Tuesday, 07 May 2013 14:11 By Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co. | Op-Ed
I’ve been focused on economic policy lately, so I sort of missed the big push to rehabilitate President George W. Bush’s image in the run-up to the opening of his presidential library in Texas recently; also, as an anti-Bushist who pointed out how terrible a president he was back when everyone else was praising him as a Great Leader, I’m kind of worn out on the subject.
But it does need to be said: Mr. Bush was a terrible president, arguably the worst ever, and not just for the reasons many others are pointing out.
From what I’ve read, most of the pushback against pro-Bush revisionism focuses on just how bad his policies were, from the disaster in Iraq to the way he destroyed the Federal Emergency Management Agency; from the way he squandered the budget surplus to the way he drove up the costs of Medicare, the health insurance program for older Americans. And all of that is fair.
But I think there was something even bigger, in some ways, than his policy failures: Mr. Bush brought an unprecedented level of systematic dishonesty to American political life, and we may never recover.
Nearly 60 percent of the detainees at Guantanamo are currently on hunger strike, in what experts and their lawyers say is a protest against their indefinite incarceration there. Amid the crisis, President Obama announced this week that he will renew his administration’s efforts to close the prison.
The events sparked a debate on CNN last night, prompting former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to defend his former boss’s decision to open Gitmo to begin with. “We have it because these people did not even follow the law of war, let alone the rule of war,” he said, adding, “These people didn’t even wear a military uniform. They engaged in battle against America as terrorists, a violation of the laws of war. That’s why Guantanamo got invented.”
To start with, I’m not sure how Fleischer understands the distinction between “law of war” and “rule of war.” Regardless, he believes that those held at Gitmo did stuff that violated international law. And because they violated international law, it was OK for Bush to violate international law – in fact, to do them one better: to violate not just international law, but also U.S. law and U.S. Constitution, all at the same time.
Their most outrageous violation, Fleischer suggests, is that they (sic) “didn’t even wear a uniform.” Uhhhh… Ari… Exactly which uniform do you suggest they should have worn? They’re civilians!! Yes, a minority of them might indeed have participated in violence against the U.S. or its allies. But they were captured or kidnapped in various places, and they’re citizens of various nations. So, again, what uniform should they have worn?
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This uniform thing must really seem important to Fleischer, because under pressure he went even further:
They [the Germans] followed the law of war. They wore uniforms and they fought us on battlefields. These people are fundamentally, totally by design different. And they need to be treated in a different extrajudicial system.
Hate to break it to you, Ari; but apparently you have bullshit for brains. One word, pal: “Nuremberg.”
Shortly after WWII ended in May 1945, Allied governments jointly agreed that those responsible for wartime atrocities must be held accountable and punished for their crimes. The International Military Tribunal (IMT) was organized in the German city of Nuremberg in order to do just that.…
The four counts of the indictment were: 1- Conspiracy to commit crimes alleged in other counts; 2- Crimes against peace; 3- War crimes; 4- Crimes against humanity. The Nuremburg trials were one of the first organized attempts to apply principles of international law, and established new precedents for the international community.
Reflections inspired by the cloistered “Inside-the-Beltway press” and their suck-up-a-thon at the annual dinner.
When businesses were getting into the computer thing in a big way, they were spending a lot of money. Often another option would offer a better price/value, but people chose IBM just the same. Their explanation? No one ever got fired for recommending IBM.
Basic psychology, demonstrated in replicable studies: In making decisions where they have to go on record, individuals are inclined to discount their own personal judgment and echo the crowd — that is, to bleat in four part harmony along with the flock. Sitting in some scientist’s reserved room is one thing. The problem is that journalists and politicians and those they serve/represent behave the same way. They’re doing it right now, trying to get us to make stupid decisions regarding Syria, Iran, etc.
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Side note: Heard a senator say that if the vote had been made by secret ballot, the gun control decision would have passed with 88 for it and only 12 against it.
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What happens to those who do stand up, fight the system? Ask Bradley Manning. The war criminals make speeches, dedicate libraries, go on book tours (carefully avoiding the countries where they would be arrested and put on trial). The little guy who blew the whistle and revealed the emperor’s nakedness to the world? Tortured, treated shamefully at his trial, and facing life in prison.
And did I mention? When’s the last time you heard Bradley Manning’s name spoken on MSNBC? Celebrate or abhor Manning, you have to admit that this is a huge story, a vital element in the story of the… Well, you know. Bill of Rights? Geneva Conventions? International law? Human compassion and honor.
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death. You’d see me with my puffy petulant face, Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel, Reading the Roll of Honour. “Poor young chap,” I’d say–”I used to know his father well; Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.” And when the war is done and youth stone dead, I’d toddle safely home and die–in bed.
Siegfried Sassoon
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Siegfried Sassoon was among the poignant and effective British WW I poets. He’s writing here from personal experience, not from imagination.
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Here’s a comment I wrote. (I’m seriously pissed at MSNBC right now.)
