John Yoo, now a lawprof at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (those would be the tort reformers a la Overlawyered) after leaving his post as Inquisitor General, has gone on  the offensive in his war against the  use of the courts as a means of resolving disputes.  Yoo has written a piece for the  Wall Street Journal explaining why the Padilla suit against him will bring the downfall of Western Civilization.

Side note to defendants:  You have the right to remain silent.  Yoo’s polemic is yet more proof why you should do so.

Yoo’s opening salvo makes clear his vision of what Padilla v. Yoo means for the nation.

If [Padilla’s lawsuit] succeeds, it won’t be long before opponents of the war on terror use the courtroom to reverse the wartime measures needed to defeat those responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

I was unaware, until now, that John Yoo was personally so critical to our nation’s defense that a lawsuit against him meant that America would be subject to annihilation by terrorists.  What, you say?  Jose Padilla had nothing to do with the attack on the Twin Towers?  He came later?  Well, you only say that because you haven’t read the rest of Yoo’s piece.

Under Padilla’s theory, the U.S. is not at war, so any citizen killed or captured by the CIA or the military can sue. In November 2002, according to press reports, a Predator drone killed two al Qaeda leaders driving in the Yemen desert. One was an American, Kamal Derwish, who was suspected of leading a terrorist cell near Buffalo. If Padilla’s lawsuit were to prevail, Derwish’s survivors could sue everyone up the chain of command — from the agent who pressed the button, personally — for damages.

But that happened in the desert of Yemen, so that’s a little different, no?  Okay, there’s more.

In the spring of 2002, I was a Justice Department lawyer asked about the legality of Padilla’s detention. There is ample constitutional precedent to support the detention of a suspected al Qaeda agent, even an American citizen, who plans to carry out terrorist attacks on our soil. During World War II, eight Nazi saboteurs secretly landed in New York to attack factories and plants. Two of them were American citizens.

After their capture, FDR sent them to military detention, where they were tried and most of them executed. In Ex Parte Quirin, the Supreme Court upheld the detention and trial by military authorities of American citizens who “associate” with “the military arm of the enemy” and “enter this country bent on hostile acts.” If FDR were president today, Padilla might have fared far worse than he has.

But WWII was an actual war with a declared enemy in Germany, right?  Wow, you are one tough customer.  What about this?

None of that matters to the anti-war left. They failed to beat President Bush in the 2004 elections. Their efforts in Congress to repeal the administration’s policies have gone nowhere. They lost their court challenges to Padilla’s detention. The American public did not buy their argument that the struggle against al Qaeda is not really a war.

So instead they have turned to the tort system to harass those who served their government in wartime. I am not the only target. The war’s critics have sued personally Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Robert Gates, Paul Wolfowitz and other top government officials for their decisions in the war on terrorism.

Finally, we’re getting to the bottom line.  America owes a debt of gratitude to these visionaries who stand between our way of life and the marauding forces of international terrorism.  They saw it coming long before and were bold enough to do the job that needed to be done.  If the “anti-war left” had it’s way, we would all be praying to Mecca and wearing burkhas right now, upon pain of our heads being chopped off with scimitars.

[Note to lawprofs: Is this what you would consider sound academic scholarship?]

John Yoo concludes with his incisive view of what will happen when the final domino falls:

The prospect of having to waste large sums of money on lawyers will deter talented people from entering public service, leading to more mediocrity in our bureaucracies. It will also lead to a risk-averse government that doesn’t innovate or think creatively. Government by lawsuit is no way to run, or win, a war.

Patriots like Yoo need not constrain themselves to the unworkable confines of our laws and this abuse of our tort system will keep other Patriots, who know better than anyone else, from becoming the talented public servants that staff our bureaucracies in the future.  If we can’t trust in a nation of men, we are doomed.  So says John Yoo.

What scares me most about Yoo and his ilk is that they truly believe that they, a handful of brilliant Patriots, should be entrusted to do whatever they deem necessary, without constraint or oversight, because they understand what no one else does.  There is nothing we, the People, can say or do that could ever change their view, since they are right and everyone else is wrong.