There is an old adage about hypocrisy; “Do as I say, not as I do.” That adage appears, in virtually every aspect of American interactions, whether on an individual plane, a societal plane, or perhaps most especially on an international plane.
The initial motivation for this essay was new information from IndictBushNow.org;
“…on April 3, at a meeting of over 150 lawyers, legal scholars and human rights campaigners, Ramsey Clark, founder of Indict Bush Now, was chosen to be the chairperson of an international campaign to investigate war crimes committed by officials from the Bush administration.”
Further motivation came from an article at Truthout.org:
“…in a sworn declaration obtained exclusively by Truthout, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell during George W. Bush's first term in office, claims that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others knew the "vast majority" of prisoners captured in the so-called War on Terror were innocent and the administration refused to set them free once those facts were established because of the political repercussions that would have ensued.
“Wilkerson said he ‘made a personal choice to come forward and discuss the abuses that occurred because knowledge that I served in an Administration that tortured and abused those it detained at the facilities at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere and indefinitely detained the innocent for political reasons has marked a low point in my professional career and I wish to make the record clear on what occurred.’”
The Truthout.org article is a must-read as is Wilkerson’s sworn declaration (PDF).
Recently, Behind Blue Eyes posted a video released via a whistleblower inside the Pentagon who leaked the video posted by WikiLeaks, which is one more definitive piece of evidence against the Bush administration’s involvement in the horrors resulting from the illegal Iraq invasion. The video shows U.S. military helicopters killing Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters reporters.
Now comes this report from the Washington Post that Thomas A. Drake, former senior executive with the National Security Agency;
“has been indicted on 10 felony charges related to the leaking of classified information to a national newspaper in 2006 and 2007, the Justice Department announced Thursday morning.
“The case is one of the few leak investigations to reach the point of criminal charges in recent years and is likely to renew questions about how the Justice Department chooses to prosecute leaks.
“An appellate court's opinion in the Plame leak case took note that not all leakers are the same, and differentiated between those who are genuine whistle-blowers, trying to shine light on a government wrong, and those with a political agenda or ax to grind. Fitzgerald argued successfully that Libby and Cheney had been engaged in an effort to smear Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, and the leak of her identity was a political tactic.”
Cheney has never been charged, nor has any other high-ranking Bush Administration official involved in various criminal acts, although Donald Rumsfeld may soon face charges in a civil court (PDF). The evidence in that case is strong against Rumsfeld, as well as against other high-ranking Bush Administration officials. The evidence in that case is not new, however; the suit was filed in 2006, so the evidence has been known since that time when the suit was first filed and only now are seeing some kind of action, not from the government, but from civil authorities.
The American government, playing the role of legal obstructionist up to this point, has refused to hold members of the previous administration accountable for their crimes against humanity. That duty has fallen to the international community. A law professor filed a complaint in January 2010 with the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.):
Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, U.S.A. has filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” perpetrated upon about 100 human beings.
To make the point a little clearer, Huffingtonpost.com had an article by Arlen Specter on March 3, 2010, reporting the Supreme Court would hear oral arguments regarding the 1991 Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA), “which bars safe haven in this country for foreign practitioners of torture by subjecting them to U.S. laws against torture.”
Specter does not address the issue of how the Supreme Court might reconcile subjecting former members of foreign governments that ordered torture to U.S. laws against torture, while simultaneously allowing American government officials who ordered torture to avoid such accountability. One can only speculate about Specter’s view regarding that matter, but the conspicuous absence of the question, from his article, demonstrates perfectly the overriding approach of the Obama administration and many Americans to dealing with Bush administration crimes.
This blind-eye policy, of the current administration, towards the abuses of the previous administration has also seemingly, somewhat inexplicably, been adopted by much of the American citizenry. Fortunately, some have remained principled and continue to demand that those perpetrators of clearly criminal acts from the Bush administration be brought to justice and made to answer for their actions. Unfortunately, they are outgunned by the current administration’s Department of Justice, which continues to run interference in attempts to block any such justice.
So, the ugly task of rectifying the crimes of the Bush administration, a responsibility shirked by the U.S. government, falls to legal representatives of other countries, while our own country turns a blind eye towards its own leaders’ wrongs while condemning leaders of other countries for the same acts. How does a nation that prides itself on being a nation of laws, of “All men are created equal”, and “justice for all”, allow this to happen? How does such a nation justify leaving its dirty work to other nations, to “an international campaign to investigate”? There is another old adage; “Practice makes perfect.” So, perhaps the answer is, “With lots of practice.”
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Beth Winegarner
SnippytheGrammarDog
Paul Nevins
Chauncey DeVega
Belinda T.