Does MSNBC have a rule – stated or implied – that one must never, ever mention the name “Bradley Manning”?
Coincidental or not, that’s their de facto practice — a practice that does a profound disservice to our nation as well as others. It exhibits both journalistic malpractice and moral cowardice. It helps strengthen the foundation for a police state.
A lot of people are aware of this nightmare, and are eager to shatter it. The potential for powerful reaction is there, but we really, really need a catalyst, a structure, a powerful megaphone through which we can shout our anguish and warnings.
I hope to goodness this project will help us find a voice, and a way of focusing and amplifying it. Yeah. Hi fallutin’ talk is cheap. So I’ll quit blathering and get real. Yes, I will host a showing and discussion, probably at our house.
While I was making this cartoon, I got to thinking…. How would a guy like Lindsay Graham define those who are “good” in this context? Can’t say “Americans,” because Americans too can be terrorists as well as victims. Can’t say “Christians,” because Christians too can be terrorists as well as victims. Can’t say “white,” because “white” people too can be terrorists as well as victims.
The worshippers in the Unitarian church were white Americans, and they were killed by a white American Christian. A majority of those killed or wounded in the Oklahoma federal office building were white American Christians. The man who killed them was a white American Christian. Dr. George Tiller was a white American Christian, and was in fact killed on Sunday, in his own church, by another white American Christian.
The Islamic mosques that have been vandalized or destroyed since 9/ll have been attacked by white American Christians. The black churches that were bombed, the lithe girls killed in such a bombing, those who were lynched were the victims of white American Christians. Those who carried their assault rifles to the Press Club, and tried to intimidate the people who were there by asking for their ID’s were white American Christians.
A terrorist is a person using the threat or reality of violence in order to achieve a political or ideological end. Sadly, terrorists too often act in the believe that the God they believe in wants or has ordered them to do it.
[Watergate] was a true constitutional crisis. The abuse of presidential power was staggering, from the soliciting of illegal corporate campaign contributions used for hush money and delivered by bagmen, to the illicit actions of the aforementioned plumbers — an operation, by the way, that traced its roots all the way back to the early months of Nixon’s first term. Combined with the ongoing tragedy of Vietnam — including the secret bombing of Cambodia and the violent squelching of antiwar protest — Watergate shook the public’s confidence in government as it hadn’t been since the bleakest days of secession and the Civil War.
But as several participants at the [Lessons of Watergate] conference noted, the nation and its institutions did something about it. Committees in both the Senate and House, members of both parties cooperating with one another (!), conducted thorough investigations. In a more competitive, less consolidated news environment, a free press went on the attack (once the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein at The Washington Post, Sy Hersh at The New York Times, Jack Nelson at the Los Angeles Times and others awoke a moribund White House press corps).
And the courts worked, from John Sirica, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who cracked down on the Watergate burglars and demanded the White House turn over those audiotapes, to the highest court in the land. As Fred Wertheimer of the reform group Democracy 21 remarked at the conference, “The Supreme Court understood that citizens had a constitutional right to protect their democracy from corruption.”
People went to jail, lots of them — even the former attorney general of the United States, John Mitchell. Think about that. Many of them did hard time. Today, we couldn’t even get miscreant bankers to resign in exchange for their billions in bailouts, much less prosecute them for criminal behavior.
The briefly restored public trust that followed Nixon’s departure started turning back to the cynicism that endures today almost immediately, when his successor Gerald Ford absolved Nixon of his sins with a full presidential pardon. In the years that followed, the erosion has continued. The bagmen have become the banks and Wall Street. Gridlock and intolerance have replaced bipartisanship. The efforts at campaign finance reform that followed Watergate – crushed by Citizens United and other court rulings — have dwindled to the point where, as conference panelist Trevor Potter of the Campaign Legal Center observed, we are “shockingly close again to no contribution limits.” And with 9/11 and the war on terror, including ongoing drone attacks and threats to civil liberties, Morton Halperin noted, “The public is once again accepting an imperial presidency.”
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[T]he Lessons of Watergate are lessons learned and lost. We’ve got to organize, get our government back and make it accountable. Many believe it will take another scandal the size of Watergate, or worse, to get us back on track. Let’s hope not.
We’ve already had such scandals, of course, and nothing has come of them. The first subsequent scandal was Iran-Contra. Imagine this, if you will, remembering that we’re talking about reality and not some goofy movie script:
The President of the United States is suffering from officially undiagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease. The symptoms are recognized by those around him, but they don’t know what’s causing them. The surgeons who operate on the President after he’s had a fall from a horse recognize the characteristic plaque and tangles of a brain degenerating from Alzheimer’s; they gossip about it; but they make no official report.
By this time Congress has enacted a law forbidding the U.S. government to provide aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, rebels trying to unseat the legal government of their country (which happens at the time to be communist). The President hates communists, and he wants to provide such aid, laws be damned. He also wants to recover 7 U.S. hostages now being held by Iran. Yeah. That Iran. The Iran which even at the time is a U.S. enemy, subject to sanctions the U.S. is imposing. He also wants to help Israel. Yeah. That Israel. The nation which is a sworn enemy of Iran.
