As everyone with more grey matter than a Republican senator knows, the stock phrase Sonia Sotomayor invoked in her statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, that her guiding principle as a judge has always been “fidelity to the law,” implies exercising judgment; after all, what else are judges are for. [As everyone also knows, in exercising judgment, one cannot help but rely on one’s own life experience; what else do the Republican Sentators think all those white male Supreme Court Justices have been doing all these years!] However, judges exercise judgment within the sometimes broad, sometimes narrow constraints of the legal system. They draw conclusions in “gray” areas where reasonable people can disagree about what the law requires. But not all areas are gray. “Fidelity to the law” implies recognition of this fact as well.
Until the past few days, the Obama administration – intent on “looking forward” – has been, to put it mildly, unmindful of Sotomayor’s guiding principle. Along with a compliant media, intent on promoting the rather dubious idea that serving justice would be a “distraction” from Obama’s domestic and foreign “agenda,” they have been the main protectors of the Cheney-Bush torture regime. But now, finally, key House and Senate Democrats have stopped playing ball with the administration on this point. This happy turn of events has come about, it seems, because CIA Director Leon Panetta told them that Dick Cheney told the CIA to keep Congress in the dark about a pet assassination program of his. [If this allegation turns out to be true, as it surely will be (if it is properly investigated), that would in itself be a violation of U.S. laws dating back to the Ford administration.]
With key Democrats on board, The New York Times was sufficiently emboldened to confirm what journalists not “of record” have been reporting for a long time. Thus the truth has been brought in from the margins, setting a process in motion that is more consistent with Sotomayor’s principle than Obama’s practice to date. Obama might still quash it, of course; but with each passing day, as “revelations” mount, he’d have a harder time doing so. The very egregiousness of the Cheney-Bush administration’s infidelity to the law is now forcing the prospect that justice (or, more likely, some semblance of justice) will be served.
Thus Attorney General Eric Holder is floating the prospect of a special prosecutor (though it isn’t entirely clear yet what his or her mandate would be). Neither is it clear whether this is Holder’s initiative or Obama’s; no one outside the highest echelons of the Justice Department and the White House really knows how much freedom of action Holder has in these matters. But whatever lies behind what Holder is reported to have in mind, the appointment of a special prosecutor is an initiative worthy of enthusiastic support. It is therefore urgent that we bring public pressure to bear! The Justice Department and the White House must be made to understand that, notwithstanding all the slack Obama’s admirers are eager to cut for him even as he betrays their “hopes” for “change,” now is the time to make “fidelity to the law” the Obama administration’s guiding principle too.
Showing posts with label bringing Bush to justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bringing Bush to justice. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Viva España
Praise is due Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish counter-terrorism judge whose prosecution of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, led to his arrest in Britain in 1998. Garzón has begun proceedings in Spain against six senior Bush administration officials for the use of torture against (Spanish) detainees in Guantánamo Bay: Alberto Gonzales (formerly White House counsel, then Attorney General), David Addington (formerly Dick Cheney’s chief of staff), Douglas Feith (formerly Under Secretary of Defense) , William Heyne (formerly the Pentagon’s general counsel), and John Yoo and James Bybee (formerly senior Justice Department legal advisors). Unbelievable as it may be in a country officially dedicated to the rule of law, Yoo is presently a Law Professor at U.C.-Berkeley and Bybee is a federal appellate judge in California. The case must now be referred to a prosecutor, who, according to informed sources, would have little choice under Spanish law but to approve the prosecution.
The officials in question are just a rung below the very top – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et. al. Typically, this is how prosecutions of this sort work: prosecutors go first for lower lying fruit.
Coming on the eve of Obama’s first trip to Europe as President, this is a fortuitous turn of events. Thanks to Garzón, the only legal way out for Spain now not to pursue the case against the Gang of Six would be for the U.S. itself finally to press charges against them – and, since one thing is bound to lead to another, against their “superiors.”
Obama so far has shown no sign that he will let this happen, much less make it happen. Instead, as Cheney brags repeated about the torture regime he concocted, Obama has allowed the matter to turn into a debate about “security” policy. That is emphatically not what it is: torture is illegal under international and domestic law, and both Cheney and Bush have publicly admitted their culpability in the on-going commission of this crime.
