Bush abuses his war powers
The United States is at war, having been attacked in the most atrocious manner
on September 11. The overwhelming majority of Americans, and indeed most of
the world's nations, have rallied behind the US forces commanded by President
George W. Bush in the ensuing war against the Al Qaeda network and the now-deposed
Taliban regime.
From the start, there has been a conflict within the Bush administration about
just what the "War on Terrorism" should entail. The American people
and America's closest allies are united in supporting actions against Al Qaeda
and the Taliban, but hawkish voices have also been calling for an invasion of
Iraq, escalated US intervention in Colombia's civil war, US support for Israel's
attacks on its Arab neighbors, and so on.
To be sure, the destruction of the Al Qaeda network, which has strong underground
components in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria, and cells throughout
the world, will be a more difficult task than was the elimination of their Afghan
base. This war did not end with the fall of Kabul.
It may, in fact, have escalated and gone astray. On the day that Kabul fell,
Bush issued a far-reaching military order providing that "terrorists"
who are not US-citizens will be tried by US military tribunals. Vice-president
Cheney defended this order, citing the trial of those accused of conspiring
to assassinate Abraham Lincoln as the historical precedent.
Those who know the details of that trial will know that Bush and Cheney are
calling for legal charades that will hand out death sentences and convict the
innocent and guilty alike. In the Lincoln assassination trial, the defendants
were confined in suffocating canvas hoods, the defense lawyers were not allowed
to defend their clients, the most scurrilous and transparently fraudulent "evidence"
was allowed into the record and both the innocent and the guilty were condemned.
The imprisonment of Dr. Samuel Mudd, the physician who set John Wilkes Booth's
broken leg without knowing anything about his patient's role in the Lincoln
assassination, lives on in history as a monument to the politicized injustice
that comes out of US military tribunals.
Worse yet, Bush's military order does not just apply to Al Qaeda operatives
acting in the United States, but to "terrorists" in general; and it
does not end when the US war against Al Qaeda ends. So now we face the prospect,
for example, of Colombia's civil conflict being aggravated by the trials of
suspected leftist rebels by American military courts. Such an event would leave
the United States more isolated in the court of world opinion than it ever has
been before.
George W. Bush's military order of November 13 may mark the beginning of the
end of the global coalition that he has assembled to fight Al Qaeda. It might
be a popular cause with conservative white voters in Texas, but most of the
world won't support death penalties handed down after grossly unfair trials.
The proper legal response to international terrorism is through an impartial
and permanent international criminal court, not through US military tribunals
whose members are subject to pressure from superiors to hand down convictions.
Bear in mind...
The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live
as the greatest he.
John Lilburne
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character,
give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
A food is not necessarily essential just because your child hates it.
Katharine Whitehorn
