What to do With War Criminals
One issue that the incoming administration has on its plate is what to do with the various war criminals now kicking around as a result of the Bush-Cheney torture and detention policies. On the merits, I’d like to see forgiveness for implementers who were following what they were (falsely) assured were lawful orders and harsh measures for people on the policy level. In practice, it’s pretty clear that Don Rumsfeld isn’t going to wind up in jail. Michael Isikoff reports on the Obama campaign’s thinking:
Despite the hopes of many human-rights advocates, the new Obama Justice Department is not likely to launch major new criminal probes of harsh interrogations and other alleged abuses by the Bush administration. But one idea that has currency among some top Obama advisers is setting up a 9/11-style commission that would investigate counterterrorism policies and make public as many details as possible.
….”If there was any effort to have war-crimes prosecutions of the Bush administration, you’d instantly destroy whatever hopes you have of bipartisanship,” said Robert Litt, a former Justice criminal division chief during the Clinton administration. A new commission, on the other hand, could emulate the bipartisan tone set by Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton in investigating the 9/11 attacks.
I think the model being reached for here is something like the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But as Kevin Drum says, on this plan “we’ll get the truth, but not the reconciliation, since I doubt that any of the perpetrators of this stuff are inclined to show the slightest remorse for what they did. I suppose that here in the real world this might be the most we can expect, but I don’t have to like it. And I don’t.”
I’m half inclined to say there should be neither truth nor reconciliation. Instead, George W. Bush should be kidnapped, drugged, flown to Spain in an unmarked plane, and wake up on the streets of Madrid tied up with a bunch of files and evidence pinned to his chest so Judge Garzón can sort the whole thing out. If anyone asks how that happened, deny knowledge and mention “executive privilege.” I dunno.
On a more serious note, I think it’s important to draw a distinction between simply declining to engage in war crimes prosecutions as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, and actually taking prosecution off the table. The latter should be done, if at all, only in exchange for confessions, expressions of remorse, and cooperation with investigations. The former may is probably the better part of wisdom for now, but many of the perpetrators can be expected to live for decades and absent something like a real Truth and Reconciliation Commission the door should be left open to doing something down the road if circumstances change. I don’t think it’s even remotely acceptable to just give a full retrospective stamp of approval on everything that was done during the Bush years merely because that might be the most convenient way to build legislative support for Obama’s domestic agenda.
76 Responses to “What to do With War Criminals”
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November 23rd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
The bad thing about a commission is that it will give a bunch of evil men the opportunity to rebrand themselvs as Jack Bauer -style heroes, in the same way Ollie North did back when. I’m all for the truth coming out and pardoning the little guys, but against giving a free public platform to thugs who will use it to make sanctimonious speeches.
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Impeaching Bill Clinton for getting a blow job didn’t bring the end of the Republic so I don’t see why indicting war criminals no longer in office should be any different.
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:43 pm
But why the forgiveness for implementers? The Nuremburg defense of following orders has been official considered invalid these past 60 years. Why is it suddenly valid again for torturers just because they were wearing US Army uniforms or had CIA badges? A couple of these guys seem to have beaten people to death. If they get let off the hook, who is still on it?
As for the rest – politically you’re probably right – and that should make us feel sick.
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
The “criminalizing policy differences” meme is waiting in mothballls, just where it was left in the last days of the Clinton administration.
It won’t be long before it reappears.
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Truth without reconciliation may be the best we can hope for, but it could be truth with consequences.
If it were publicly documented that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other policy makers authorized (or demanded) war crimes, they might, a la Pinochet, face the prospect of legal harrassment if they were to travel outside U.S. territory.
Academic accreditation panels presumably would take a dim view of universities hiring people who committed or enabled war crimes, effectively making the likes of Yoo unemployable except at fringe-right institutions — and usefully tainting those institutions in the bargain.
Weak sanctions, I know. But at least the evildoers would be marginalized.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Whoa, duude, W is still the sitting president. Wouldn’t “kidnap Bush” earn you at least a pro forma visit from the Secret Service, now that you’re so influential and all?
Be sure to update your readers on whatever happens.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:06 pm
On the merits, I’d like to see forgiveness for implementers who were following what they were (falsely) assured were lawful orders and harsh measures for people on the policy level.