If the Forgiver-in-Chief continues to protect his predecessors for the sake of “looking forward,” then he too will become an accomplice in war crimes. Intentionally or not, Garzón has put Obama in a position where he must do the right thing or else forfeit the claim to be better (less morally and legally retrograde) than Cheney and Bush. Obama must now, at the very least appoint, a Special Prosecutor, who would take the prosecution out of Spanish hands and put it where it belongs – in the American legal system.
But, of course, “must” is one thing, “will” is another. To bring Bush and Cheney and the rest of them to justice, we need public outrage directed towards Obama’s “bipartisan” pusillanimity. And, for that, we need to break through the wall of silence that the media are already beginning to erect around the good news from Spain. There is plenty of outrage already in the Land of the Free about bailouts and subsidies for obscenely wealthy Wall Street malefactors (and, not incidentally, campaign contributors). But there is always room for more. Now is the time to make it as clear as can be to Obama and the Clintonites he has chosen to surround himself with that he cannot afford not to bring to justice the leaders of the criminal administration that preceded his.
The officials in question are just a rung below the very top – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et. al. Typically, this is how prosecutions of this sort work: prosecutors go first for lower lying fruit.
Coming on the eve of Obama’s first trip to Europe as President, this is a fortuitous turn of events. Thanks to Garzón, the only legal way out for Spain now not to pursue the case against the Gang of Six would be for the U.S. itself finally to press charges against them – and, since one thing is bound to lead to another, against their “superiors.”
Obama so far has shown no sign that he will let this happen, much less make it happen. Instead, as Cheney brags repeated about the torture regime he concocted, Obama has allowed the matter to turn into a debate about “security” policy. That is emphatically not what it is: torture is illegal under international and domestic law, and both Cheney and Bush have publicly admitted their culpability in the on-going commission of this crime.
If the Forgiver-in-Chief continues to protect his predecessors for the sake of “looking forward,” then he too will become an accomplice in war crimes. Intentionally or not, Garzón has put Obama in a position where he must do the right thing or else forfeit the claim to be better (less morally and legally retrograde) than Cheney and Bush. Obama must now, at the very least appoint, a Special Prosecutor, who would take the prosecution out of Spanish hands and put it where it belongs – in the American legal system.
But, of course, “must” is one thing, “will” is another. To bring Bush and Cheney and the rest of them to justice, we need public outrage directed towards Obama’s “bipartisan” pusillanimity. And, for that, we need to break through the wall of silence that the media are already beginning to erect around the good news from Spain. There is plenty of outrage already in the Land of the Free about bailouts and subsidies for obscenely wealthy Wall Street malefactors (and, not incidentally, campaign contributors). But there is always room for more. Now is the time to make it as clear as can be to Obama and the Clintonites he has chosen to surround himself with that he cannot afford not to bring to justice the leaders of the criminal administration that preceded his.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Shoes Are Not Enough!
Bravo to the brave Iraqi journalist who, by throwing his shoes at George Bush yesterday in Baghdad – at great personal cost – made the best possible use of cultural conventions to signify contempt! But contempt, even when backed by shoes, is not enough. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest of them must be brought to justice – Pelosiite/Obamaite pusillanimity and “bipartisanship” notwithstanding.
Unfortunately, with our institutions and our Democrats, there is really no way to call Bush and Company to account. Voting them out of office is hardly equal to the offence, especially since they were obliged to leave office anyway, and since voting them out meant voting in more decent and competent but essentially like-minded people led by an administration dedicated to “change”— in other words, to continuity by another name. Impeachment would have been a step in the right direction but, thanks to the Pelosiites in Congress, that was “off the table.” In response to that betrayal of Congress’ Constitutional responsibilities, the most those vaunted “progressives” in the Progressive Caucus and elsewhere were willing to do was offer grotesquely muted objections. But, even if they had had the courage and wits to put Bush and the others on trial before the Senate, and even if they had been successful in removing them from office, since we have no functional equivalent of a “no confidence” vote in the Home of the Brave, the convicted perpetrators of various “high crimes and misdemeanors” would still have gotten away with almost all their foul works and deeds.
This is, after all, the President who bankrupted the country, brought on the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and who is now intent on destroying the remnants of American industry – all the while transferring obscene amounts of wealth to the beneficiaries of our recently departed Gilded Age. This is the President who has done incalculable, perhaps even irreparable, environmental harm. This is the President who has done more than any of his predecessors since the days of the Alien and Sedition Act to undermine Constitutional protections for civil liberties. This is the President who has concocted a torture regime and done his best to undermine the rule of law at the international level. This is the President who has targeted and persecuted American citizens and permanent residents of the wrong ethnicities on the pretext of defending “the homeland.” Worst of all, this is the President who, by spreading murder and mayhem to Afghanistan and Iraq, has perpetrated incalculable harm in two on-going, lost wars (one of which Obama plans to intensify!).
