War Crimes

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.

65 Comments

65 thoughts on “War Crimes”

  1. Gee, imprison the President because we believe bad things about him, mostly because we want to believe bad things about him? Criminalize political differences? Good, then maybe we can execute Barak Obama after he leaves office. Appointing the Constitution-hating judges he has promised to appoint really should be a capital offense.

    The nutjobs are run amok.

  2. …Which your way of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling “Nyah nyah nyah” to make it go away…

    If you don’t think I have a serious point, then you’re rather parochial. If you do think I have a serious point but just want me to go away, then you’re the one doing the trolling.

    Sorry, but they are plenty of bright people in the world who are not moonbats.

  3. It is by no means parochial to think you don’t have a serious point. And indeed there are plenty of bright people in the world who are not moonbats. And you may be one of them. But your comment number 51 doesn’t bolster your case.

  4. Elliot,

    What you say re manipulation of popular opinion in case of Iraq is true. But this happens on any serious issue nowadays, so no surprise. I still stick to my point that it is perfectly fine to persecute an authoritarian dictator. Or a leader of another country for crimes against your people (if you can afford this). But it is way less fine to go after a president of a truly democratic country!

    You need really really strong arguments to do the latter. The guy was just expressing the will of you and your compatriots. That an average man is gullible and unthinking is a pathetic excuse. Besides, the anger at Bush is somewhat post factum – i don’t see anybody scolding Clinton for ousting Slobodan Miloshevich (same evil dictator as Saddam) and eventually creating the state ruled by a pack of narcobarons in the centre of Europe. Why? Because gazoline was not that high afterwards, i guess 🙂

  5. Loki,

    You are absolutely right selective and sanctimonius rage is a characteristic of ideologues of any kind (both left and right)… I amazed at the level of anti-Bush hysteria… blaming all of the world evils on one man is nonsensical and short-sighted. Wars and crimes and murder existed before Bush came along and will continue to be with us long after Bush is gone..

  6. So there were some aggressive interrogation techniques applied to a few people who wished to kill us all. Perhaps some of the methods were too aggressive and got out of hand. But allegations of premeditated torture and war crimes perpetrated by our President and his top officials? Try explaining that to those who survived Auschwitz and the unbelievable horrors of Nazi Germany, or to the victims of Pol Pot.

    Sean’s allegation trivializes the entire concept of war crimes.

    Let’s take a look at the big picture. We recently mourned the passing of a great intellect, physicist John A. Wheeler. The following is an excerpt for his Wikipedia entry:

    “Together with many other leading physicists, during World War II, Wheeler interrupted his academic career to participate in the development of the U.S. atomic bomb under the Manhattan Project at the Hanford site, where reactors were constructed to produce the chemical element plutonium for atomic bombs.”

    John Wheeler was instrumental in building the bomb that instantly vaporized tens of thousands of people and horribly burned hundreds of thousands. These were non-combatant women and children living in the heart of cities far away from the conflict. Albert Einstein went to President Roosevelt to ask for the development of the Bomb. John Wheeler and his colleagues knew exactly what their efforts would result in. Are these people war criminals? The alleged torture inflicted under the Bush administration pales in comparison. Yet there has been effusive (and well deserved) praise for John Wheeler from the same people who want to convict Bush administration officials.

    Even today, there are hundreds of physicists working on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy Labs (Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, Sandia, Los Alamos). Does anyone question these physicists about what they are doing?

    Sean and the rest of the herd have gone off the deep end. If their sentiments are typical of the nonsense that comes out of the academy, God help us all.

  7. Otis, just because bigger crimes have been committed in the past by other people does not mean we should stop prosecuting the crimes of the Bush administration.

  8. Why is the response from the Bush apologists always like a multiple choice question.

    If you want to hold him accountable you must be:

    1) someone who hates America
    2) hysterical and focused on this for political reasons only
    3) making it up with no evidence to support it
    4) not concerned about the threat of terrorists
    5) too concerned about civil liberties
    6) all of the above

    How about let’s have an inquiry, based on ample evidence of wrongdoing, and see where it leads?