While we’re at it, let’s also issue retroactive pardons for the Nazi and Japanese prison and concentration camp guards who were merely following that they were assured were lawful orders. After all, the guards who operated the gas chambers, or the Japanese soldiers who beheaded captured Allied airmen, were just doing what they’d been told to do in a time of war and what was in fact legal according to their nation’s laws…..
Oh, what’s that, you say? You don’t want to do this? So the key difference between these situations seems to be that those Americans who committed atrocities should be let off, while those Germans and Japanese who also committed crimes were deserving of punishment?
American exceptionalism, indeed.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:17 pm
1) We got where we are by letting people get away with stuff. We have to stop letting people get away with stuff.
2) George W. Bush is a figurehead. So are all of the individuals whose names we have read. They are all politicians. The only thing politicians do is pander. All of the “war crimes” (status quotes, not mocking quotes) were panders. The only question we should be asking is, panders to whom? The answer is, half of America; half plus or minus noise; none the less half because of the outcome of the most recent election, which only shows that some will always lose their nerve. (Be glad of that; it is all we have going for us.) How prosecute half a nation? This is the question that Nuremberg funked. There may be no way to extirpate totalitarianism — if there is not, then the human experiment has failed — but if there is, it has to start with making an example of its SUPPORTERS somewhere, not just the figureheads, who originate nothing and who in most cases understand nothing.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
The crimes in question are international crimes: crimes of war and crimes against humanity. So what we should be asking is whether the Obama administration will stand in the way of international prosecutions.
The politics might take care of itself here. Once the Bush administration is gone, I suspect the media floodgates of repudiation and outrage will begin to open, with popular opinion even among some Republicans gradually coming around to punishing at least the worst of the wrongdoers. Republican politicians, intelligence officials and military officers looking out for their careers might self-segregate, point fingers and scapegoat as the information gets out.
The Obama administration can help the process along by being open in the release information, even as they publicly decline to prosecute.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I don’t think it’s even remotely acceptable to just give a full retrospective stamp of approval on everything that was done during the Bush years merely because that might be the most convenient way to build legislative support for Obama’s domestic agenda.
Hear! Hear!
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
….”If there was any effort to have war-crimes prosecutions of the Bush administration, you’d instantly destroy whatever hopes you have of bipartisanship,”
Now there’s a risk.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Three administrations have violated the law on the theory that anything the president does is legal (unless it involves consensual sex.) The fact that Nixon was driven from office in disgrace did not deter the Reagan administration from flouting the law – and they got away with it. Which is one of the reasons the criminals in the Bush administration could also flout the law with such confidence and arrogance.
With a record like that, the theory of the unitary executive pretty much stands as the operative view of government in this country – unless something is done to correct that. A “truth commission” or whatever you want to call it is not going to accomplish that correction. Crimes have been committed. If they are not treated as crimes, then they will endure as precedent. And we will have this same conversation again in 20 years or so.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:47 pm
As the Pinochet case demonstrates, foreign governments will participate in efforts to bring Bush era war criminals to justice.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I’d still prefer to see the compromise outlined at my link. That is, the Obama administration making all the relevant memos public, in exchange for congress agreeing not to investigate.
Obama did run on transparency in gov’t, after all.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Not exactly. America wasn’t demanding torture (any more than they were demanding the invasion of Iraq). Instead, the leaders of the country and the dominant political party made a point of advocating torture as the only thing that could keep us safe in the wake of a traumatic national event.
This was a time, if you recall, where people had almost no understanding of the nature of the enemy or its goals (remember how people were seriously talking about terrorists invading America, and wrapping their rural homes in plastic sheeting to protect against biological attack). The Republicans pushed torture not only as a necessary defense, but as a partisan litmus test.
And ironically, even the Administration wasn’t willing to actually call it “torture”, because of a reasonable fear that Americans might not have the stomach for the crap that was actually happening in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib (so much cleaner when it’s just harmless waterboarding, right?). And they certainly weren’t forthcoming about the quality of the actual results they were getting from ‘enhanced interrogation’, or the fact that many people undergoing it may have been only loosely linked to Al Queda (if at all).
