Q: What do the following Army service decorations have in common?
- Army Distinguished Service Medal
- Legion of Merit with three oak leaf clusters
- Army Staff Identification Badge
- Meritorious Service Medal with six oak leaf clusters
- Army Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters
- Army Achievement Medal with one oak leaf cluster
A: They have all been awarded to the author of this statement:
After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.
That would be Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba (ret.), writing the preface to the report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the US, recently released by Physicians for Human Rights. The “ret.” in General Taguba’s full title is somewhat euphemistic; after 34 years of service, in 2006 he was instructed to retire by the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. This might have been related to his authorship of the Taguba Report, the official report of an Army investigation into torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
It’s hard to have a reasonable discussion about the possibility of holding senior officials in the U.S. government responsible for war crimes. It’s the kind of accusation that gets thrown around too lightly for political or rhetorical reasons, by ideologues on one side or the other who are far too quick to find inhumanity and evil intent in the actions of their opponents.
But that doesn’t mean that war crimes don’t happen, or that our country doesn’t commit them, or that responsibility can’t ever be traced to the highest reaches of the government. There is no question that the U.S. tortures; people who have been held without any charges against them have been raped, killed, and permanently psychologically damaged. And there is no question that it’s not just a matter of a few bad apples — not when John Yoo, author of the infamous Department of Justice torture memos, gets asked “Could the President order a suspect buried alive?” and doesn’t know what the right answer is.
The question is, should the President and other administration officials be held accountable for these acts? Taguba thinks the answer is yes:
This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors… [T]hese men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution. And so do the American people.
It it literally sickening that we’ve come to this. But nobody can be surprised. The Bush Administration has been perfectly consistent in its behavior for the last eight years. It’s going to take some time to deal with the consequences, and it won’t be pleasant for anyone. I can’t imagine the sort of havoc it would wreak on the political landscape if a Democratic administration pursued charges of war crimes against a former Republican administration (for example). It would not be the kind of thing that brings the country together, let’s just say.
On the other hand, should the United States have a policy that its political officials cannot, a priori, be accused of war crimes, because to do so would cause a political firestorm? Perhaps we will end up needing a Truth Commission.
No matter the political fallout, prosecuting the crimes of the current administration really needs to happen. If it does not, then it will send a message to future presidents that they can get away with it. This old adage, I think, applies all too well here: “Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Allowing the current administration to get away with its flagrant violations of the law will only pave the way for future presidents to do the same, or even take it a step further.
Anyone thinking that there will be war crimes prosecution is living in a fantasyland, as were those who thought that impeachment was a possibility.
It’s just not how politics works in this country. The Democratic Party doesn’t have the stomach for it, and the people in general don’t care. The Shire won’t be scoured: it’ll have some nice paint put on, and maybe some aluminum siding.
When the change of administration happens, I call for the immediate apprehension and incarceration of the top acting members of the Bush administration, inclusive of Bush and Cheney. I call for their immediate prosecution under charge of war crimes, sedition, and treason. I will remind you that treason is a capital crime.
If you want an object lesson on how “minor” infractions of the rule of law can escalate, I only point to Iran-Contra. Where the then administration committed perjury and outright defiance of a legal prohibition enacted by Congress and nothing happened. I won’t pretend that it was as bad as the current behavior, but it was an object lesson.
Of course there won’t be any prosecutions. One or two European countries might press symbolic charges, but that will only be done so as to have them recorded in judicial history. (Nobody will ever bring Bush to trial, or Blair, or any number of European leaders who supported the Iraq war. (Or Putin for that matter, who probably deserves a long prison sentence even more than our own Dear Leaders.))
(Awful English, I know.)
While I agree with the sentiment, I think its unfair to pin the rapes on the administration. Shit just doesn’t roll that far uphill.
Pingback: I don’t want to say a hero, because what’s a hero … [Cosmic Variance] « One magnum Opus after another…
I have no doubt that many people, inside and outside America, would argue that the possibility of American citizens raising voices about perceived war crimes of their own leaders shows how much democratic and civilized America actually is, compared with most of the rest of the world.
The sad thing is that it is in fact true. (At least it seems so to me.)
Sometimes I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with this world.
(And then some people in some small East Asian country or another would begin to argue how beneficial the US has actually been to their own nation, despite its perceived faults and crimes, and how their nation should try its best to lick Americans’ collective ass… but I digress.)