For most of these and other stupendous harms, there is little anyone can do except throw shoes or their functional equivalent at the perpetrators. But the war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against the peace are eminently actionable. The point now is to make it painfully clear to Obama and his minions that “making nice” to the miscreants for “pragmatic” reasons is not only pragmatically counter-productive, and a missed opportunity for a genuinely “educative” politics. They must be forced to act on the plain fact that not bringing Bush and Company to justice egregiously offends that ideal. In short, they must be made to understand that “moving on” is a recipe for more of the same, and there there is far too much of that already.
Unfortunately, with our institutions and our Democrats, there is really no way to call Bush and Company to account. Voting them out of office is hardly equal to the offence, especially since they were obliged to leave office anyway, and since voting them out meant voting in more decent and competent but essentially like-minded people led by an administration dedicated to “change”— in other words, to continuity by another name. Impeachment would have been a step in the right direction but, thanks to the Pelosiites in Congress, that was “off the table.” In response to that betrayal of Congress’ Constitutional responsibilities, the most those vaunted “progressives” in the Progressive Caucus and elsewhere were willing to do was offer grotesquely muted objections. But, even if they had had the courage and wits to put Bush and the others on trial before the Senate, and even if they had been successful in removing them from office, since we have no functional equivalent of a “no confidence” vote in the Home of the Brave, the convicted perpetrators of various “high crimes and misdemeanors” would still have gotten away with almost all their foul works and deeds.
This is, after all, the President who bankrupted the country, brought on the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and who is now intent on destroying the remnants of American industry – all the while transferring obscene amounts of wealth to the beneficiaries of our recently departed Gilded Age. This is the President who has done incalculable, perhaps even irreparable, environmental harm. This is the President who has done more than any of his predecessors since the days of the Alien and Sedition Act to undermine Constitutional protections for civil liberties. This is the President who has concocted a torture regime and done his best to undermine the rule of law at the international level. This is the President who has targeted and persecuted American citizens and permanent residents of the wrong ethnicities on the pretext of defending “the homeland.” Worst of all, this is the President who, by spreading murder and mayhem to Afghanistan and Iraq, has perpetrated incalculable harm in two on-going, lost wars (one of which Obama plans to intensify!).
For most of these and other stupendous harms, there is little anyone can do except throw shoes or their functional equivalent at the perpetrators. But the war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against the peace are eminently actionable. The point now is to make it painfully clear to Obama and his minions that “making nice” to the miscreants for “pragmatic” reasons is not only pragmatically counter-productive, and a missed opportunity for a genuinely “educative” politics. They must be forced to act on the plain fact that not bringing Bush and Company to justice egregiously offends that ideal. In short, they must be made to understand that “moving on” is a recipe for more of the same, and there there is far too much of that already.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Bringing Bush to Justice
The current (December 2008) issue of Harper’s Magazine contains an article by Scott Horton (“Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration”) that meticulously identifies and assesses the legal and political difficulties in the way of settling accounts with the Bush administration’s violations of American and international law. Horton’s article includes proposals for steering through the obstacles; a plan that, if implemented, would actually do much of what needs to be done. But, of course, nothing will happen unless Congress and the Obama administration are forced to do the right and necessary thing. That’s why the task now is to make it politically impossible for the Party of Pusillanimity to follow its usual inclinations.
Left to their own devices, Obama and the others will want to “move on.” But the stakes are too high for them to get their way. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest must be brought to justice.
Needless to say, in this instance, real justice can hardly even be approximated; there is no way any punishment could fit the enormity of the crimes for which Bush and the others could be charged. But that is no reason to accede to calls for “bipartisanship” and consensus (within the political class). If Democrats are reluctant to proceed, the first order of business must be to make it clear to them that they will pay electorally for their “reasonableness” (cowardice). It must be impressed upon them, in no uncertain terms, that justice must be done. But not just for justice’s sake.
