Justice

Is there anything more absurd than the U.S. Congress's decision to deny funds to close Guantanamo, on the grounds that this might result in detainees being held on American soil? Excuse me, but isn't this taking the "not-in-my-backyard" principle to absurd lengths? We're not talking about letting a suspected terrorist walk around free in your hometown while he awaits trial; we talking about putting them in jail while they are tried (and by a military tribunal). If convicted, they'd end up in prison (along with over 200,000 other federal prisoners already incarcerated and the more than 3,000 convicted murderers now on death row). If acquitted, they could still be deported.  

This episode betrays a certain schizophrenia about America's role as a world power. On the one hand, the foreign policy elite continually tells Americans that the United States is the "leader of the free world," and that they have a long list of global responsibilities. As a result, the United States spends a lot of money on its national security apparatus, tells lots of countries how to run their own affairs, maintain an extensive array of military bases, and send its armed forces into harm’s way in various faraway lands. Indeed, William Pfaff is not far off in saying that the United States has become "addicted to war."

But on the other hand, U.S politicians somehow believe that all this overseas activity shouldn't have any impact here at home, apart from making us stand in long security lines at the airport. So President Bush didn't raise taxes to pay for the war on terror or the war in Iraq, and now Congress doesn't think the American people would tolerate having a couple of hundred suspected terrorists in prison somewhere in the United States.  

Frankly, if Americans are that skittish and self-absorbed, the country has no business exercising any sort of "global leadership" and the various Congresspersons who voted to deny the funds should immediately demand the abrogation of all existing alliances, the termination of all military activities overseas, and a return to a strict policy of isolationism. I don't think that's a good idea, by the way, but at least our Congressional representatives would be being consistent.

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A couple of commenters suggested that my previous post on the Harman affair was adopting a "guilty until proven innocent" approach. Not true. I did say that I wasn't buying the spin offered by some of her defenders, but that doesn't mean I accept the CQ story as gospel either. I made two main points: 1) the idea that Harman might have traded favors in the manner implied by the CQ story had a certain prima facie plausibility (which doesn’t mean was in fact true, of course), and 2) that I hoped more information would become available so that we could determine what actually occurred. I also said I hoped that the transcript of the conversation between Harman would be released, so that we could all know exactly what was said (and to whom). Representative Harman agrees, and has now called for the transcript of the wiretapped calls to be made public. I hope it is.

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On the torture memos: I’m not a lawyer, but I think I understand the political calculations that led Obama to say that his administration would not be prosecuting individuals for their role in this loathsome episode. He understood that this could reach very far up in the Bush administration, and that beginning a legal process would be divisive and cost him some swing votes he thinks he’ll need on other issues. So the principals in the Bush administration torture regime may end up with a free pass, at least in terms of criminal prosecution. But I have three thoughts:

First, a lot of countries (including the United States) have expended considerable diplomatic effort to hold people like Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic or Liberia’s Charles Taylor accountable for their crimes. Apparently Obama feels that this principle can be jettisoned when it might be politically expedient to do so. At a minimum, we ought to remember this incident the next time we get upset that some other country is declining to prosecute a former leader, turning a blind eye to some other ruler's depredations (think Robert Mugabe), or cutting a deal with some warlord or terrorist leader.  Maybe they were making pragmatic calculations too, and we holier-than-thou Americans ought to be a bit less judgmental. 

Second, does our failure to prosecute open the door to other efforts to do so? A number of states (France, Canada, Belgium, Spain, etc.) have incorporated a principle of “universal jurisdiction” into their own domestic legal systems, when dealing with genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity (including torture). This principle can be invoked when the home country of the alleged perpetrator is "unwilling or unable to prosecute"  Earlier reports suggesting that Spanish officials were going to indict six former Bush administration officials eventually led Spain's attorney general to say that U.S. courts would be the proper venue, but Obama has now made it clear that this isn't going to happen. I don’t know what the practical implications might be, but if I were Dick Cheney or David Addington, I wouldn’t be planning a summer vacation in Spain.

Third, for those of you who think that power is of declining relevance in world politics and that normative and legal standards are becoming increasingly important, I'd just point out that the various officials who sanctioned these abuses would be in a lot more trouble if they came from a  weak and vulnerable state, as opposed to a global power like the United States. Not only does power corrupt, but it allows people who sanction torture to get away with it, albeit at some considerable cost to America's image and reputation. Those reputational costs will be borne by all Americans, who ought to be furious at the crimes that were committed in their name.