More Traction

The idea that certain members of the Bush Administration need to be prosecuted for crimes continues to gain strength. This recent post discusses the legal grounds that exist to allow the bringing of war crimes charges against US government officials who violated Geneva Convention guidelines and the laws of war.

Of course the big question here is who should be held liable for these violations of Geneva? There are several possible classes of criminal targets in a war crimes investigation:

(1) the lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and the White House, who advised the administration that the Geneva Conventions could be ignored and counseled it on how to do it;

(2) the military commanders and officers who sanctioned and carried out (or ordered subordinates to carry out) these violations; and

(3) the top officials who authorized the violations.

Ultimately, the buck stops with the president, who—although he cannot be indicted while in office—could be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, including war crimes.

Several legal scholars have documented how members of the Bush administration approached the dismantling of the law in a deliberate and intentional manner. Scott Horton, an adjunct law professor at Columbia University who teaches international law, submitted an expert report to the German Parliament in January 2005, for a case that had been brought in German courts against Rumsfeld and other American officials. According to Horton, government officials “viewed all legal limitations on their dealings with detainees . . . with contempt and ridicule” and “worked consistently to undermine and render inoperative the implementation” of Geneva and the laws of war.

.............former Attorney General John Ashcroft was “complicit in a scheme for the commission of war crimes.” Also, that current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was “the principal author of the scheme to undertake war crimes, having expressly noted in his January 25, 2002, memorandum that he was motivated by a well-founded fear of war crimes prosecution, which he sought to evade for the benefit of himself and others in the administration.”

Echoing Horton’s findings, Jordan Paust, a former Army captain, U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and law professor at the University of Houston, writes that there was a “'Common Plan' to violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions” that “involved at least those responsible for ‘the Department of Justice . . . formal legal opinion’” by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel.

OLC lawyers not only failed to caution against violating the laws; these attorneys actively advised the administration to break the law. Apparently, too, this advice was “endorsed by top lawyers in the White House, the Pentagon and the vice president’s office,” according to The New York Times.

While the criminal Rethuglican Mafia in Washington makes successful prosecution by political means a very difficult task, it is needed for the future of our country and our standing in the world community. America will be relegated to the “has been class” of nations unless we can show the strength of true democracy. Who will emulate us, aspiring to travel our purported path of high minded ideals towards liberty, freedom, and the often boasted claim that in the American democracy no one is above the law, unless we can show the capability to cleanse our own filth?

There is one way to start regaining credibility and some of our badly damaged honor, and it must begin in November – vote Democrat.

Posted on The Human Stain