Why Cheney Was So Wrong
About four months ago I flew to London on a red eye. In economy. I know a thing or two about stress positions. They do make you hostile to others. And combative. Definitely combative.
Joking aside, the issue of torture and detainment is a serious one. We kept people imprisoned at Guantanamo, some of them completely innocent. We did not give them access to lawyers or even contact with their families. We tortured them. And now we learn that the CIA was operating a terrorist assassination program with the program kept secret from Congress. On Dick Cheney’s orders.
Dick Cheney alone did not reduce our country to something we don’t want to be, but he did some significant damage. Oddly, since he was not the president, he seems to have wielded extraordinary power in the executive branch. Though his signature authorizes the assassination program, Bush is as silent and complacent now as he must’ve been as president, letting Cheney throw the hardballs and make the tough decisions. For those of us who thought the Bush presidency was a low point, this seems all the more a miscarriage of American government. After all, we elected George W. Bush, not Dick Cheney, to lead our country.
And the problem is where Dick Cheney seems to have led us.
Extradition and torture, and now assassination, all seem like reasonable treatment for terrorists. Terrorist organizations operate by definition outside of the bounds of sovereign nations and are therefore not protected by the same international law or general respect. The United States cannot always request extradition from the countries who host these terrorists, especially when the host country does not have an operating judicial system or is hostile to the US. But here’s the problem: the entire purpose of the court system is to ensure justice for both the guilty and the innocent. The US response to terrorism skirted the entire judicial process and sought to carry out a vigilante program of retribution. While most of us can get behind that when we’re sure the target is guilty, how many of us can support this approach when we’re not sure? Vigilante justice is illegal because you might kill the wrong guy.
Most of us want to remain Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.” We want America to represent all the good a democracy can offer: citizens ruling together in a benevolent manner with a robust justice system that protects its people and an executive branch kept always in check by the courts and Congress. I just watched a video clip of Fox News’ Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly joking about torturing Democrats, those leftist Marxist loonies who want to hurt America — and felt ill. This is not the America I want to be. This is not Ronald Reagan’s America.
America’s greatness comes from the balance of all its powers, the shifting and change between Liberals and Conservatives is part of that balance. Both are represented and the sum of the two is our democracy. It could be argued that Cheney took extraordinary measures after 9/11 to keep our country safe, that he cannot be faulted for this. I don’t agree for the simple reason that we have laws and balances in place to keep us safe from dictators. I believe in our country enough to know that no one needs to break the law of our land to ensure our safety. This is its own danger.
The rhetoric today is that Obama is using the economic crisis just like Cheney used 9/11: to expand government powers into areas the public would never accept if circumstances were different. In a robust economy would we accept the massive debt the Obama administration is taking on? Maybe not, but it is legal and approved by Congress. In our country the rulers are powerful, but they remain citizens. They are expected to remain within the lawful boundaries of their positions. This is what separates us from dictatorships. No matter the threat, this is a fundamental tenet of our country and can’t be sacrificed even when terrorists wreak their havoc. Especially when terrorists wreak their havoc. America will remain the shining beacon.
Obama’s Test on Torture: Was Closing Gitmo a PR Stunt?
From the SCOTUS Blog:
The Obama Administration, taking its first position in a federal court on claims of torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees, urged the D.C. Circuit Court on Thursday to reject a lawsuit by four Britons formerly held there. In addition, the new filing argued that a recent appeals court ruling makes clear that “aliens held at Guantanamo do not have due process rights.”
Obama’s halo is crumbling when it comes to standing up for international law and abiding by the Geneva Conventions. The Obama Administration has appealed a federal court’s decision allowing for the right to habeas corpus (right to review of imprisonment) for prisoners at Bagram, an Afghanistani Gitmo. The judge did not object to prisoners who were picked up in Afghanistan, just to prisoners who are arrested in other countries and then transported to the Bagram prison where the judge’s ruling pointed out they were “physically beyond the reach of the Constitution.”
No doubt the Obama administration is facing a huge dilemma: if they continue the illegal detention and torture of prisoners, they are certain to create more hostility against the US, essentially more potential terrorists. But, if they release the detainees, those are bound to be some really pissed off guys, more potential terrorists.
I understand this is a difficult decision. But the US is in peril if we don’t continue to show that we have parted ways with the arrogance of the Bush Administration where treatment of foreign nationals is concerned.
On Thursday, Obama will show his cards in his administration’s stand on torture. Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed after a long internal battle (against John Brennan) to declassify and release memos from the Bush Justice Department detailing specific techniques allowed for use against “high-value” detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Either the memos will provide full disclosure, be partially redacted, or the Obama Administration will refuse to release them all together. If Obama provides full transparency, then we can say that his administration has chosen to forgo secrecy. If they withhold the memos, then we can assume they’ve decided to protect the Bush Administration, and most likely will continue on the path that brought our country so much shame internationally.
Adding fuel to the proverbial fire, Spain is suing Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Doug Feith and William Haynes for their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens at Guantanamo. Why is Spain suing these Justice Department lawyers???
Because the US has not undertaken any investigation into the legality of torture under Bush. Glenn Greewald at Salon tells us why (emphasis mine):
The barriers to these prosecutions are numerous, but one of the principal obstacles is that CIA Director Leon Panetta has been emphatically demanding that there be no investigations of any government officials whose conduct was declared legal by DOJ lawyers (i.e., the very individuals the Spanish are now investigating for war crimes). And it’s not surprising that Panetta has taken this position given that at least two of his top deputies at the CIA are among those implicated, to one degree or another, in the torture regime [...]
…Take Stephen Kappes. At the time of the worst torture sessions outlined in the ICRC report, Kappes served as a senior official in the Directorate of Operations—the operational part of the CIA that oversees paramilitary operations as well as the high-value detention program. (The directorate of operations is now known as the National Clandestine Service.) Panetta has kept Kappes as deputy director of the CIA—the number two official in the agency.
And why is it that Stephen Kappes was made the number 2 officials at the CIA despite his being in a key CIA position during the implementation of America’s torture regime? Because the two most important Senate Democrats on intelligence matters — Jay Rockefeller and Dianne Feinstein — insisted that he be so empowered as a condition for their supporting Panetta’s nomination, after both of them first demanded that Kappes actually be made CIA Director.
Rockefeller and Feinstein? Wow, what too many years in Washington will do to a person, eh?
Obama may feel the need to appease hawkish Democrats and Republicans by continuing this shameful practice of torture in secret prisons. And, these people imprisoned for six or more years without any representation at all (!) may in fact be very bad people. If they are, let them stand trial. That’s the way justice is supposed to work here in the land of the free.
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