Erica K
Salon.com
Comments
The pursuit of Thomas Drake for his principled and patriotic exposure of waste, incompetence and criminality at the NSA, while refusing to "look back" at the known felonies committed against innoicent American citizens and foreign civilians is a disgusting display of hypocrisy
There're plenty of things to be grateful for since the change from Bush to Obama, but restoration of civil liberties and the rule of law isn't among them
Thanks for starting the discussion. Either way we word it, it comes down to the same hypocritical act (or non-act?). I am just dumbstruck that more people are not pressuring this administration to act on this. I mean, every time a U.S. government official, judge, or law enforcement says anything about another country’s criminal acts or criminals, their words are meaningless as long as the current blind-eye attitude continues as is.
You write, “…he wants the same levels of ability to ‘pursue justice’ as Bush had,” and our choice of framing of the phrase “pursue justice” in quotation marks highlights precisely the problem; it is hypocrisy at its pinnacle. However, I’m not sure this administration is looking ONLY to future possibilities; it may well be considering past actions of its members, as well.
Good to see you stop by.
You write, “The pursuit of Thomas Drake […] while refusing to ‘look back’ at the known felonies [...] is a disgusting display of hypocrisy”
Yeah, I thought that particular fact, along with the SCOTUS hearing arguments about 1991 Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) would be enough to embarrass ANYONE with even a little conscience, or ethical/moral fiber. Either I’m just wrong about that, or these people running things clearly have neither.
Tom,
“This is one area where it looks like Mr Change is willing to ‘stay the course’”. Leave it to you to come up with another catchy turn of a phrase. Of that, you are a master craftsman. History will not be kind to any of us, I think, for we --- the collective we --- are truly responsible for allowing it.
It’s baffling.
Your erratic, seemingly impulsive appearances always crack me up. Thanks for stopping by once in a while.
I think, though, that in this instance you contradict your usual message a bit, as you are usually stating exactly what I have; that as long as we allow it, nothing will change. Regardless of how, I think we must bear some responsibility. I do, however, agree with you that there are those on whom it would be difficult to place blame due to their intellectually compromised condition.
"that as long as we allow it, nothing will change. Regardless of how, I think we must bear some responsibility."
This statement encompasses so many problems and so many possible solutions.
I agree. But, frankly, we are battling not only corporate corruption and control, but an unrelenting epidemic of STUPID in this country, right now. Today I was switching channels and saw somewhere (MSNBC, CNN?), perhaps an email message from a Tea Bagger that said, regarding taxes, “I don’t want to lose my social security; I wasn’t thinking in terms of things I need that I might lose.”
No, of course you weren’t, you DOLT! Can things be any stupider? Perhaps, which makes me afraid to ask …
What troubles me is that if that's the case, then Democracy is a sham. If it's really the case that the public can't know the real truth, the public can never vote usefully based on proper knowledge. And in that case, we ought not have it because it will only mess up what we need. But if someone wants to make that case, they need to make it. They ought not say “Oh, democracy is great and is working fine.” and then not practice it. That's confusing and leads to seemingly contradictory policy.
Though sometimes I wonder if the reason these things are not prosecuted doesn't amount to a kind of “temporal diplomatic immunity,” that is, diplomatic immunity across time rather than space. Normally we have a kind of “if you don't arrest me, I won't arrest you” policy among leaders. I think there's a similar kind of thing among suceeding leaders in the US. Arresting the last guy out of anger sort of sets yourself up to be hauled off for some trumped up thing or another when you're out of office yourself. I bet Presidents are strongly advised to be wary of that.
Of course the eventual question comes as to when practical produces more evil than good. After all, Hitler raised Germany out of depression (economic and emotional) and made the trains run on time ...
One can argue we didn't have the information Cheney et al had, but of course that is a tautological argument. Let's stick with what we know:
(1) No evidence had been presented that there was a "ticking bomb"
(2) The consensus among interrogation experts (save for the Cheney/Addington crowd -- who are NOT interrogation experts) was that no actionable intelligence was derived thru torture, and that on the contrary, torture only made prisoners more reluctant to talk or made them offer up false information
(3) Torture made it all but impossible to prosecute people for the crimes they did commit
No justification of efficacy, let alone necessity, can possibly explain waterboarding a prisoner 180-odd times, rather after the third or fourth such episode failed, that would seem to provide rather obvious evidence of a lack of efficacy -- and it would also provide evidence to me that some darker motive was at work -- see Torquemada for one likely explanation of aberrant behavior.
If we can't decry such behavior on moral grounds, we ought to at least be able to deny it on practical grounds.
You write, “Normally we have a kind of “if you don't arrest me, I won't arrest you” policy among leaders.”
Yup, and this is precisely the kind of hypocrisy I was addressing. They go after the little guys, like Thomas A. Drake, they denounce leaders of foreighn lands for doing the same things and set up laws so that those foreign officials might be prosecuted here under our laws, but our own leaders are immune to those same principles. I thought the article by Arlen Specter was especially revealing in this regard.