The more urgent need is to change the political constraints under which Democrats (and Republicans) operate -- as deeply and for as long as possible, the better to deter future criminality, but also, more importantly, to remove the temptation. If anything good can emerge from the Bush Wars, it will be an Iraq (or Iraq plus Afghanistan) Syndrome more disabling than the (short-lived) Vietnam Syndrome was. As American world domination becomes increasingly untenable – at a time when capitalism itself is falling increasingly into crisis – there is no other way for the American people, and the peoples of the world, to avoid a potentially catastrophic, near term hard landing. One change we really do need that lies within the horizons of what is possible in the short run are policies aimed at making the inevitable landing as soft as possible – while the United States makes the transition from a rogue superpower to one of several world powers in more or less permanent crisis.
But, again, for that to happen we must change the constraints under which Obama and his Clintonite colleagues and advisors operate. It is becoming increasingly clear, with each passing day, that Obama won’t do anything of the kind on his own initiative; if he does it at all, it will be because he is compelled. That won’t be easy. But we can make it happen.
Left to their own devices, Obama and the others will want to “move on.” But the stakes are too high for them to get their way. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest must be brought to justice.
Needless to say, in this instance, real justice can hardly even be approximated; there is no way any punishment could fit the enormity of the crimes for which Bush and the others could be charged. But that is no reason to accede to calls for “bipartisanship” and consensus (within the political class). If Democrats are reluctant to proceed, the first order of business must be to make it clear to them that they will pay electorally for their “reasonableness” (cowardice). It must be impressed upon them, in no uncertain terms, that justice must be done. But not just for justice’s sake.
The more urgent need is to change the political constraints under which Democrats (and Republicans) operate -- as deeply and for as long as possible, the better to deter future criminality, but also, more importantly, to remove the temptation. If anything good can emerge from the Bush Wars, it will be an Iraq (or Iraq plus Afghanistan) Syndrome more disabling than the (short-lived) Vietnam Syndrome was. As American world domination becomes increasingly untenable – at a time when capitalism itself is falling increasingly into crisis – there is no other way for the American people, and the peoples of the world, to avoid a potentially catastrophic, near term hard landing. One change we really do need that lies within the horizons of what is possible in the short run are policies aimed at making the inevitable landing as soft as possible – while the United States makes the transition from a rogue superpower to one of several world powers in more or less permanent crisis.
But, again, for that to happen we must change the constraints under which Obama and his Clintonite colleagues and advisors operate. It is becoming increasingly clear, with each passing day, that Obama won’t do anything of the kind on his own initiative; if he does it at all, it will be because he is compelled. That won’t be easy. But we can make it happen.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Bring Bush to Justice?
Not likely; not if our Democrats have anything to say about it. With CNN and its ilk framing what counts as political discourse in the Land of the Free, justice for the Bush crime family is far from the public mind. According to our manufacturers of acquiescence, all that matters, this week, is how “presidential” Barack Obama looks as he visits the troops (as in their trope “support the troops”) and meets with imperialism’s increasingly recalcitrant servants (Hamid Karzai and Nouri al-Maliki).
But without an enraged citizenry clamoring for it, justice for Bush and Company would be bad for the regime. Such, it seems, is the Democratic view, identified and explained here, in Glenn Greenwald’s latest column on salon.com. Democratic thinking reduces to this: let principle be damned and the rule of law as well! What matters more is that we (the political class) “just get along” so that the regime we administer continues unperturbed. This, I might add, is what the paymasters of both parties want; and it is their dollars that the Democrats are shamelessly chasing. Note, especially, Greenwald’s gloss on the position of New York’s “civil libertarian” Senator Charles (Schmucky Chucky) Schumer and the views of that archetypical Obamian liberal Cass Sunstein, ace legal philosopher and recent bridegroom of the (temporarily) deposed Hillary name caller and “humanitarian interventionist” Samantha Power.
In 2000, the still cowed Al Gore, aided by the hapless Warren G. Christopher, Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State (now a senior Obama advisor), let George Bush and Dick Cheney, aided by the far more able Bush family fixer James Baker, steal the presidential election. Although the facts were on their side, the Gore campaign put up a miserable fight. In the end, though, it wasn’t just incompetence and/or timidity that permitted Bush and Cheney to take possession of the Oval Office. The Democrats caved mainly for the sake of “harmony” within the political class. This is the same reason that will permit Bush administration leaders and functionaries, the beneficiaries of the old Gore’s quest for harmony, to get away with crimes far worse than murder.
Will not future generations see Gore’s capitulation as emblematic of the Democratic political style? And will they not appeal to the disposition it illustrates to explain what is bound in time to seem almost incomprehensible: why Bush and Cheney and the criminals they let loose upon the world were never tried by competent courts and, in consequence, obliged to live out the remainder of their miserable lives in orange jumpsuits under conditions more humane (for how could it be otherwise!) than those they (illegally) imposed upon others?