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Foreign prosecutions won’t mean anything because the Bush/Cheney cabal, if they’re getting good legal advice, simply won’t leave the U.S. And, in the name of preserving U.S. sovereignty (and U.S. exceptionalism), no administration is likely to extradite these U.S. citizens to any foreign jurisdiction.
As for any hope for “bipartisanship,” anyone who expects Repubs to magically develop that trait hasn’t been paying attention for the last fourteen years.
According to the excellent “Taxi to the Dark” side documentary, 37 detainees have been killed while in U.S. custody. No one can claim that they were following presumably “lawful” orders by murdering shackled victims. The focus, though, should be at the top of the chain of command.
Since no domestic war-crimes prosecutions are likely in the near future, the best option (from Scott Horton in Harper’s) is to have a full-scale independent investigation with a report. Then, if the political climate is favorable, appoint a special prosecutor to look at the evidence and initiate criminal prosecutions as appropriate.
The problem: members of the current administration have already shown their disdain for Congress’ subpoena power. They’d have a powerful incentive to avoid testifying before a commission, and they might avoid any consequences (as they have so far).
Sadly, the “political climate” factor will be decisive in all this. Right now, of course, it’s not very favorable. The meme is: let’s move on to more serious issues and avoid “divisive” prosecutions.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I’d like to see them prosecuted but don’t think it would really serve much useful purpose except inflame and divide even further.
But ass-sniffer Yoo and others of his low ilk may be at risk if they go abroad. Pinochet thought he was totally immune but ran into trouble when he ventured forth.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Re: This is the question that Nuremberg funked. There may be no way to extirpate totalitarianism
Yes, the failure Nuremberg explains why the German Republic today is one of the most notoriously totalitarian in the world.
Re: So what we should be asking is whether the Obama administration will stand in the way of international prosecutions.
Obama should flat out reject international prosecutions. Allowing that would give the GOP a great big hobby horse to ride back to power. We’ve got some major problems to fix in this country and some urgent reforms– and if you don’t want to see more of what we saw the last eight years then handing any issues that could help the GOP back into power is the utmost last thing any sane person should want. Moreover, as a matter of principle, international prosecutions should only be used in two situations: 1) When the government which ought have jurisduicion no longer exist (e.g., Nazi Germany) and 2)when the government in question requests an international trial due to the political impossibility of handling the matter at home (the recent Sebian situation).
There will be no war crimes trials here, folks. Deal with it, and work for the future instead. As Vergil said to Dante about the damned in Hell, Non raggiam di loro, ma guarda e passa (”Don’t make a big deal out of them; just look and move on”).
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:32 pm
alleged abuses
Love it, but then I’ve become a bit cynical lately. With such a spineless, supine media and dems bending over backwards to “heal rifts”, “move on” or whatever it’s pretty much certain that not much at all will happen.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I would be shocked if the new administration addresses torture and renditions beyond just forcing future compliance with the Army Field Manual. It’s politically suicidal. The most experienced intelligence people in the country are implicated; Obama can’t clean house without decimating American intelligence, and he can’t “just air the truth” without having very grisly details emerge about people on whom he relies.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Foreign prosecutions won’t mean anything because the Bush/Cheney cabal, if they’re getting good legal advice, simply won’t leave the U.S. And, in the name of preserving U.S. sovereignty (and U.S. exceptionalism), no administration is likely to extradite these U.S. citizens to any foreign jurisdiction.
This sort of reasoning ignores the fact that – because of the financial crisis, the United States is no longer fully sovereign. To overcome this crisis, the United States needs money from abroad – in return for which it must pay.
Globalization is a two way street.
Deal with it.
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
This sort of reasoning ignores the fact that – because of the financial crisis, the United States is no longer fully sovereign. To overcome this crisis, the United States needs money from abroad
Most of the money the US is relying on comes from China, who is highly unlikely to push hard on this particular issue.
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
The CAP cleaning staff ought to stick to their
long brooms. They quite literally don’t
understand democracy. Politicians never exceed
their brief; they are afraid to. They say
nothing and they do nothing — the more
experienced ones THINK nothing — that exceeds
their instructions from their constituents.
You cannot shift blame by alleging, in defiance
of all historical evidence, that the
figureheads originated anything. Dick Cheney
doesn’t have a philosophy. John Yoo doesn’t
have a philosophy. What they do have is
fingers in the wind. There is no way to escape
from the cold, hard fact that 50% of Americans
specifically and explicitly ordered their
public servants to conduct a campaign of
torture. You cannot flinch away from that;
you are up against solid rock, there is no
wiggle room in that direction.
