Hamdan Vs. the Flagrant Hypocrisy of the Bush Administration

[Time for change]

The recent Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld decision by our USSC sparked a great deal of outrage (feigned or otherwise) from the Wall Street Journal and right wing jerks in general. The two main arguments put forth by those opposed to the Hamdan decision are that it: 1) impairs the ability of our President to prosecute his “War on Terror” with “speed and decisiveness”; and 2) treats al-Qaida terrorist suspects just like American servicemen and women. But as Aziz Huq explains in today’s Tom Paine article, What Geneva Means to Hamdan, the Hamdan decision does nothing of the sort. And not only that, but it lays bare the flagrant hypocrisy with which the George W. Bush administration has been pursuing their “War on Terror”.


The right wing outrage is based on misunderstanding of the Geneva Convention – sincere or otherwise

First of all, the portion of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 that is in question, Common Article 3, applies only to the treatment of persons who are no longer fighting. In other words, it poses no constraints on our military’s use of force, and therefore does not impair the “speed and decisiveness” with which George Bush pursues his “War on Terror”. In any event, it strains credulity to imagine that being required to give someone a fair trial would impair the ability of our military to act with “speed and decisiveness”.

Secondly, the rules for the treatment of our servicemen (if captured) are very different than the rules for the treatment of those of our prisoners who do not qualify under the Geneva Convention for prisoner of war status. Most important, prisoners of war are entitled to “combatant immunity”, which means that they cannot be tried for acts committed as a soldier in the course of fighting a war. In contrast, the prisoners that we hold, if determined not to be prisoners of war, do not get combatant immunity or certain other benefits.


The hypocrisy of George W. Bush

But Bush wants it both ways, thereby putting our prisoners into a classic catch-22 position. On the one hand he denies them prisoner of war status, thereby denying them the many rights that such a status would entail. But on the other hand he refuses to provide them with the opportunity for a fair determination of whether or not they are really “illegal combatants” – by either indefinitely postponing their trial or by providing them only with a secret military tribunal. In effect, he is judging them guilty until proven innocent – and worse, he isn’t even giving them sufficient opportunity to prove their innocence. Hence, a total inversion of the proud American tradition of “innocent until proven guilty”. And furthermore, even if they are determined to be illegal combatants, the Geneva Conventions still insist that they can’t be tortured.


Why on earth do Americans accept this in their name?

I believe that there are three factors operating here to keep U.S. citizens quiescent about all this:

First, we are led to believe that those prisoners whom we are holding at Guantanamo and in Iraq and elsewhere, as part of our “War on Terror”, are the “worst of the worst”, barely even human, and deserving of less human rights than a fetus, or even an unfertilized egg.

Secondly, the great majority of people whom we are holding are Muslim, and ethnically different from the good majority of American citizens. Therefore, most Americans think that they personally have nothing to worry about.

And thirdly, to compound everything else, our corporate news media does an excellent job of withholding from us the information we need to make decisions on matters such as this.

And maybe there’s a fourth factor too: FEAR


But let’s take an honest look at these so-called terrorists

As Aziz Huq points out in his article:

There is real doubt about whether substantial numbers of Guantánamo detainees have any connection to al-Qaida or the Taliban… Congress and the American public are still slowly learning that Guantánamo detainees are in fact innocent of all conduct, that we have been frittering away our money, manpower and reputation not on the “worst of the worst,” but on shepherds and farmers because the {Bush} administration declined to sort the innocent from the guilty.

For example, Major General Antonio Taguba, following his investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, determined “A lack of proper screening meant that many innocent Iraqis were being detained – in some cases indefinitely.” And Taguba added that 60% of civilian prisoners at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released.

Similarly, the International Red Cross said that between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.

Captain James Yee, former Muslim U.S. Army chaplain, who provided ministerial services at Guantanamo Bay for several months, comments throughout his book, For God and Country, that the more he got to know the prisoners the more difficult it was to picture them as terrorists, or criminals of any kind, while providing numerous details to support those conclusions.

And as Jimmy Carter has pointed out in his recent book, “Our Endangered Values”, at least 107 of our detainees have been identified as being under the age of 18, with some are as young as eight years old.


What are the consequences?

It pains me to say it, but one very unfortunate consequence of this Bush administration policy is that, despite an overall 37% approval rating, 64% of Americans have a lot or a moderate degree of confidence in the Bush administration’s ability to protect them against terrorist attacks. So his ability to project the illusion of protecting us against terrorism is holding up his dismal approval numbers. And what fosters that illusion? His swaggering and the ruthless (and cowardly, though most people don’t see it that way) manner in which he treats his totally defenseless prisoners. It’s a very sad commentary on the state of our country, and it’s obviously greatly facilitated by our corporate media’s failure to do its job.

And what effect does the example we’re setting have on democracy and human rights movements throughout the world? Here’s what Jimmy Carter had to say about that after attending an international human rights and democracy conference that was sponsored by his Carter Center:

The participants were in broad agreement that recent policies of the United States were being adopted … They told of a general retreat by their governments from previous human rights commitments, and emphasized that there was a danger of setting back democratic movements by decades in some of their countries…. Oppressive leaders had been emboldened to persecute and silence outspoken citizens under the guise of fighting terrorism…. The consequence was that many lawyers, professors, doctors, and journalists had been labeled terrorists, often for merely criticizing a particular policy or for carrying out their daily work. We heard about many cases involving human rights attorneys being charged with abetting terrorists simply for defending accused persons.

[acmejack]

1. Common Article Three!

snip>
But Geneva is a comprehensive framework for everyone captured in warfare. Hence, it has a minimal baseline standard for any person captured during wartime, a baseline that precludes “utrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment,” and also criminal trials outside of a “regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.” This is “Common Article 3.”

Further, there is good cause—in strictly counter-terrorism terms—to apply Common Article 3 to alleged members of the Taliban and al-Qaida. It is generally believed around the world that many of those detained at Guantánamo are in fact innocent of all connection with either the Taliban or al-Qaida. It is hard to imagine how a trial that does not respect “the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples” could convince others that Guantánamo detainees are properly detained. Unfair trials will make it more difficult to win the ideological battle at the heart of counter-terrorism.

Common Article 3 is especially important now because there is real doubt about whether substantial numbers of Guantánamo detainees have any connection to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Geneva tells states to take the common-sense measures of holding swift hearings on the battlefield to distinguish combatants from those swept in accidentally. But the administration decided to forego these essential procedures “to make a point—that the president can designate them all enemy combatants if he wants to.” Congress and the American public are still slowly learning that Guantánamo detainees are in fact innocent of all conduct, that we have been frittering away our money, manpower and reputation not on the “worst of the worst,” but on shepherds and farmers because the administration declined to sort the innocent from the guilty.

Adherence to Common Article 3, in line with the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan, is thus not the blow to counter-terrorism measures that the Journal claims. It is a necessary, eminently practical tool in a difficult, long-term battle. It is the line we cannot cross without losing our claim to moral and political leadership. And it is a standard we fall short of at our own risk.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/07/what_geneva_means_to_hamdan.php

[Time for change]

2. Yep

"It is the line we cannot cross without losing our claim to moral and political leadership."

Absolutely! We've already crossed that line, and the damage will not be repaired until we get rid of Repuke control of our country.