Got the picture? The President suffers from Alzheimer’s, so he’s fading (except for the moments when he’s back “on stage,” so to speak). His wishes are clear, however. So a kind of shadow government fills the power vacuum. A key player is the NSC’s Colonel Oliver North. What these people arrange is to provide weapons to Israel, some of which Israel will sell to Iran, at a mark-up. In return for the arms, Iran will release the hostages. At least part of the mark-up profit will be returned to the U.S. The U.S. will then spend the cash helping the Contras. If in the process the U.S. helps drug cartels smuggling cocaine back to the U.S. on return flights? What the hey! There’s always “collateral damage,” right?
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Nerdish readers will remember T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral, and/or its movie version. The key line in this context is uttered by King Henry II, regarding his former? still? friend Thomas a Beckett, then serving as Archbishop of Canterbury: ”Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” He’s overheard by vassals, who go to the cathedral and do indeed rid him of the priest — by murdering him. Is that what the King wanted? Is that what he explicitly asked for? subconsciously? Was he pleased by the murder? Ambiguous and, ultimately, unknowable.*
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This outrage to law, Constitution, ethics, and morality comes to light. A number of persons are convicted; some have the convictions reversed on appeal; and some go to prison. But the combination of “plausible deniability” and a whole lot of late-night paper shredding by Oliver North to get off scot free. No impeachment.
Catch the key phrase in North’s testimony below: “I do not recall.” The lie cannot be disproved, because North shredded the evidence.
GERHARD A. GESELL, the unpredictable 79-year-old Federal District Judge who presided over the Iran-contra trial of Oliver L. North, saved a final surprise for last by punishing Mr. North for his crimes with a sentence that included a fine, community service and probation, but no prison term.
Mr. North’s admirers and his detractors had expected much harsher treatment, considering Judge Gesell’s oft-spoken respect for adherence to the law, the seriousness of the charges and a recommendation by the independent prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, that Mr. North serve time in jail. In addition, Judge Gesell had shown no reluctance to send highly placed Government officials to prison when he presided over several Watergate-related trials in the mid-1970′s.
North is now host of a successful hate-talk radio show, and a hero to the far right.
Then there was the Bush/Cheney horror. Violate international law by taking the nation into an unnecessary war on the basis of deliberate lies; trick Congress into approving the so-called “Patriot” Act, thus hugely increasing the size of government and creating a police state; “out” a clandestine CIA officer; violate both domestic and international law by horribly torturing suspects (many of whom have proved to be totally innocent, simply sold out for bounty money); initiate “rendition” run secret, “dark” prisons; violate FISA; create a special prison to hold human beings without charge or trial or habeas corpus or — in many cases — access to counsel)… etc. beyond calculating.
And now Obama. In short, Obama has continued many Bush outrages while dropping others. And he’s added vast expansion of the drone program; claiming the right to assassinate American citizens on his own “imperial executive” authority (and acting on that claim); and, perhaps most destructive of all, the crushing of government whistleblowers.
The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers.
The Espionage Act, enacted back in 1917 to punish those who gave aid to our enemies, was used three times in all the prior administrations to bring cases against government officials accused of providing classified information to the media. It has been used six times since the current president took office.
Oh! Wait! There really was an impeachment, wasn’t there. President Clinton was impeached! Why was that? What violations of national, international, and Constitutional law more egregious than Reagan’s, Bush’s, and Obama’s could he possibly have committed?
Of course. I remember now. He lied about having had a blow job in a side office at the White House. Presiding over the trial was Speaker Newt Gingrich — who was at the time himself getting blow jobs from one of his own employees in his own Congressional office. Remember this?
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The moral of this entire post? Our nation is fucked. And this spirit crushing violation has nothing to do with lusts for the flesh. It’s about hubris, manipulation by advisors, and lust for power. Did I mention hubris?
The easiest person for a greedy conman to rob is a person who is herself or himself equally as guilty. The easiest person for a hubristic leader to corrupt is one who wants to be kept safe. Or, alternatively, one who shares the hubris: “I’ll cede my freedom and independence and even moral integrity to you, as captain — as long as you can convince me you can make ours the most powerful team (nation) of all. You let me do an end zone dance and give the finger to the world? You know, like chanting “U.S.A.” after the assassination of Bin Laden? I’ll be content.
Yeah, yeah. I admit it. If you’re the wrong color or the wrong sex or the wrong sexual orientation or the wrong political party… Well, the honeymoon will be spoiled. But if you’re right on all that? If you’re praised by Republican TV News and hate talk radio? I’ll bow and wash your feet and kiss your ring or … you get the point.
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* The play actually focus on Thomas a Beckett rather than Henry. And Thomas’s best line is this: “The last act is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