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Duncan: To overcome this crisis, the United States needs money from abroad – in return for which it must pay.
You mean “pay” by extraditing its citizens for war-crimes prosecutions in the EU or someplace else? Our major trading clients don’t seem to be very motivated to bring the Bushies to trial in their own courts. You think the Chinese or Japanese will refuse to buy Treasury bonds unless the U.S. hands over Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for prosecution in their courts? Wishful thinking, at best.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Mr. Wilhoit – If you have a specific case that as much as 50% of the American public desired a campaign of torture, make it. Your post, filled as it is with Palinesque fantasy, fails to convince. To address just a couple of howlers:
John Yoo is a pure staffer, not a politician. He has never run for office and it’s highly unlikely he plans to. He’s completely uninterested in what the voting public thinks of what he does – that is his “principal’s” problem.
Politicians do whatever they damn well please with the exception of the rare issue the public is actually paying attention to. Is it really credible that such items as the bankruptcy “reform” bill, the Glass-Steagel repeal or the midnight rulemaking now working through the system represent the “specific and explicit orders” of the voting public? That Dick “the public wants to end the war – so what?” Cheney makes his moves based on a “finger in the wind?” The questions answer themselves. So much for “all historical evidence.”
My own observation is that when you throw out the people too uninformed to count, the people who in defiance of all evidence don’t believe the US is torturing and the people who were willing to take the authorities word it was a good idea but no more, you’re left with maybe 5-15% who actively wanted such a policy. That’s not a very reassuring figure either, but it doesn’t support your fantasy of the unique moral depravity of American culture.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
What Studebaker Hawk said, except…
While I don’t have any support for this conclusion from the polling, there seems to be a “don’t ask, don’t tell” element in the attitude of a significant portion of the public towards torture. As in, “hammer the bad guys and keep us safe, but don’t necessarily give us all the details.”
This attitude may characterize a different portion of the public than the minority (5-15%?) who would strongly agree with Cheney that waterboarding is a “no-brainer.”
Some of the unease about torture prosecutions may have its roots in a vague sense of culpability that a significant percentage of the U.S. public shares. Just a hunch, mind you…
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
studebaker, it was impossible to ignore the evidence from Abu Ghraib a couple of months before the election in 2004 – yet they Bush got reelected anyway. So either a lot of people didn’t think torture is such a big deal, or they won’t believe the US tortures unless it’s happening on the White House lawn during CNN live coverage. Neither option is very appealing.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Jon F,
Don’t Serbia and Chile still exist?
These are international crimes, and it is appropriate for international bodies to investigate them and prosecute them. Nobody trusts individual countries to investigate their own leaders’ crimes.
People were tortured and murdered. Somebody has to be held accountable for those, or else we will only succeed in establishing new international precedents for what is permissible, and that will invite imitation. Ultimately, the US might not have any say in the matter.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:28 pm
many of the perpetrators can be expected to live for decades
But importantly not Cheney.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I think you really have to value achieving a greater good through a unified Congress over seeking justice. Granted, completely ruling out prosecution would be pointless. But Obama is deftly nourishing a trust with republicans, hoping to ease their reflexive opposition to ideas that come from a Democrat’s mouth. Many, many Americans and congressman are in fact in favor of using torture (though they may believe there have been abuses), and to prosecute those who carried it out would devastate Obama’s crucial effort and enrage Rush Limbaugh.
Of course the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have been reprehensible, but when weighed against fixing the economy, fixing health care, etc., prosecution would directly lead to more suffering.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Ultimately, the US might not have any say in the matter.
And why is that? The last four administrations have carefully positioned the U.S. so that its citizens are insulated from international criminal prosecutions. All in the name of preserving U.S. “sovereignty” and protecting troops from “harassment” overseas. Is there the remotest possibility that Obama or his successors would extradite U.S. citizens to The Hague or any other jurisdiction for war-crimes trials?
