Since 9/11, President Bush's repeated assaults on the Constitution and celebration of international lawlessness in confronting al Qaeda have needlessly made Americans less safe. The president, for example, has flouted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in intercepting the conversations and e-mails of American citizens on American soil on his say-so alone. He has claimed authority to break into and enter our homes, open our mail and commit torture in order to collect foreign intelligence.

He has insisted that the entire United States is a battlefield -- even pizza parlors -- where lethal military force may be employed to kill al Qaeda suspects with bombs or missiles. He has detained citizens and noncitizens alike as enemy combatants based on secret evidence. And he has insisted that he is constitutionally empowered to keep U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely.

Congress should restore the Constitution's checks and balances and protections against government abuses. Citizens would be safer. And international terrorism would be more effectively arrested by restoring cooperation with allies; by cultivating friendly democratic regimes abroad through democratic example; and by preventing injustices that serve as recruiting fodder for al Qaeda (for instance, Mahar Arar, the Syrian Canadian who was mistaken for a terrorist and tortured in Syria with U.S. and Canadian complicity).

The most frightening of Bush's abuses travels under the banner of "extraordinary rendition." In its name, Bush has kidnapped, secretly imprisoned, and tortured or treated inhumanely people he believes are implicated in international terrorism. The practice is what would be expected of dictators such as the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin or Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The detainees are held incommunicado without accusation or trial. No judge reviews the allegedly incriminating evidence. No law restricts interrogation methods or the conditions of confinement. And the innocent are left without recourse as "collateral damage" in Bush's war on global terrorism.

The cases of Khaled El-Masri and Abu Omar are emblematic. In the former, a German citizen was plucked in collusion with the Central Intelligence Agency from the Serbian-Macedonian border, imprisoned in Afghanistan, and kicked, beaten and otherwise abusively interrogated in a filthy cell for more than four months.

El-Masri was never charged with a crime and was ultimately released in Albania. The United States has invoked the "state secrets" privilege as a defense to El-Masri's pending lawsuit alleging maltreatment and an unconstitutional deprivation of liberty. The German justice system has commenced criminal proceedings for abduction of El-Masri against CIA agents or collaborators. The United States is stonewalling.

Abu Omar was similarly abducted by the CIA in the middle of Milan and flown to Egypt, where he was tortured, released and then rearrested. Criminal proceedings in Milan have been instituted against 25 CIA operatives. The United States has sneered at extraditing the accused for trial.

The El-Masri, Abu Omar and sister precedents endanger American citizens. For example, they would justify Russian President Vladimir Putin in kidnapping Americans visiting Paris and imprisoning them indefinitely in dungeons because he suspected they sympathized with Chechen independence. By following Bush's precedents, the world could degenerate into a grim Hobbesian state of nature in which each nation would prey on the citizens of other states.

Congress should stop this slide toward international anarchy. Legislation should prohibit any U.S. official from participation in kidnappings abroad except for the purpose of bringing a suspected criminal to trial in proceedings that satisfy international standards of due process (for instance, the cases of Adolph Eichmann and Carlos the Jackal).

Bush's lawlessness further makes Americans less safe by provoking foreign governments and intelligence agencies to cease or to curtail counterterrorism cooperation. International terrorism cannot be defeated by the United States alone. Several nations were used in the planning and execution of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Alarmed by Bush's detentions without trial or judicial recourse and reports of U.S. kidnappings, secret prisons, and torture in Eastern and Central Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which includes all European democracies, harshly protested in a draft resolution last year: "The Assembly condemns the systematic exclusion of all forms of judicial protection and regrets by depriving hundreds of suspects of their basic rights, including the right to a fair trial, the United States has done a disservice to the cause of justice and has tarnished its own hard-won reputation as a beacon of the defense of civil liberties and human rights." Accordingly, Europe has grown chary of sharing counterterrorism intelligence and assets with the United States, which make a second edition of the Sept. 11 attacks more likely.

Bush has acknowledged that terrorism feeds on despotic, non-democratic governments. But his assaults on the rule of law breeds new terrorists by encouraging despotism: Spying on Americans on his say-so alone in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; detaining Americans indefinitely as enemy combatants on his say-so alone; employing military commissions, which combine judge, jury and prosecutor, and using secret evidence and coerced confessions to prosecute alleged war criminals; claiming inherent constitutional authority to torture in violation of law; and insisting that the entire United States is a battlefield where lethal military force can be employed to kill or maim al Qaeda suspects.

The United States has been spared new terrorism incidents on its own soil since Sept. 11, 2001, but not because of Bush's scorn for the rule of law. The criminal law featuring the trappings of due process has been repeatedly and successfully deployed to thwart embryonic terrorist conspiracies. And no convincing evidence has surfaced indicating that military commissions, kidnappings and imprisonments abroad, torture, or circumventions of the foreign surveillance act have been necessary to frustrate even one terrorist incident.

In sum, Bush's lawlessness has made all American less safe with no commensurate benefit. It is up to Congress to set the law right and make Americans safer.

Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates and chairman of the American Freedom Agenda, an organization devoted to restoring checks and balances and protections against government abuses. He is author of the forthcoming book, "Constitutional Peril: The Life And Death Struggle Of Our Constitution And Democracy."