It’s nice that the Seventh District Court of Appeals says that Donald Rumsfeld can be sued for torture, but we all know he should be in prison along with Bush and Cheney, as well as other senior military and intelligence officials. This cannot be seriously disputed. The Obama administration decided not to treat the outgoing party as a pack of war criminals, and I can understand the desire to avoid making his first term all about accountability for Bush’s crimes. But those crimes won’t wash away with the sands of time. They will look worse with each passing year. And Obama will be somewhat tainted by them as well. Too bad Obama’s magnanimity wasn’t reciprocated in the slightest.
I hope Rumsfeld loses his case and has to pay everything he owns to the plaintiffs, but even that wouldn’t begin the scratch the surface of justice.
As could have been Kissinger, Nixon, the entire upper command of the U.S. armed forces during the Vietnam War, the Iraq adventure, the still ongoing kidnapping, illegal rendition, imprisonment and torture of so-called “suspected” terrorists/guerrillas/al Queda etc., Reagan, Bush I, Cheney for his first first tour of duty as Secretary Of Offense, the entire Clinton administration and every executive official of the CIA since its inception. .
Why hasn’t this happened? Because the entire system is a criminal conspiracy. Take one down and you must take them all down, including Obama. He is complicit in the Afghanistan scam, among many other things…the totally illegal “murder” and stinking-to-high-heaven disposal of bin Laden’s body at sea among them.
You cannot single one out without convicting them all.
Ready for that, Booman?
You’re an Obama supporter, right?
Ready for that?
I didn’t think so.
S.
There was nothing illegal about killing Usama Biin-Laden. Not under American law, and it’s a stretch to make the case under international law. In fact, considering the circumstances, we probably could have legally declared war on Pakistan and turned it to glass. If this is a war on terror, it is first and foremost a war on the assholes who attacked us and any idiots who would give them safe harbor. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, we didn’t recognize any sovereignty behind which the culprits could hide. That’s not the problem.
Look. You’re trying to keep deep. I understand what you’re saying. Everyone is complicit in the ultra violence. An empire will commit its crimes. I get it.
I distinguish between Iraq/Abu Ghraig/Cheney and Clinton/Iraq/Albright. If you can’t then you are just going to indict anyone who runs the American enterprise. I can respect that point of view without endorsing it.
I don’t think the people of Iraq would distinguish between that. I agree with both you and Arthur. As GreenCaboose and I discussed on another thread somewhere, it is of my opinion that any president of the United States is a war criminal by default. But then you have people who fit the bill that are complicit in those crimes that it’s beyond the pale to ignore.
For example, anyone who honestly believes the US didn’t torture before Bush is beyond delusional. Even if you ignore Bill Clinton’s renditions, there’s bound to be countless areas of torture before him. The difference between what Bush did and what previous presidents did, however, is the institutionalization of it. Bringing in doctors to make sure people weren’t tortured “too much”; lawyers to argue that what they did was perfectly legal; force your armed forces to partake, etc etc. That’s when you flip the switch and become an outright “torture state.”
You are a partisan forgiver, Booman. Shame on you.
Dems are immune to the same laws?
Please.
Is it legal to kill civilians in a declared war? How about an undeclared war? These petty legalisms suck. Sorry, but there it is. Was the firebombing of Dresden “legal?” Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki “legal?” Dem presidents both. Are the so-called collateral damage drone killings in Afghanistan “legal?” Please. If there is a court that would say those kinds of mass executions are legal, than it is the system and the law that should be changed.
The media are presently all over Tony Bennet for having the temerity to publicly suggest that the U.S. asked for the 9/11 attack by its actions.
He didn’t even get into the economic imperialist system that causes such conflicts in the first place. I was channel surfing last night at about 11PM looking for something real on TV (I do keep trying) and l hit NYC’s CBS affiliate’s nightime local news show as it started. It went 5 minutes or more on what Bennet said, and it did so in the most jingoistic manner imaginable.
Ron Paul, who is without a doubt winning every RatPub debate and straw poll, is basically saying the same thing. He basically can’t get any media coverage.
Hmmmmmm…
The fix is in, and it is a nasty, murderous fix.
It’s not about “politics” anymore, Booman. It’s about right and wrong. Bin Laden changed all of that when he wrote:
A simpler, more honest summation of what is up here in the United Staes has never been written. From slavery through the Native American genocide, Vietnam and right on through to today’s TechWar slaughter…there it is.
There it is.
You cannot…although you obviously do…forgive DemRat murderers while condemning RatPub ones. It’s a gestalt, this system as it stands today, and it is a truly rotten one at that.
Sorry, but…there it is, Booman.
Deal wid it.
Or not, as you must.
And the beat goes on.
Later…
S.
There is a certain beauty in simple clear arguments. They can be convincing and compelling. But you cannot account for America’s role in the world in the post-war era, or even in the post-Cold War era with such a simple moral formula. I cannot think of one positive thing that al-Qaeda has ever done. The equivalence may seem to be there, but it is not. Not even remotely. Things are much more complicated than arguing that our country counts Arab lives cheap.
You “cannot think of one positive thing that al-Qaeda has ever done.” Many others would disagree with you. Like…those who died for the idea, among others.
You want to talk about simplistic, Booman?
Are they?
What if it was your little house in the woods, wife and young child under the drone gun?
Please.
The United States and its Western European/Pacific Rim allies have bogarted the joint for a long, long time. They have done so at the point of a gun. But now those who have been economically imperialized have found a weapon that will break their oppressors and they are using it.
Are they “right?” Do two wrongs make a right? Not in my universe they don’t. But if we were to give up our “right”…the right to live high on the hog while the other 90% of the population of the world scuffles because we have (or at least we used to have) sufficient weaponry to enforce our ongoing theft of goods and services…al Qaeda and other anti-U.S. terror-based militaries would disappear in a matter of years. Why? How? Because their raison d’etre would be gone. Those that continued to fight on some sort of ideological an/ or fundamentalist plane? They would lose once the people they are presently representing were no longer scuffling because they would not have the necessary support of those people.
This is precisely what Ron Paul is saying when he goes all isolationist on us, and he is right on the money. But the MONEY money doesn’t want to give up its privileges, so it stuffs his message in the circular filing cabinet and promotes its imperialist agenda by only paying media attention to those who are on board with that agenda. RatPub or DemRat, no matter.
Simple?
Hardly.
Deadly?
You betcha.
Deadly to those in the countries where this war is being fought out daily and potentially just as deadly to the U.S. Deadly in an economic sense, for sure. Look around. And deadly in both a social sense and also in the possibility that some terrorst tactics might escalate into the use of dirty bombs or nuclear sabotage.
Could happen, Booman. Where’s your nearest nuke plant? Mine’s 20 miles north of da Bronx.
UH oh!!!
We cannot maintain this posture much longer.
Bet on it.
Difficult?
Yes.
But bet against what I am saying and you are betting your child’s future.
Willing to do that, are you?
I hope not.
I really do.
Later…
AG
I refer you to a piece I posted twice:
First Instance
Second Instance
Very interesting case.
.
Came with human [?] kind and stretches throughout history of Roman and Biblical times. In “modern” civilization torture should be eradicated, just like hunger and utter poverty. Not in my lifetime …
Perhaps abolishing the death penalty is a first litmus test of civilization. Bangladesh, China, Iran, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, UAE and the USA are not quite there yet.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I can understand not wanting to get bogged down in war-crimes prosecutions while there is a huge, unfolding financial crisis underway (i.e., the situation in early 2009).
So just outsource the prosecutions to the ICC: few quick “renditions” to The Hague and it’s out of our hands.