The only recourse is domestic prosecutions, and that’s fraught with difficulties. A special prosecutor would have to be appointed, or a local DA with enough chutzpah (like the one who just filed in Texas) could concoct a legal theory and file charges in one of the states. Not likely, though.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Matt I strongly disagree with the association of John Yoo with war crimes tribunals or whatever justice may be handed out. Yoo is an academic. One that I fervently disagree with? Yes. One that shouldn’t have a job at one the best law schools in the nation? Yes. But the man has the right to scribble down his executive power garbage on whatever bathroom wall he wants to. It’s Bush that carried out the crimes.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Given that Washington DC is overrun with Good Germans who either enabled Bush’s acts –or averted their eyes when they happened — I doubt any war crimes prosecutions will get off the ground.
The Reference to the 911 Commission is hilarious — the 911 Commission focused more on covering up the Truth than in exposing it — as Commission consultant and Harvard Professor Ernest May acknowledged in his New Republic Article. It was deemed too “politically sensitive” to examine WHY the attack occurred –WHAT and WHO had provoked it.
Seven years later, most of the News Media and official Washington are still supporting Bush’s Big Lies.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Don’s absolutely correct. The 9/11 Commission did interviews with Sibel Edmonds, then relegated her to a footnote. It was a joke.
And Edmonds still can’t get a hearing from Henry Waxman, after he told her her case would be his top priority after the 2006 elections.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Re Matthew’s joking suggestion that “George W. Bush should be kidnapped, drugged, flown to Spain in an unmarked plane, and wake up on the streets of Madrid tied up with a bunch of files and evidence pinned to his chest so Judge Garzón can sort the whole thing out.”
————–
I would suggest leaving the job to former Clandestine Service officer Valerie Plame.
That way Bush would wake up on the steps of Judge Garzon’s courthouse buck naked, with his hands superglued around his small penis, and with the files stacked beside him.
WHile touristas snap pictures for sale to the London newspapers.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:48 pm
But the man [Yoo] has the right to scribble down his executive power garbage on whatever bathroom wall he wants to.
Judges and lawyers were subjected to prosecutions at Nuremberg for doing essentially what Susana describes. (See USA v. Altstoetter, for example.)
A special prosecutor could certainly argue that Yoo’s technical justifications for practices that clearly violated international law placed him in the same category of war criminals as Altstoetter and his colleagues. The international law in question, of course, is the 3rd Geneva Convention’s unambiguous prohibition on torture and coercion of prisoners.
In the Altstoetter case, U.S. prosecutors successfully argued that the defendants’ bureaucratic justifications would likely “cause the death of human beings.” Yoo’s rationales directly supported the torture, and possibly the actual deaths, of detainees. Those crimes were the predictable result of policies articulated by Yoo, Gonzales and other Bushies in clear defiance of settled international law.
The law in this area isn’t particularly vague. If there are no criminal prosecutions, it’s only because the political will (or courage) is lacking.
The convicted Nuremberg defendants were sentenced to ten years in prison.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:04 pm
The Nuremburg trials went forward because those being prosecuted were from a political power structure that had been utterly annihilated, both physically and morally. Even so, Goering offered up a spirited defense; if he’d had a significant political following at the time, it might not have been so easy to punish all the defendants.
The political right in the U.S. has been dealt some severe blows, but it is far from annihilated. To the extent that the incoming administration wants/needs the right’s acquiescence (if not its cooperation), it won’t be practical or feasible to drag Cheney, Addington, Yoo and the rest through a war crimes trial, however much they deserve it.
If the coming years see the current Republican power structure completely discredited and marginalized, it may eventually be possible to launch prosecutions. (By this I mean that it no longer is socially possible to openly defend them, much as we no longer defend slavery proponents or segregationists.) At this point we can’t know the extent to which this may happen; I imagine it’ll be at lest partly dependent on how bad the coming economic years are.
There could be some value to foreign war crimes convictions, even if the U.S. is politically unable to extradite those convicted. First, there would be a full airing of the cases against these people. Second, they would be unable to leave U.S. soil, which would be a certain punishment. Last, there would be a judgment against these people’s names, one they would carry with them till they died, and which would inform any historical memory of them.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Re: How prosecute half a nation? This is the question that Nuremberg funked.
