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Overview
In the war on terrorism, the federal government has detained over 5,000 foreign nationals, engaged in guilt by association and ethnic profiling, and conducted secret searches and wiretaps without probable cause of criminality. These measures have been sold to the public on the ground that they affect only foreign nationals, not American citizens. In Enemy Aliens, award-winning author, Georgetown law professor, and civil liberties lawyer David Cole argues that in balancing liberty and security we have consistently relied on a double standard, imposing measures on foreigners that we would not tolerate if they were applied more broadly to us all. Cole warns that while such a double standard is politically easy (the 20 million noncitizens living in the United States can't vote), it is constitutionally suspect, counterproductive as a security matter, and ultimately illusory, because history shows that acceptance of such treatment for outsiders paves the way for similar measures against American citizens. Coming on the heels of his multi-award-winning No Equal Justice, which exposed race- and class-based double standards in the criminal justice system, Enemy Aliens brings Cole's keen intelligence, constitutional acumen, and personal litigation experience to bear on the character of constitutional freedoms in the war on terrorism.Synopsis
When David Cole was first writing Enemy Aliens, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the anti-immigrant brand of American patriotism was at fever pitch. Now, as the pendulum swings back, and court after court finds the Bush administration's tactics of secrecy and assumption of guilt unconstitutional, Cole's book stands as a prescient and critical indictment of the double standards we have applied in the war on terror.
Called "brilliantly argued" by Edward Said, and "the essential book in the field" by former CIA Director James Woolsey, Enemy Aliens shows why it is a moral, constitutional, and practical imperative to afford every person in the United States the protections from government excesses that we expect for ourselves.
The New York Review of Books - Anthony Lewis
The harsh treatment of aliens since September 11 has had little political attention.... In this powerful book, Enemy Aliens, David Cole shows why we should care... He lays out the Bush administration's policies in the way they can best be understood, in their impact on individual aliens. His tone is measured, his legal hand sure. He lets the facts speak, and the result is gripping. Cole gives the most convincing view that I have read of the legal and bureaucratic threats that now face immigrants and visitors to America. But then he goes on to make an even more important point. The repressive measures that President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft first took against aliens are now being applied to citizens.
Editorials
Anthony Lewis
The harsh treatment of aliens since September 11 has had little political attention.... In this powerful book, Enemy Aliens, David Cole shows why we should care... He lays out the Bush administration's policies in the way they can best be understood, in their impact on individual aliens. His tone is measured, his legal hand sure. He lets the facts speak, and the result is gripping. Cole gives the most convincing view that I have read of the legal and bureaucratic threats that now face immigrants and visitors to America. But then he goes on to make an even more important point. The repressive measures that President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft first took against aliens are now being applied to citizens.—The New York Review of Books