    Bill Clinton got impeached for lying. Why can’t the standard be the same for Bush administration officials? And the consequences of Bushes actions are far more significant.

    I don’t think Sean was announcing a verdict. I think he is asking that the evidence be weighed in an appropriate domestic or international forum.

    Or did I not read his post correctly.

    e.

  9. Elliot,

    Apparently you did not read Sean’s post correctly. He wrote:

    “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.”

    That sounds like a verdict to me and its over the top.

  10. Otis

    Gotta love your selective editing. We all can read the post in its entirety and context above. I will leave it to the learned readers here to decide if Sean is advocating accountability or has designated himself judge and jury and already handed down a guilty verdict.

    e.

  11. I appreciate the degree and depth of serious concern over “war crimes” that may have been committed by the Bush Administration (and some allies?) I believe it is sincere and not just a way to take a crack at someone you dislike for other reasons. Mistakes were certainly made, and some things are just beyond the pale (use of torture to get confessions, even if e.g. we grant that just maybe it’s OK to prevent a “ticking bomb” from going off, however hoary a cliché some claim that is.) To put in some perspective, I however consider the nature of the threat the West has been under or perceived itself under is at least an “extenuating circumstance” for how we should judge a lot of what was done.

    That doesn’t keep e.g. John Yoo from being an overreach-enabling crank, Rumsfeld and others from having great culpability, Bush from not providing proper leadership. However, IMHO it isn’t the same as something just done under normal circumstances simply for gain. We need a big national debate over just what is right and wrong and in these times, and to get this clear so we either: fully uphold our classic values (preferable, but carrying some risk perhaps of vulnerability), or to decide that our survival requires cutting some corners. If the latter, it should be admitted to and justified as a last resort. It should not be lied about or flim-flammed as if still part of our prior attitudes and practices.

  12. From a constitutional point of view, an administration has the right to be idiots or even monsters–there is not , so far as I know, any provision against war crimes in the document.* What a president doesn’t have the right to do is to violate due process, habeas corpus, and the separation of powers. And that’s what this issue comes down to. The Americans either enforce system of government by punishing those who violate the letter as well as the spirit of the law or they can say goodbye to their traditional form of government. When Franklin was asked what the Constitutional Convention had kind of government had been decided upon, he famously answered “a republic if you can keep it.” The point is, it appears we aren’t interested in keeping it.

    I’d be curious to know if Neil B. really thinks that 9/11 was in any way, shape, or form a real national emergency compared to Pearl Harbor or the outbreak of the Civil War or if he just taking for granted that the American public, in its current condition, is guaranteed to react to any threat with hysterical over-reaction and immediately jettison their principles when they feel something warm running down their leg . If the former, I disagree. He may well be right on the second interpretation, however.

    *As I understand the Consitution, ratified treaties do have the same standing as any statute passed by Congress and signed by the President. If that assumption is valid, breaking the United Nation’s Charter and the Geneva Conventions do constitute crimes under American law.

  13. Jim_Harrison,

    The single attack of 9/11 was not by itself grounds for reexamining and altering our basic principles, but the long-term nature of the terrorist/radical Islamist (and other problems) at least *might* be. Above all, I want an open national debate about that and the knowing consent of “the people” whatever we do, rather than things done in our name that are hidden, misrepresented, etc. Even then such corner-cutting requires constant oversight to avoid being abused (even more than its very existence may or may not be to start with.)

    Note I didn’t say such a threat definitely was grounds for making a fundamental adjustment. I said just that it might be, and that the pressure the threat put leaders under was an extenuating circumstance for judging their responses (not the same issue as what the response should be.)

    You made a good asterisked correction to your original rumination about whether Congress/Administration can Constitutionally practice war crimes. If we signed a treaty, the USC says we are supposed to uphold our word on that.

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