Er, huh? You really want the law to go after everyone who SUPPORTED Bush and his venal farce of a presidency? The Bolsheviks tried to do that too. They felt that everyone who had been a supporter of the czar and the capitalists (or perhaps, just not strongly enough opposed to them) was an evil bastard who needed to be dealt with. All they managed to do was create a reservoir of hatred and distrust of their regime, that led to its long and slow collapse over several decades.
Go after Charles Granier and his pals- I’m all for that. If you can make a case for going after other particularly vicious individuals in the military or the government who have committed individual crimes, then I’m all for that too. But no, there won’t be any Nuremberg trials of the Bush administration, and there probably shouldn’t be. Bush is a bad man and his advisers even worse, but they’re not half as evil as Pinochet or Somoza, and not a tenth as evil as Hitler or Stalin.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
There’s a lot to be said for “hang them all.”
One of the reasons we know so much about this torture regime is because there was a PROFOUND resistance to it throughout the US bureaucracy. People wanted their asses covered 10 ways to Sunday because they remembered how German foot soldiers couldn’t use “I was just obeying orders” as an affirmative defense. They demanded their superiors write all kinds of memos, and get themselves on the record in all sorts of uncomfortable ways.
Ashcroft nailed it when he said “what are we doing here? History will not look kindly upon this.”
It is in our national interest to create a bureaucracy where people are VERY AFRAID to torture people or to put people in infinite detention (or, perhaps, in ovens) even if they have proper orders signed in triplicate. I’m sorry, but there should be people against the wall from all levels of the bureaucracy on this one.
In terms of justice, it should obviously be Rumsfeld, Bush, Yoo, Cheney and the gang who suffer.
But really, this is so horrific that I’m prepared to see lower heads roll simply so that if the next Cheney tries to do something like this, the under-secretary of Guantanamo realizes he’s going to be the one going to jail, and he slow-walks this thing so that it never gets implemented. At the ned of the day, I want the incentives at every level of the bureaucracy to point towards “you get involved in this shit, you will end fucked up 6 ways to Sunday, it just ain’t worth it.”
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Bush’s people compelled him to … improvise.
Shall we agree upon that formulation? The real
problem is that he identified HIS people with
THE people.
His voters knew what they were asking for,
knew what they were getting, and tied the one
back to the other. To assume otherwise is to
annihilate the rationale for democracy.
Obviously, half a nation cannot be prosecuted.
That is why Nuremberg funked the question. The
situation is absolutely intractable; huge and
unprecedented efforts would have been
justified to prevent it, but now that it has
happened, there is literally no way to fix it.
Truth and reconciliation? Strictly either/or.
Not both.
The truth is already coming out, even before
we have heard from Sy Hersh’s sources who have
been telling him to call them on 21 Jan., and
the irreconcilability has been the
deliberate strategy of the Republican Party for
a generation. They’re not trying to win,
they’re trying to knock over the board. The
game ended thirty years ago.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:30 pm
This is a real test for Obama and for our country as a whole.
Its not like there were just a few marginal and debatable war crimes committed. War crimes were committed on a massive scale. By far the most important stem from the fraudulent basis on which the Iraq War was sold to Congress and the public — a fradulent war that led to about a million deaths and millions of people forced to flee their own country.
If we just allow bygones to be bygones then we’re simply not a great country because that is not what a great country would do.
Obama should start an investigation now, without stupidly immunizing too many people, and have it report about 2 years from now. If Obama is going to get anything done it will have already happened in the first 2 years. At that point, he could initiate charges based on what he then knows from the report of the investigation and put some serious criminals in jail.
If he doesn’t do that then he cannot even say he lived up to the standards of South Africa. He will not be a great president.
And please don’t anyone hand me any bullshit about reconciliation and healing. We “reconciled” and “healed” after Nixon and we got Reagan. Then we reconciled and healed after Reagan and we got George HW Bush pardoning his coconspirators in the Iran Contra scandal. And then we got many of the worst perps from all 3 of those administrations in the George W Bush white house and guess what? The result was war crimes on a massive scale.
