Justice for War Criminals?
Satyam Khanna rounds up the somewhat contradictory statements from Barack Obama and his appointees as to whether or not there should be any kind of prosecutions or investigations for the serious crimes committed during the Bush years. Obama leaves the door open to investigations but his most recent statement places emphasis on a desire to “move forward” and the fact that he doesn’t want intelligence operatives to “suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering.”
The latter concern strikes me as reasonable enough. But I don’t think the solution is just to let everyone get away without accountability. There wasn’t enough accountability after Watergate and that helped lead to the lack fo accountability around Iran-Contra. Which, in turn, helped get us where we are today. You could set up a commission or an investigator with specific authorization to offer immunity to anyone below the highest tiers of government in exchange for cooperation. Failure to do anything will just be read as a concession that “serious” people of both parties actually favor torture, arbitrary detention, and illegal surveillance but the “serious” Democrats are too hypocritical to admit it.
46 Responses to “Justice for War Criminals?”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
January 11th, 2009 at 11:55 am
he doesn’t want intelligence operatives to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering
That phrase is synonymous with “he doesn’t want intelligence operatives to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time obeying the law.”
January 11th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I expect unprecedented, sweeping pardons by Bush as his last official act as precedent, so timed to minimize scrutiny as Obama ascends to power.
January 11th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
What Marshall said, just adding in that A) it’s part of intelligence operatives’ JOBS to obey the law, B) it always HAS been, C) what does Satyim Khanna mean by “ALL their time”?, sounds kinda like the ole straw man making an appearance.
As long as the Obama presidency leaves the issue of war crimes and war criminals unaddressed, there’s a stain on the Obama presidency. Period.
January 11th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
And The GOP wanted to try BC because he lied about a BJ. They still got him impeached.
The Iran-Contra Report says the dems decided not to impeach RR (though he was guilty) because of the harm it would do to the country. Now they dither about this administration’s alleged (yeah,sure) crimes. The GOP doesn’t give a shit about the country, so they impeach BC over minutia
Both parties suck.
January 11th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
There wasn’t enough accountability after Watergate? Please amplify on this point.
January 11th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Your affected naivete is quite charming.
Just as Churchill told a woman ‘we have established that you are a whore, we are just haggling about the price’, ample evidence exists to conclude that both the parties condone torture, and the difference is only in how much they are willing to accept publicly that they agree with enhanced interrogation techniques as official policy.
In this regard I like the honesty of the Republicans.
January 11th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
First, if President Bush or Dick Cheney are tried in American courts, on of two things will happen: they will be exonerated, or they will be convicted.
If they are exonerated, then this country would have gone through a painful process (in many ways not unlike the Bush years themselves), with a moral at the end that what this President did was legal. His detractors (most of the country) would be despondent, his supporters, just recently crushed, given new energy.
But if they are convicted…
Remember, about 1 in 4 Americans still approve of what this President and his Cabinet did.
As far as they’re concerned, what Bush did wasn’t just legal, it was good. The war in Iraq proves the US is awesome. Torture makes America safe and gives terrorists (or at least Arabs) something to be sorry about. And if you don’t support them, it only proves you’re either naive or treasonous. Don’t mess with Texas, and so on.
Disagree if you want, but this is where a large portion of the country stands. And if Bush or Cheney are convicted, it will only be proof in their eyes that those who try to defend their country have to watch their back.
And if they think they have to watch their back, how do you think they’ll approach traitors [sic] like us?
What I’m saying is this: if a quarter of the country thinks their political opponents are prosecuting them for politics (for gaining political office and applying their political philosophy), their going to see it as as fair game to do the same to the other side of the spectrum.
And if you think prosecuting Clinton for a BJ is bad…
January 11th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
The problem is that there really is some collective guilt
here. The news about the Abu Ghraib atrocities was out
before the 2004 election and nobody sensible believed it
was all because of a “few bad apples”. But this was
never an election issue, Kerry never made anything of it,
and I think this was because the Dems thought torture was
popular (look for example at “24″). The country
needs to know what happened, who ordered it and why, but
criminal prosecution seems divisive, and probably counter-productive.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Mr. Ford, I’m not sure what the Republicans could do that they haven’t already done. They impeached Clinton over a blow job and they stocked the attorney general’s office full of hacks willing to pursue illegitimate cases against Democratic politicians. Right now the Dems have the political power. You put a few prominent Republicans behind bars and it makes the others think twice. Plus it’s a lot harder to elect or hire a former felon, even if 25% of the country thinks they were in the right. The other benefit of conducting an investigation is to bring to light just what was done. There is a decent percentage of the electorate that probably doesn’t think any laws were broken but could be persuaded by the results of a criminal proceedings, no matter how loudly the last 25% screams that its all political.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Mr. Ford, no compromise. There is right, there is wrong. If we let the most violent 25% fo the population dictate to the rest of us, then tyranny is onlyl a heartbeat away.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Not only was Iran-Contra allowed to fade away, it faced 2 other problems:
(1) Its very initial setup was drawn up in such a ‘bipartisan’ manner that it removed most of the substantive investigation which needed to be done, i.e., focusing on whether or not Executive officials properly consulted with Congress in its oversight capacities, and not on what they were actually doing.
and
(2) In a bipartisan manner the committee agreed to silence and censor one of its major findings, that of how Reagan ran a CIA-style propaganda and disinformation campaign in the domestic USA against our own population; and thus, having been kept out of the final report, that same system was simply reactivated when it came time for those ex-Reaganites and Reagan II, I mean, Bush Jr., decided to propagandize the American population into a war with Iraq.