But without an enraged citizenry clamoring for it, justice for Bush and Company would be bad for the regime. Such, it seems, is the Democratic view, identified and explained here, in Glenn Greenwald’s latest column on salon.com. Democratic thinking reduces to this: let principle be damned and the rule of law as well! What matters more is that we (the political class) “just get along” so that the regime we administer continues unperturbed. This, I might add, is what the paymasters of both parties want; and it is their dollars that the Democrats are shamelessly chasing. Note, especially, Greenwald’s gloss on the position of New York’s “civil libertarian” Senator Charles (Schmucky Chucky) Schumer and the views of that archetypical Obamian liberal Cass Sunstein, ace legal philosopher and recent bridegroom of the (temporarily) deposed Hillary name caller and “humanitarian interventionist” Samantha Power.
In 2000, the still cowed Al Gore, aided by the hapless Warren G. Christopher, Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State (now a senior Obama advisor), let George Bush and Dick Cheney, aided by the far more able Bush family fixer James Baker, steal the presidential election. Although the facts were on their side, the Gore campaign put up a miserable fight. In the end, though, it wasn’t just incompetence and/or timidity that permitted Bush and Cheney to take possession of the Oval Office. The Democrats caved mainly for the sake of “harmony” within the political class. This is the same reason that will permit Bush administration leaders and functionaries, the beneficiaries of the old Gore’s quest for harmony, to get away with crimes far worse than murder.
Will not future generations see Gore’s capitulation as emblematic of the Democratic political style? And will they not appeal to the disposition it illustrates to explain what is bound in time to seem almost incomprehensible: why Bush and Cheney and the criminals they let loose upon the world were never tried by competent courts and, in consequence, obliged to live out the remainder of their miserable lives in orange jumpsuits under conditions more humane (for how could it be otherwise!) than those they (illegally) imposed upon others?
Sunday, June 10, 2007
A Modest Proposal
Readers of Robert Dallek’s new book Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power will be struck by how, when it comes to cynically prolonging a war that is plainly lost – and, more generally, to a criminal mix of hypocrisy and delusion – Bush and Cheney don’t hold a candle. They will also be struck by how often Nixon sought relief from troubles at home with well-publicized travels abroad. This past week, George Bush resorted to that tactic too – in his own bumbling and farcical way. But not even our “liberal” media could hide how repugnant his government is to the peoples of Germany, France, Italy and the more enlightened quarters of the “new” Europe of Donald Rumsfeld’s demented imagination. However this morning’s news reports one exception in what is still the most benighted corner of the European continent: Albania. Our media are playing it for all it’s worth.
For their own cynical, hypocritical and delusory reasons (see “Not Just Bad Strategy,” June 7), the Democrats won’t impeach Bush, no matter what their voters want. Still less will they bring him and Cheney and the rest of their sorry crew to justice. Other governments, that arguably do have jurisdiction, are at least as cowardly and cynical (see “Are European Governments Even More Abject than Democrats?, May 18). But this morning’s news suggests a way out – a genuine win/win situation. EXILE THE BUSH BOY TO ALBANIA! The world can’t wait, we Americans can’t wait, and neither, evidently, can the Albanians. If only the Democrats would take up the cause, they’d be off the hook and well positioned to pick up votes everywhere -- even deep in the heart of Crawford, Texas. Who knows? If all goes better than we have any right to expect, perhaps before long the Clintons -- beloved bombers of Belgrade and champions of anti-Serbian ethnic cleansing -- will be welcome there too.
For their own cynical, hypocritical and delusory reasons (see “Not Just Bad Strategy,” June 7), the Democrats won’t impeach Bush, no matter what their voters want. Still less will they bring him and Cheney and the rest of their sorry crew to justice. Other governments, that arguably do have jurisdiction, are at least as cowardly and cynical (see “Are European Governments Even More Abject than Democrats?, May 18). But this morning’s news suggests a way out – a genuine win/win situation. EXILE THE BUSH BOY TO ALBANIA! The world can’t wait, we Americans can’t wait, and neither, evidently, can the Albanians. If only the Democrats would take up the cause, they’d be off the hook and well positioned to pick up votes everywhere -- even deep in the heart of Crawford, Texas. Who knows? If all goes better than we have any right to expect, perhaps before long the Clintons -- beloved bombers of Belgrade and champions of anti-Serbian ethnic cleansing -- will be welcome there too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)