EB,
I will let professor Finkelstein's critique of Dershowitz's book, "Why Terrorism Works" speak for itself: (for more, visit
www.normanfinkelstein.com)
Finkelstein comments:
I would want briefly to supplement some of Professor Desch's comments.
Point (1) in Dershowitz's letter. Although it might seem that the quote Dershowitz cites in his letter comes from Why Terrorism Works, it does not. Dershowitz keeps two sets of books. Whenever he gets called on one of his more outrageous statements, Dershowitz rushes into print with a contrary opinion, and then cites the revisionist account as the unique and authoritative one. So, after receiving harsh criticism for what he said in Why Terrorism Works and attendant interviews, Dershowitz wrote an essay for a book edited by University of Texas Law School professor Sanford Levinson, from which the cited quote in his letter comes (Alan Dershowitz, "Tortured Reasoning," in Sanford Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 266). Apart from what Desch rightly quotes from Why Terrorism Works, compare what Dershowitz was saying at the time Why Terrorism Works came out:
Any reason why you use needles under the fingernails as your torture method of choice?
A reviewer criticized me for that. I purposely wanted to do that. I don't want to be vague. I wanted to come up with a tactic that can't possibly cause permanent physical harm but is excruciatingly painful. I agree with the reviewer; he's right when he said, "different strokes for different folks." For different people, different kinds of nonlethal torture might be more effective. Obviously, to the experts, having seen the movie "Marathon Man," drilling the tooth might be better than some. But the point I wanted to make is that torture is not being used as a way of producing death. It's been used as a way of simply causing excruciating pain.
Aren't there other forms of torture that would be less painful than that, that you might have considered?
But I want more painful. I want maximal pain, minimum lethality. You don't want it to be permanent, you don't want someone to be walking with a limp, but you want to cause the most excruciating, intense, immediate pain. Now, I didn't want to write about testicles, but that's what a lot of people use. I also wanted to be explicit because I didn't want to be squeamish about it. People have asked me whether I would do the torturing and my answer is, yes, I would if I thought it could save a city from being blown up.
Source: salon.com/books/int/2002/09/12/dershowitz/index3.html
Point (2) in Dershowitz's letter. To figure out who's telling the truth, it is a simple exercise to compare Dershowitz's rendering of Morris with what Morris actually wrote. Dershowitz never points to a single instance where I have misrepresented this juxtaposition in my appendices. Rather, he gestures to an alleged email correspondence between a FAU professor and Morris. Several weeks ago I requested from this FAU professor a copy of his alleged email correspondence to verify that Dershowitz accurately rendered it. The professor never responded. You will notice that, in Dershowitz's rendering, two questions were allegedly put to Morris: on the use of citations and on representation of Morris's current opinions. The alleged reply from Morris (as rendered by Dershowitz), however, seems only to bear on the representation of his views, not on the matter of citation. It is also peculiar that Dershowitz didn't himself write Morris soliciting a letter of support. (Or did he but didn't get one?) Before assuming that Morris has confirmed Dershowitz's scholarship, I would want to see the actual email correspondence. This is an elementary precaution when dealing with Dershowitz. Finally, it is noteworthy that nowhere on his website did Dershowitz post this vindication from Morris, although he had plenty to say about me. Is this because he worried that someone might check up on it?
Point (3) in Dershowitz's letter. Everyone who has actually examined the evidence that I assemble in Appendix I of Beyond Chutzpah concurs that I make a compelling case. (See, e.g., Jon Wiener in The Nation, Amy Wilentz in the Los Angeles Times, and Neve Gordon in The National Catholic Reporter.) I am not aware of anyone who still supports Dershowitz in his denials since publication of my book. It is unclear what evidence Bok actually examined, since he never requested from me a copy of the advance proofs, while it is also worth bearing in mind that, scandalously, Bok acquitted Laurence Tribe of plagiarism charges, although the evidence was (again) overwhelming. The testimony of James Freedman is rather underwhelming, given that he and Dershowitz are – by their own mutual reckoning – best friends.
Point (4) in Dershowitz's letter. The adage, "Where there's smoke, there's fire," would seem to apply in Dershowitz's case. Consider what an avowed admirer of Dershowitz (in particular, his views on Israel) recently wrote in the Claremont Review of Booksregarding another opus to which Dershowitz's name is affixed as author:
The Rights and Wrongs of Alan Dershowitz
By Hadley Arkes
The Claremont Institute | November 4, 2005
A review of Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origin of Rights, by Alan M. Dershowitz
There he goes again: Alan Dershowitz has turned out another book. I know, I know, but look: over the years he has occasionally said sensible and even compelling things on the matter of Israel; and he has been a model of sobriety on dealing with terrorism and detention when compared with other, rather untethered, people on the Left. In fact, back in 1970, he wrote a piece for Commentary on preventive detention in Israel. Without quite intending it, he virtually replicated and amplified Abraham Lincoln's case for the suspension of habeas corpus, and did it in terms that resonated with our own time.
...
How could Dershowitz have been so wrong on every aspect of these matters? The charitable answer is that this is not his usual field. He was operating out of the area of his main strength. Of course, with the recent experience of Professor Dershowitz's colleagues at the Harvard Law School, other explanations suddenly arise: Professors Tribe and Ogletree explained some egregious lapses into plagiarism by reporting that certain books of theirs were written in part by their student aides, with only a cursory review. A mischievous hypothetical: could it be that parts of Dershowitz's book are in conflict with one another because they were written by different hands? In a curious, telling passage, he refers to the author of the Dred Scott opinion as "Justice Roger Tawney," and to the author of the Brown v. Board of Education decision as "Justice Earl Warren." No one familiar with these cases, or the law, would have misspelled the name of Roger Taney; and he would have quickly corrected the text to read, in either instance, Chief Justice Taney and Chief Justice Warren. All of us need proofreaders, but there is a strong temptation to think that these pages were never read by anyone who had more than a passing acquaintance with the subject. The publisher, Basic Books, surely owed their author, and their audience, a better performance than this.
...
Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions at Amherst College, and a fellow of the Claremont Institute.