They don’t just fail to prosecute and finish the investigations — they end up trying to keep their crimes hidden.
The lessons for such criminals and thugs are clear: Do what you do, and no one will make you ever pay; the only crime is insufficient loyalty to whatever right wing authoritarian leader you serve. Crimes against your country are insignificant, power doesn’t care.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Like it or not, any public investigations or prosecutions will be divisive and painted as partisan, fairly or not. Right now substantial GOP support for rescue measures seems an overriding concern for the new administration. I am confident that quiet internal queries, away from the media spotlight, will begin on day one. Later, once the economy is back on track and we are back to business as usual, the process may become public if there is something actionable. But for the moment recovery seems to trump revenge…
January 11th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Keep in mind that 1) The Dems knew everything that was going on and either did nothing about it or supported it actively 2) Obama was in the senate, he has a bunch of friends in the senate, he’s going to appoint a few of them to high positions in the near future.
Politics is a club. Bush and Obama and everyone else involved are part of that club. Club members do not support the prosecution of other members.
January 11th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
What’s so confusing about this? Obama will soon be President. Unless he gets shot, he will one day be a former President. The last thing he wants is for him and his friends to be prosecuted for the crimes they commit while in office. Sticking to the norm that Presidents and their staffs are not to be prosecuted for crimes committed while in office is very much in his self-interest.
And if you think Obama doesn’t plan to violate the law, I can get you a great deal on a bridge.
January 11th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
There wasn’t enough accountability after Watergate and that helped lead to the lack fo accountability around Iran-Contra.
The functional equivalents to Ollie North in the Watergate affair actually did receive and serve jailtime, so there obviously wasn’t much in the way of deterrence value from the first event to the second one. Plus, North would of (and should of) received jail time, but for a botched prosecution.
As far as the pardoning of Cap Weinberger and the 5 others, in retrospect, this was a bit of gift to Clinton. it enabled him to demonstrate concern without having to do anything – because he couldn’t, and thus avoiding the distraction of a rehash of the late cold war to open his presidency. It turned out, of course, that he would develop other ‘distractions’ that would cause the setbacl in ‘94, but for the time being he was able to maintain the ‘don’t stop thinkin’ ’bout tomorrow’ theme.
January 11th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Just join the ICC (like we should have already done), and let them decide whether anyone needs to be tried for war crimes.
January 11th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
This is all an “American” joke. Bush authorized personally the waterboarding of Sheik Mohamed. I’m sure by now this man doesn’t remember his own address. He’s almost brain dead. Apparently he admitted to committing the 9/11, the Bali bombing, the USS Cole etc. Baloney…. they drove him crazy to cover up what the Pentagon did. Out of 800 that were at Gitmo, there remains only 250. What happened to the other 550. They were supposed to be the “worse of the worse”. They were in Guantanamo for 5, 6, 7 years without any trial, why? Easy …
Pentagon had nothing against them, yet they were tortured. By the way, if you were bombed by a foreign country, wouldn’t you try to defend your country? Of course. Instead they were captured and given the name “enemy combattant”. It should not be U.S. to try Bush for war crimes but the International Tribunal” but I’m sure they U.S. threatened the U.N. of not paying it’s annual 25%, so they got scared and drop the charges. Bush and Cheney will go home next week full of money of Iraqi oil – unfortunately they got away with murder.Very sad – very sad indeed.
January 11th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I am against prosecuting heads of state for matters of state on philosophical; it is against Westphalian Principles.
To be honest, I thought the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials erroneous interpretations of international law as well. I am against the whole concept of international criminal courts because sovereignty, and thus the right to prosecute, can only be justifiably invested in Sovereign States, not some amorphous international organisation. Anything else, to my mind, is self-destructive towards the whole edifice of Western Civilisation.
January 11th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
And a corollary of that is immunity of heads of state from prosecution for matters political.
January 11th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
By the way, last Friday, the senate passed a bill that says: Israel it allowed to defend itself.
Now we really see who runs this country. But I’m sure most American (the Midwest Hillbillies) don’t realize what’s going on with their country.
By approving this bill, the U.S. becomes a “partner in crime” and claim to the world that they have values.
January 11th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Stephen Myles is arguing that Hitler should not have been prosecuted for the Holocaust. Bravo. I really have to admire that sort of principled stance. Genocide, torture, having women raped by dogs, all’s fair in his world… as long as its happening to someone else. ROTFL
January 11th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Re: I am against the whole concept of international criminal courts because sovereignty, and thus the right to prosecute, can only be justifiably invested in Sovereign States, not some amorphous international organisation.
After WWII the sovereign states that had hosted the German and Japanese war crminals had ceased to exist. Who else had any claim of judgment over these malefactors if not those who were administering the territory of the former states, acting on behalf of their victims?
