Actions Have Consequences
This is Paul Wolfowitz. The head of the World Bank, he is under fire for using his position to get his girlfriend a cushy job and a huge pay raise. Now this is hypocritical because, as a full-on Neocon Bushie, he had been using an artificial, selective, disingenuous anti-corruption platform to inject Right Wing Bush Administration policies into what has been up to now, and what is supposed to be, a politically neutral agency.
Typical conservative hypocrisy, sure, but here's the interesting part. If it had been most anyone else, the small violation of good faith, this almost understandable overreach in the name of cronyism would have been overlooked, or at most handled quietly and administratively. It certainly would not have resulted in the tumult and shouting we have now, and that Bank President's job would be safe.
Wolfowitz's job is most certainly not safe, with most Bank employees openly wearing blue ribbons to signify their dissatisfaction with his leadership and a number of world leaders, along with the Bank's leadership calling for his dismissal. Why, you might ask, would such a small transgression result in such a large outcry and it's attendant consequences?
Paul Wolfowitz is known as the "Architect of the Iraq War". As early as 1972, as an analyst in the Pentagon he worked with a group that came to be known as "B Team", examining raw intelligence and questioning the assumptions inherent in the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate. In what would become a recognizable pattern, he refused to accept the CIA's "conventional" findings, in this case about the capabilities and intentions of the Soviet Union. B Team produced a report describing a number of secret Soviet superweapons, not a single one of which has turned out to ever even have existed. But that report did serve to turn the US away from what had been "detente" with the Soviet Union under Nixon to a much more adversarial footing under Reagan.
By 1977 Wolfowitz had discovered Iraq. Even then he was warning that the NATO and the west were at risk if Iraq, the dominant military in the Gulf region, were to seize the oilfields. This lead to two things. First, the wests vast expenditures to support and arm the Saudis, and second, it was the beginnings of a core group of American policy makers, including Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith and Libby to agitate for war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
It would take them two and a half decades, but with the election of George Bush as President and Dick Cheney as VP, they got their chance. Driven by Wolfowitz, now Undersecretary of Defense, they exploited the 9/11 attacks, used false or misleading intelligence and ignored any intelligence that couldn't be made to support their position to create the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. With nearly a million dead, as many as another two million displaced, Iraq utterly dysfunctional and every other oil-producing nation in the region at risk of being torn apart by the bitter sectarian and nationalist violence that was unleashed by this illegal and unnecessary occupation, the world knows Wolfowitz's role in bringing about this horror. Everyone knows there is much blood on his clean academic hands, and all the people who have suffered because he treats the world like a giant "Risk" gameboard holds him responsible.
So now, after causing a great upheaval of death and suffering, he is rewarded with the prestigious position of President of the World Bank. But he cannot just walk away from his history. He is responsible for the greatest crime of this century so far, and he will not find peace or continued success. He is hated, for good reason, and there is no transgression he can commit, no mis-step he can make, no lapse in judgement he can have that will not be used to repeatedly punish him.
It is widely believed he deserves nothing less than a cell in The Hague. Indeed, we may yet see that in his lifetime, but until then, he should not expect to be treated as a fellow member of the human race. If he is not a monster, he has acted monstrously, and actions have consequences.
Oh man, I Can Just Picture it Now
From the Associated Press:
MURRELLS INLET, S.C. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain told voters Wednesday that if he becomes commander in chief he'll brief the public biweekly from the Oval Office on developments in the Iraq war.
[Snip]
McCain decried the idea of a timeline for U.S. withdrawal from the country, saying it would spawn chaos, and committed to a long-term fight on terrorism. "We're going to win. We will. We will never surrender".
Sure. Ok. This is just exactly what we need. We'd have a President who would go on TV twice a month and blow happy smoke up our ass about Iraq. After his stroll through that Baghdad market and his mindless, idiotic statements about the conditions in Iraq post-surge, I have no doubts that his so-called briefings from the Oval Office would be nothing more than a dishonest sell-job for perpetual war in the middle east.
...And Justice for All?
There are many stories to be told about the individuals in Guantanamo, Baghram, Abu Ghraib and the other prisons in the US gulag. Some are about bad, dangerous men made uncontrollably angry and dangerous by years of custody, isolation, torture and lack of due process. Many, probably most, are about innocent young men sold to the US as terrorists to make a few dollars, or to settle a score. Because America, as a nation, lost it's way and it's will to live by it's own rules after September 11th, all these stories are egregious violations of everything we believed and everything we believed America stood for. In our terror, we allowed ourselves, as a nation, to be afraid of a few individuals, to the point where we wouldn't let these wretched individuals communicate with their families or be represented by attorneys. That is certainly sickening, but it's sad too. It's the demise of a great idea, and the success of terrorists, whose goal, after all, was to terrorize America into changing. It worked.
But some of these stories are not quite as clear cut as that. Some occupy that grey area that an honest system of justice can address if allowed to work. When not allowed to work, they represent a travesty of justice. John Walker Lindh, an American citizen, was captured by US forces in Afghanistan in late November 2001. David Hicks, an Australian, was also captured in Afghanistan by US forces less than a month later.
When Lindh was captured, he had been wounded and in very bad conditions with little food, shelter or clean water for a week. Instead of giving him medical care and food, he was duct-taped naked to a stretcher and left for days freezing in a metal shipping container. Hicks was captured by a warlord and given to US special forces for $1000.00. Tortured, mistreated and held in solitary confinement at the US Detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Cuba for years, it appeared that he would spend the rest of his life in American Military custody.
Then came political strife for the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard. He's fighting for his political life, with elections this year and his popularity plummeting due to his support for the deeply unpopular Bush administration and the Iraq war. So our own Darth Vadar, Dick Cheney went down there and cut a deal. Hicks would get a plea bargain - seven years, with all but seven months suspended. Interesting, as that keeps him in prison only until the end of the year - with elections to be held in October or November. Plus, as part of the agreement, he cannot speak about his captivity for a year, and he can never sue the US or seek redress for his illegal treatment in US custody.
But John Lindh had the misfortune to come to trial less than a year after the September eleventh terrorist attacks, while the US was still at the height of anti-terrorism hysteria. So he pleaded guilty to two minor charges - joining the Taliban army and carrying a weapon - and accepted a
twenty year sentence. That's right. Hicks is held for five years without trial, convicted on actual terrorism charges and yet will serve less than a year in prison in Australia. Lindh got twenty years without ever being convicted of any terror related charge.
This unacceptable miscarriage of justice can easily be rectified. John Walker Lindh is not a threat to America. John Lindh has clearly served enough time. Let this misguided young man, who certainly made some bad choices, none of which harmed any American other than himself, go home to his family. To continue to imprison him at this point is unnecessary and cruel. It serves no purpose, and is completely disproportionate when measured against terrorism suspects tried since.
By illegally torturing and mistreating terror suspects, the US has undermined it's ability to get real justice. These suspects, from the most hardened to the most innocent, cannot be allowed to describe the circumstances of the detention in open court. The judge will simply release them, as well he should. So the vast majority will be railroaded on bogus "plea deals" that will keep them in prison and their mouths shut, or they will simply be held without trial or process forever. The American system of justice did not fail them - the American government, acting like the brutal thugs in a banana republic, prevented the system from working.
John Walker Lindh represents one opportunity to get it right. An American citizen. Mistreated, but not systematically tortured. His sentence could be commuted. Compassion could be allowed to serve us all today, without threatening Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or any of these other criminals that now must hide behind Soviet era judicial practices in order to stave off indictments. This is a chance we cannot afford to miss, if our nation is to retain any semblance of her soul.