Jick,
I would agree with the first paragraph you wrote. While many members of the present US administration surely deserve to be tried for war crimes and while the US is resented in many parts of the world today, I find it very admirable that the first people to find faults with America are Americans themselves, usually led by the universities.
My country, India, which seems to be so loved by western press in recent times, has a long record of war crimes and human-rights violations, in Kashmir, in Gujarat and in some of the eastern states, where the “Naxalites” and “Maoists” are deemed terrorists. But what really shocks me is that most Indians are completely unconcerned and get very offended when these are brought up. Atleast, I don’t see that in the US or maybe I haven’t been around much.
Jick,
I don’t understand your first paragraph.
People all over the world accuse their leaders
of war crimes. In Zimbabwe, this is happening now.
A ‘democratic and civilized’ country shouldn’t ever
get to such a situation.
That show how undemocratic and uncivilized we (the US)
is.
jick, and the fact that it got to that point at that nothing happened in the end shows how far the US still has to go.
I do not need to tell you how the opinion of the US has suffered. Western European allies are well aware of a lack of accountability (most of Bushs colleagues would have been forced to step down long ago had they done what he did), the dramatic weakening of seperation of powers and checks and balances and the rule of law, etc.
That said the US always has the capacity to surprise.
That administration has undermined the judicial system to the point where they are virtually above the law. Also, most countries seem to have unwritten laws that prohibit charges against former presidents – see frodo’s post. It would take lasting public outrage to move something. There is little hope for that as long as it is out of fashion, especially for the media, to afford a spine or a paired organ a few inches below. Also, I feel that most people are sick & tired of the Dark Ages (unlike most cosmologists), and want to look forward to better times rather than back.
At least, there is hope for change this November. Got to support the not-so-old candidate.
Just keep in mind that the question of whether or not Bush Administration officials will be held accountable is not one of Democrat versus Republican. The question is one of the citizenry versus the corporations. Part of the reason that we as voters are so frustrated with what seems to be a spineless Democratically-controlled Congress is due to a failure to recognize that our government, Democrats AND Republicans, have been taken over by the corporations.
That’s why Dems won’t work against the Republicans – because doing so would be working against corporate interests, and corporate interests fund the Democrats.
There’s no better indication of this than the FISA battle: despite being blatantly unconstitutional AND injust, FISA passed the Senate 80-15 because it includes retroactive telecomm immunity. This immunity saves the telecoms tens of millions of dollars, while also preventing the process of judicial inquiry from proceeding beyond the telecoms to the White House.
If “the opposition,” the Democrats, can’t be impelled to support the rule of law in order to investigate the Republicans on illegal telecom wiretaps (presumably against Democrats as well as everyone else), why should anyone expect anyone to investigate the even more serious issue of torture?
Following the Bush Administration, what we need is a full-fledged South Africa style Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We’re not going to get one.
The only thing that can save American democracy is Campaign Finance Reform, in order to (re-)remove the corrosive influence of corporate money on Congress. The only way to pass CFR is a long-term grassroots effort to elect Democratic and Republican candidates committed to passing CFR. We must supersaturate Congress with CFR supporters if we want CFR to pass.
Without CFR, we will remain a fascist state in the trappings of a democratic republic.
No American will ever end up in the Hague, see here why:
War crimes is such a complicated and emotional issue. How about good old conventional crimes? embezzlement, nepotism, perjury, etc. etc….lots to choose from. A strong independent justice department has the mandate to prosecute those crimes, whether or not it is politically advantageous for the next administration. Not holding my breath though…
When a new administration enters, they need to open the kimono (so to speak) for international review. It is important to let others decide this matter. We are all biased and complicit. We can only have integrity when we subject our actions to open criticism. If Bush and others are war criminals, then that will be judged in the Hague. If I were Bush, I would not like my chances.
“That’s why Dems won’t work against the Republicans – because doing so would be working against corporate interests, and corporate interests fund the Democrats.”
Very well stated by Albatross – and completely consistent with observations.
“…holding senior officials in the U.S. government responsible for war crimes”. I sincerely hope it happens, but I will not hold my breath for it. See above.
Thanks Chancho. I fully expect Obama to win and after inauguration declare that it’s time to put the past behind us and move forward. He might even issue a blanket pardon to Bush and Cheney. He’s a centrist Democrat and very much part of the Beltway political machine; it’s not a machine that’s designed to self-diagnose and repair. I’d be delighted to see a Bush/Cheney perp walk, but I expect instead that everything will be swept under the rug.