Re: And a corollary of that is immunity of heads of state from prosecution for matters political.
Matters political, sure. But not matters criminal.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
I really have to admire that sort of principled stance. Genocide, torture, having women raped by dogs, all’s fair in his world… as long as its happening to someone else.
No, as long as someone powerful is doing it. Myles’ philosophy of conservatism is all about the righteous rule of the powerful and their right to control others… in part it’s because Myles is a natural toady, and in part because he has a fantasy of being one of those powerful.
January 11th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Anything else, to my mind, is self-destructive towards the whole edifice of Western Civilisation.
To your mind? Well, yeah.
Miley really does argue like a terrier in a top hat.
January 11th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I imagine this fucktard Stephen Myles to look like some sort of Monty Python schmuck meant to represent the “British Ruling Class”.
I remember when William S. Burroughs was living in London, he despised the British and their class system. He said only in England does a shop clerk refer to his fellow employees as “my colleagues.”
Hey, Myles, how do like these apples? Burroughs had some of his characters march into a staid upper class club, haul up all these assholes in a line, then force them at the point of a gun to say “Bugger the Queen!” and gun down anybody who wouldn’t say it.
Most of them said it, by the way.
So fuck you.
January 11th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
But but they were only obeying orders!
Besides, and to be fair, Obama is a war criminal by any reasonable standard. As are most of our national “leaders”.
In the Senate he consistently voted funding for the illegal war on Iraq and thus shares responsibility for every death and injury which has resulted.
What we need is an American de-Nazification.
And of course we should hold trials under the rules we wrote for Nuremberg.
Et tu Yglesias.
January 11th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Re: mpowell 9
Just wanted to note that I do support a full scale investigation.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
I dunno guys. I don’t think that Stephen Myles really believes these opinions. He’s clearly doing a parody ‘my grandfather was in the state department, and while I don’t support having women raped with dogs, as long as it works…’ He’s deliberately playing a part, some American equivalent to Monty Python’s ‘upper class twit.’ The views that he pretends to articulate aren’t even internally consistent within the same sentence, and he mixes erudition with quite deliberate historical illiteracy. And delightfully, once he makes his hit, he moves on. He seldom gets into arguments, almost never defends a position which he and we all know is obvious nonsense.
His ‘I love Hitler’ post here is a classic of his.
January 11th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
While there might have been some elements of humour in my other opinions, especially in American politics, on this matter, the Sovereign State, I am pretty unequivocal. One could be persuaded to different opinions on matters like taxes and education; on the pretty basic concept of sovereignty, it is, in my mind, simply a cultural meme coming out of family and social influences.
And my culture meme in this case is pretty clearly in favour of sovereignty. I don’t think people understand how fiascos like Iraq, Somalia, among others, originate out of the erosion of respect for sovereignty. Had we a bit more respect for the sovereignty of the Iraqi Gov’t, even an illegitimate one like Hussein’s, the U.S. would not be there today. The relative peace in the world post-war is due not to the overarching jurisdiction the UN Charter )in my mind, misguidedly) awarded int’l law; it is due to the stringent degree by which states have to respect each others’ sovereignty and desist from armed conflict to otherwise.
And by the way, my granny has actually been a diplomat.
January 11th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
And regarding my Western Civilisation comment; I am referring pretty specifically to Protestant Western Civilisation. Those of you familiar with Luther will understand that a key foundation of Protestantism was the sovereignty of the prince independent of external moral and spiritual influence. Protestant societies have, incidentally, been the drivers of economic growth in the last couple hundred years (see Weber thesis). Internal tribunals can hardly qualify for exemption from the designation “external moral influence.”
January 11th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I meant “international tribunals.”
January 12th, 2009 at 7:54 am
Stephen Myles: Weber did a fantastically good job with what he had, and served as a founder of sociology. However, the basic theory of Protestant Work Ethic doesn’t really hold up to empirical review, particularly when including other European nations outside Weber’s purview, and bringing in data to which he may not have had access. See Huber, Stephens, Rueschemeyer in Capitalist Development and Democracy.
January 12th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Which have been tried and found wanting. The entire sovereignty conceit is one of our most baleful inheritances from the Roman Empire. We do not have an imperial religion, we live in a Republic; being head of state is a job, not an elevation to the status of a deity. Of course heads of state should be prosecuted for criminal malfeasance.
P.S. Note that there are (at least) two Marshall’s on this site. Some authentication is in order, I think.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Marshall, you have no clue what you are talking about. Westphalia was the final conclusion of the heritage of the Roman polity, not a continuation of it.
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:31 am
levitraIncredible site!
March 12th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
March 14th, 2009 at 4:59 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
xanax
March 22nd, 2009 at 5:53 am
tramadol
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:21 am
viagra
I want to say – thank you for this!
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:54 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
buy cheap viagra
April 5th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
We have been selling only the best Male Enhancement Pills from across the globe, and we are here 24/7 to help you and give you practical advice on which of our methods will best suit your needs.
April 5th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
The best way male enhancement products.
April 9th, 2009 at 4:47 am
Incredible site! viagra