.

   At Chicago, Holmes served as Director of the Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe and as editor-in-chief of the East European Constitutional Review. In 1994–96, he was the Director of the Soros Foundation program for promoting legal reform in Russia and Eastern Europe. From 1997 to 2000, he was Professor of Politics at Princeton University.

   Holmes’ research centers on the history of European liberalism, the disappointments of democracy and economic liberalization after communism, and the challenge of combating transnational terrorism within the bounds of the rule of law. In 1984, he published Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism. Since then, he has published numerous articles on democratic and constitutional theory. In 1988, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete a study of the theoretical foundations of liberal democracy. He was a member of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin during the 1991–92 academic year. His Anatomy of Antiliberalism appeared in 1993. And in 1995, he published Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy. In 1999, his The Cost of Rights, coauthored with Cass Sunstein, appeared. For his research on the derailing of Russian legal reform, he was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2003–05.

THE MATADOR’S CAPE

America’s Reckless Response to Terror

STEPHEN HOLMES
Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law
New York University School of Law

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521875165

© Stephen Holmes 2007

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2007

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Holmes, Stephen, 1941–
The matador’s cape : America’s reckless response to terror / Stephen Holmes.
   p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-87516-5 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 0-521-87516-1 (hardback)
1. War on Terrorism, 2001– 2. Terrorism – Government policy – United States.
3. United States – Politics and government – 2001– 4. United States – Foreign relations
– 2001– 5. Terrorism – Religious aspects – Islam. 6. Anti-Americanism. 7. September 11
Terrorist Attacks, 2001 – Influence. I. Title.
HV6432.H653 2007
973.931 – dc22      2006039195

ISBN 978-0-521-87516-5 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or
will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Francesco

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Most of the ideas in this book were first elaborated in the Law and Security Colloquium at the New York University School of Law. To Richard Pildes, David Golove, and Noah Feldman – my brilliant friends and co-directors in the Colloquium – I therefore owe an enormous debt. For their incisive and often humbling comments on various chapters I need to thank not only Golove and Feldman, but also many other friends and colleagues, including Bruce Ackerman, Samuel Beer, Tom Carothers, Kiren Chaudhry, Arista Cirtautas, Amos Elon, Jon Elster, John Ferejohn, Diego Gambetta, Venelin Ganev, David Garland, Tom Geoghegan, Moshe Halbertal, Helen Hershkoff, Helge Høibraaten, Jamie Holmes, Ivan Krastev, David Luban, Bernard Manin, John McCormick, Claus Offe, Pasquale Pasquino, Patrizia Pinotti, Richard Posner, Adam Przeworski, Adam Shatz, Paul Starr, Tzvetan Todorov, Leon Wieseltier, and David Woodruff. I am grateful to them all. Only Katie Sticklor knows what mortifications I have been spared by her unerring proofreader’s eye. Heartfelt thanks also go to John Berger, my editor at Cambridge University Press, who gently coaxed me into producing this book in record time. To Karen Greenberg, the founding Director and guiding spirit of the Law School’s Center on Law and Security, my debt, as much personal as professional, is simply too costly to repay.

   Most of the chapters in this book are reconceived and rewritten versions of earlier publications. For the right to use this material, I thank the original publishers. The earlier versions first appeared as follows: Chapter One in Diego Gambetta (ed.), Making Sense of Suicide Missions (2005); Chapter Two in The American Prospect (April 2003); Chapter Three in The American Prospect (June 2006); Chapter Four in The Nation (May 10, 2004); Chapter Five in The London Review of Books (May 6, 2004); Chapter Six in The London Review of Books (April 24, 1997); Chapter Seven in The London Review of Books (November 14, 2002); Chapter Eight in The Nation (November 14, 2005); Chapter Nine in The London Review of Books (October 5, 2006); Chapter Ten in The New Republic (February 28, 2005); Chapter Eleven in The New Republic (November 19, 2001); Chapter Twelve in Karen Greenberg (ed.), The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Chapter Thirteen in The Nation (May 1, 2006).