Maybe Legal, Certainly Not Moral

There are old and new Nazis in Germany and Austria who argue that Hitler’s Third Reich never had concentration camps. When confronted with unambiguous evidence to the contrary, they add: Sure, there were concentration camps, but they stood on the territory of what was then called the “Generalgouvernement Poland.”

Ridiculous? Maybe, but more than current when considering a report in the Times about Tuesday’s decision by a Federal Appeal’s Court, which upheld the administration’s practice of detention and extraordinary rendition without habeas corpus and due process. The administration and some of it’s sycophants in Congress were jubilant. After all, this decision enables them to portray themselves as obeying the law even while they are wrecking the constitution and civil liberties and human rights. But all they might have won is a legal battle and not the moral argument.

In Nazi-Germany, the mass detention and, later, murder of non-Aryans, of Jews, of Blacks, of homosexuals and many other groups was also covered by orders and (pseudo-)legal decrees. But when defendants at the Nuremberg trials used this fact as a defensive strategy, they were told--and rightly so--that such legal decisions did not absolve them from the moral responsibility as defined by the declaration of human rights.

History will judge the behavior of the US administration along similar lines. Future students will be shocked to learn that their government, their parliament, and their court system condoned the imprisonment of people without giving them a chance to learn about the charges against them. They will be horrified to find out that the US whisked citizens of foreign countries off the streets of their hometowns and flew them to places which the US president liked to condemn as harbingers of terrorism. And let’s hope that these future students will be disgusted, for if they won’t be, this country will indeed have become a police state.

Europeans Bewildered By Bush's Ideological Stubbornness

A brief look at some European daily newspapers yesterday and today results in a unified impression of bewilderment: What is this guy thinking? Representative for the mood is a commentary in the German daily Die Süddeutsche Zeitung. Commentator Peter Lindner states:

“Bush’s new plan reads like a counter-concept to the report of the Baker-Hamilton Committee. The plan won’t bring peace, but rather has the potential to further instigate hostilities in Iraq. Bush’s new plan is nothing but additional evidence for his helplessness.”

David Brooks, Mega-Spinner

In his daily New York Times column, David Brooks provided this assessment of the president’s speech about his “new” Iraq policy:

“If the Democrats don’t like the U.S. policy on Iraq over the next six months, they have themselves partly to blame. There were millions of disaffected Republicans and independents ready to coalesce around some alternative way forward, but the Democrats never came up with anything remotely serious.
The liberals who favor quick exit never grappled with the consequences of that policy, which the Baker-Hamilton commission terrifyingly described. The centrists who believe in gradual withdrawal never explained why that wouldn’t be like pulling a tooth slowly. Joe Biden, who has the most intellectually serious framework for dealing with Iraq, was busy yesterday, at the crucial decision-making moment, conducting preliminary fact-finding hearings, complete with forays into Iraqi history.”

While the description of the dissonant democratic chorus is correct, the democrats are not to be blamed for inheriting this mess. True, many Dems initially voted for the war, and I hope that there will be a serious discussion of this in the future. But, more importantly, Brooks is at the forefront of a group of spinners who want us to forget that the situation as we face it now has somehow descended upon the Bush-Administration which is doing the best it can to solve it. No, no, and no: It has to be said loud and clearly that the responsibility for the situatin in Iraq lies with Bush. There must be accountability, and the Democrats in Congress aren’t the ones to take the blame for a lack of administrative perspective.

In fact, we hope that the Democrats will be relentless in their pursuit of the lies, deceptions, and outright constitutional crimes that led to this war and the range of “collateral damage” (fraud, corruption, embezzlement, etc.).

The questions remains: When will Brooks come clean and admit that he supported an administration, a president, who (mis)led us, the American people, into a situation for which we have to pay so dearly, in blood and in money.