The democrats in congress have had since 2006 to do something about Bush’s crimes, but they’ve done nothing. They won’t cut the funding of the Iraq war because they’re too worried about re-election. Both parties have failed us, it’s about time we had some new parties in power.
Impeachment proceedings are reserved for BJs and similar high crimes…
A new administration might be able to prosecute some members of the old administration for corruption, but war crimes are another matter altogether because a large part of the public has no problem with preventative war, torture, and other illegalities so long as they appear to work.
On the one hand, I agree with those who argue that only a severe accounting will prevent the repetition and expansion of the abuses characteristic of the Bush administration. On the other, I don’t see how it would be politically possible to bring the malefactors to justice even though many of them violated black letter law and did so in broad daylight. From this contradiction I draw the sad conclusion that the days of constitutional government are pretty much over in this country and that future administrations are likely to be more rather than less inhibited until the consequences of lawlessness result in some terrible disaster comparable to what happened to the South after the civil war or Germany after 1945.
I would hope the failure of any efforts to bring these criminals to justice yet is a calculated effort to avoid the presidential pardon that Bush might use in his final days to annul any such efforts.
Hopefully the Obama administration will turn these people over to an international tribunal without hesitation to pay for their crimes.
I would love to see Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Yoo, Gonzales, Rove etc. be held accountable for the atrocities that have occurred.
And Scalia can watch from the sidelines.
e.
(Warning: this comment is a huge chunk of non sequitar. So please don’t ask me “interesting, but what’s that got to do with Sean’s post?” Sorry and thanks in advance!)
Re: 9 (LHC Master),
Speaking generally, nationalism sucks. I guess some Indians would get upset when confronted with their human rights issues, because, well, after all, they think it’s their problem and foreigners (like me) have no right to tell them what to do. Just the same here in South Korea.
Perhaps I’m a pessimist, but it gets really complicated, because sometimes the argument actually applies. Consider Iraq. Millions of honest (if ill-informed) Americans supported invading Iraq because Hussein was such a terrible tyrant. After all, should the world tolerate the existence of such a despot? And then it turns out that perhaps we could have allowed him to live on and prosper, which would have been in fact more beneficial to most Iraqis… however cruel it sounds.
North Korea offers a similar dilemma. Some people think a dictator like Kim Jong Il should be disposed of by any means possible. Now, apart from the inconvenient fact that any such means would entail economic meltdown of South Korea and near-certain deaths of me and my family, it simply wouldn’t work. (If you doubt, see Iraq.) So Seoul actually helps him, giving his regime money, oil, and food, allowing him to survive and make more weapons that aim Seoul, and so on… There is no magic solution, practially or morally.
The ideal solution would be for every person to get rid of their own nation’s war criminals. Americans should take down Bush, North Koreans revolt in Pyongyang, and so on…… “Take care of your own trash,” I call it.
But the real world is far from ideal, so we should keep good faith and keep fighting, I guess. The fact that America is among the most democratic countries in the world shouldn’t stop Americans from demanding better justice. And the fact that powerful nations like America, Russia, and China are all sending troops to abuse human rights shouldn’t stop people of whatever poverty-stricken small country from crying out against their own nation’s crimes.
Re: 10 (anon)
I don’t know much about Zimbabwe, but I know South Korea. Until the late 80’s, people could be imprisoned, fired from job, and otherwise abused, if found just “reading” something claiming anything bad about our presidents. A university professor accusing the president of war crime (like what’s happening here)? With pseudonym, that would have been incredibly bold. Without, that would have been suicidal.
Sometime I think the Americans could have fought harder. How many Americans lost their job fighting against Bush?
well, i count at least 8 US attorney’s that have lost their jobs.
Not having a dog in the hunt (yay for foreigners butting in, eh?) I think the ‘Truth Commision’ suggestion might be a good idea. A tribunal with two powers: to subpoena, and to pardon, and with a mandate to find truth, rather than impose justice.
In both sides.
Can you imagine the worms that would be found under the logs such an organisation would turn over? No-one could easily stay silent, as anyone who testifies is likely to get pardoned – if you don’t testify, there’s no chance of a pardon, and the DOJ has access to the transcripts of what everyone else said you did…
One gets the impression that if all the skulduggery inside the Beltway in the last eight years was exposed in this way, the Augean Stables would be thought to have gotten off easily. Nobody would be convicted of anything, but what went on would be down in sworn testimony. The grass-roots lobby for ethics legislation would be murderous.