“Reconciliation” and “healing” without any real accountability DOES NOT WORK. it leads to a million people getting killed and millions more forced to flee their own country. We have tried that approach and it failed about as miserably as a policy can fail.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I’ve been calling for such a commission since 2003, but it will just get stonewalled if it is not backed up by the threat of prosecution. The key to the Madela commission was that if there were any inaccuracies or omissions in your testimony, all of it could be used against you. Once you started confessing, you had to keep going till you coughed up everything you knew. I’d be all for Obama doing that, but it would be incompatible with removing the threat of prosecution.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
“….”If there was any effort to have war-crimes prosecutions of the Bush administration, you’d instantly destroy whatever hopes you have of bipartisanship,”
Now there’s a risk.”
Indeed. Like the Republicans would be bipartisan in any circumstance.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Have we seen a bigger sell-out of principles than this ?
WTF did I sit through all these phony liberal BS posts decrying human rights abuses for 7 years for ? Just looking to fill up slow news days were we.
Next time Putin clips a journalist, do us a favour and STFU. You think it’s not politically inconvenient for him to have that shit talked about ?
Oh and feel good about preseving that spirit of bipartisan cooperation, you terrorist appeasing, Saddam loving surrender monkeys. Losing that might be just so far beyond the pale. If “the pale” translates as 4 weeks ago.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:02 am
That dangerous patriot’s game.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:02 am
It is so reassuring to have the quotes of Robert Litt soothing our ears especially remembering him as one of the first cheerleaders for torture in the fall of 2001.
Ref“>That dangerous patriot’s game.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Will Bill Clinton be prosecuted for the extraordinary renditions that took place in his administration? How about the Senators who know of the practice in both the Clinton and Bush administrations?
November 24th, 2008 at 10:52 am
@Guys in high school:
Sure — but of course Clinton is far, far less culpable than the Republicans. As I understand it he basically went along with a program that was already in existence and probably out of fear of looking weak in front of hyperaggressive Republicans who will accuse you of being the next Neville Chamberlain at the drop of a hat.
The Republicans from Nixon to now are far more culpable — particulalry given the obvious danger to the republic of their belief that if the president does it it isn’t illegal. Clinton maybe passively allowed a few renditions. There may be some cases in which those renditions were acceptable. I don’t know enough about the details to say for sure.
But one thing is for sure — under George W Bush there was a lot more than a few renditions. 38 people got murdered in custody. Many were tortured. A million lost their lives in Iraq. Clinton’s few renditions look pretty paltry by comparison but, hey, if there is evidence that he knowingly sent someone to be tortured and he was the primary instigator of the action, then put him in the dock as well.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Anonymiss at 42 has the right idea here. Sure it would hurt Obama’s ability to enact his legislative agenda if he prosecuted Bush’s war criminals, but it would be the right thing to do. It’s the only way to insure that we don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again. Of course, it won’t help Obama the politician and that’s why it won’t get done.
As a clear headed person, this kind of reality is painful to deal with. I’m happy for all the Obama freaks out there, helping to get the man elected and knock out the Republicans who are certainly far worse. But he is still massively undeserving of the adulation that he receives.
November 24th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Go after the money. Prosecute the thieves who have stolen billions.
There will be decades to try the war criminals. Start with something our
politicized justice system can handle.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I address this post briefly over at my site, largely agreeing with Obama’s approach but also pointing out that Dems are somewhat complicit in the excesses of the past eight years.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Try them and execute them.
If they are pardoned then demand of the european countries that they produce an indictment. Then deport them to whichever country agrees that the death penalty is on the table.
seize them in the middle of the night as ‘enemy combatants’ and then ship them overseas immediately.
put the executions on pay per view.
Make sure Condi gets to wear some of her nice boots.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:25 am
Matt,
“The former is probably the better part of wisdom for now”
Your writing is pretentious. You have very interesting things to say that get lost in glaring overuse of “insofar”, and of phrases like the above.
I urge you to ruthless pare out the I-went-to-college space-consuming devices.
-Steve
November 26th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Jurisdiction for war crimes isn’t limited to the Feds, but the prosecutions may have to be more specific. For instance, any municipality that lost a soldier should be able to prosecute for murder if they prove that the Bush administration lied us into war. There’s enough crime in this administration with local impact to allow any community with a conscience to help bring the perpetrators to justice.
December 9th, 2008 at 10:52 am
WASHINGTON (AFP)–Vice President Dick Cheney welcomed his successor, vice president-elect Joseph Biden, to his official residence Thursday, shrugging off his visitor’s stinging campaign trail attacks. Biden arrived at the vice
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