I guess the real question behind this particular post is, “What is this doing to our societal morals, to our ethical thinking, which was already deteriorating as Bush first came into office?”
You write, “…the eventual question comes as to when practical produces more evil than good.”
And the follow-up question there is, “How do you determine that; what criteria do you use?”
I don’t know; sometimes being “practical” is just a surrendering of will, a giving up, a betrayal of principles. I’m not sure Obama’s “practical approach” is doing anything to quell the mobs, anyway. I don’t recall seeing things like they are today.
Your description seems apt; “the country already torn apart over nonsense”
And if we were going to be torn apart over anything, I would prefer it be something meaningful, something that strengthens us rather than compromises and half-assed cosmetic non-solutions to real problems.
In the end, how does the SCOTUS reconcile hearing oral arguments about our own laws for prosecuting foreign leaders who ordered torture while ignoring our own?
Obama's administration has extended the criminal war in Afghanistan into the area of Pakistan, continued torturing of prisoners, continued illegal arresting and killing of people.
That seems to be the real reason why Obama is not going to prosecute GWB's administration. He is just the same, maybe even worse.
I think you argue purely from a provocateur’s perspective. Perhaps I’m wrong in that, but at least that would explain your arguments that do not address the actual issue at hand.
Tom has addressed your argument quite well, I think.
The kidnapped child scenario does not even come close in comparison with the circumstances presented here, or with what these American government officials did. And the kind of moral bankruptcy required to excuse what they did is what I’m particularly concerned with in this post.
But, one can turn your approach right around onto your own reality; suppose YOU were one of the innocents held for years without charges of any kind, no legal representation, and were being tortured repeatedly to get information from you that you did not have. I’m sure you see where that line is going.
Your argument exemplifies the very hypocrisy my post addresses; it’s okay as long as it’s not happening to ME, or as long as I’M the one doing the torturing. I’m reminded of one of Bush’s more honest moment’s during his presidency, which came inadvertently (the only way he could ever be honest), when he said;“ "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
”
“If we can't decry such behavior on moral grounds, we ought to at least be able to deny it on practical grounds.”
I really like that statement. I believe there is actual practicality in not allowing these criminals to go unabated about their lives as if they had never done anything wrong. The arguments from “practicality” against prosecuting them seem impractical to me. I think there is more to practicality than merely the political.
But the arguments from practicality are clear indicators of what this post addresses; I’m no absolutist, but I certainly recognize when something absolutely is wrong, and I think that excusing such things on a national level can only lead to an overall deterioration of the national conscience.
Myriad’s reference to Nazi Germany and Hitler’s rise is definitely on point here.
There has been much speculation about the reasons for Obama’s Department of Justice not prosecuting Bush administration officials, and your assertion has certainly been prominent among speculators. I think Obama and his administration, as well as Dems in Congress, have engaged in many acts that cast suspicion on their motives.
Obama spoke of hope during his campaign; my only hope at this point is that all of this turmoil will somehow turn into something better.
I think the same indifference that has allowed the criminals from the Bush regime to not be prosecuted is the same indifference that allows our jobs to be shipped overseas by corporations that find cheap wage-slave-labor there. It’s all part and parcel of the same hypocrisy and failure of national conscience.
None of those other countries “stole” our technology, our government of corporations sold it to them, and shipped it over there for the same reason as cited above.
Interestingly, you seem to be equating worrying about plagiarism in blog land with concern about torture and murderous violations of international laws. Perhaps that is not your intention, though.
If mainstream medias would start publishing extensively about the criminal activities of the administration of Obama the public would get outraged and start demanding with demonstrations that something should be done.
Another way is to publish things on this kind of sites as OS. The site will get more and more popular if these things will get published only here.
Thank you a lot for your post.
Afraid that OS will never be big and influential - tho look at Huff as an example of a blog site that actually is, possibly, a bit influential...
But still there is hope when more and more people start to understand their freedom has been taken and their money for reading that rubbish and their support for their political leaders are used for killing people. Similar people as they are.
I'm sometimes reading the Huffington Post. Actually I just came from their website back here. That news site besides Salon are kind of proofs and examples that quality news are still possible.
"reporters and readers both are interested in flash and fake conflict and blood and such, not the boring nutz&boltz of life and the economy."
I think is really a huge part of the problem. But why does it exist? I think the problem is much like the problem of religion. People are indoctrinated into a certain belief from their earliest ages, and that becomes a biological circuit in their brains, the manner in which their worldview is formed.
The "flash and fake conflict" is accepted as reality of a bigger belief that is an illusion; the illusion of conservative versus progressive in American government as it currently exists.