International Justice: The World Has its Eye on George W. Bush

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Tue Dec-04-07 05:13 PM
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International Justice: The World Has its Eye on George W. Bush

Some think that it is petty or vengeful to talk of punishment for George W. Bush after he leaves office, should our Congress fail in their duty to impeach him; that we have so many better things to do with our time and energy; that we should let bygones be bygones and move on with the future. I beg to differ with that attitude. And so does much of the rest of the world.

Our corporate news media obviously thinks that the deaths of approximately a million innocent Iraqis from the invasion and occupation of a country that posed no threat to us is no big deal. Nor do they think it�s a big deal that George Bush has thousands of innocent people locked away for years or indefinitely without charges or trial, and tortured. They hardly ever talk about these things, let alone acknowledge them as the war crimes and crimes against humanity that they are.

Nor has our Congress stepped up to deal with this situation adequately. Even impeachment continues to be �off the table�. And just as bad, Congress apparently has no stomach for or any intention of pursuing Bush�s crimes even after he leaves office. I believe that Jonathan Turley had it right in his interview with Randi Rhodes:

Some of the democratic leadership� want to stop just short of any event that would confirm the illegality of the domestic surveillance law or the president ordering torture because those two facts � if it was ever confirmed by a court � would virtually trigger an impeachment inquiry. And they have already promised the white house � I�m talking about the democrats � that they will not have any impeachment inquiry for the rest of his term.

They can�t afford to have a court actually render a verdict. Because if they do� what are you gonna do about it? And the fact is that they don�t want to do anything� I�m willing to bet you that the Democratic Senate will not allow any effort, for example, to prosecute people who tortured for the American government� And I can promise you this: the Democrats will never allow those people to be identified and prosecuted and they will not pursue the president even once he�s out of office.

It has been extremely disappointing for me (and most DUers) to see Congress failing in their duty towards these issues. As Orleans said in her recent DU post, �It is disheartening, disgusting, discouraging and infuriating.� Why is this happening? We have speculated on many explanations: Political calculation; fear; �protecting their own�. Perhaps the most cogent explanation is that Congress has been complicit � both in approving the Iraq War Resolution giving George Bush the authority to go to war, and in enacting the Military Commissions Act, which presumably legalizes Bush�s indefinitely locking away thousands of prisoners without charges or trial, in violation of our Constitution, international law, and everything our country used to stand for.

But all is not lost. George Bush�s crimes against humanity may not be addressed by the U.S. Congress, but Congress won�t necessarily have the last word on this issue.

Why pursuance of justice is so important even when (and if) George Bush leaves office

Though the term �crimes against humanity� originated at the Hague convention of 1907, it became much more widely accepted after the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. At that time, under the leadership of U.S. President Harry Truman, the Nuremberg Tribunal (officially known as the Agreement for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis and Charter of the International Military Tribunal) was established. It defined crimes against humanity as:

murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. (italics added)

Many criticized the Nuremberg Tribunal at the time. Among the criticisms, it was said that the Tribunal represented �victor�s justice�, that it was unfair to the Nazis because the crimes under which they were prosecuted were established retroactively after the fact, and that those �crimes� were actually legal in Nazi Germany at the time. But today it is widely recognized throughout the world that crimes that are committed on a large scale and which �shock the conscience of mankind� must be pursued and prosecuted regardless of those kinds of considerations, and especially regardless of the legality of the crimes within the country in which the perpetrators reside. The bottom line is that these crimes pose such a danger to the human race and to international order that, in order to provide obstacles to their future occurrence, they must be considered international crimes, without respect to national borders.

Senator Christopher Dodd, in his recent book, �Letters from Nuremberg�, emphasizes the importance of the Nuremberg trials and how the principles on which they were based should apply to the actions of today�s Bush administration:

There�s a sense that the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism� If, for sixty years, a single word, Nuremberg, has best captured America�s moral authority and commitment to justice, unfortunately, another word now captures the loss of such authority and commitment: Guantanamo.

We may also trace the loss to a single speech of an American president, standing in the Rose Garden of the White House, trying to convince members of his own party that America should reinterpret the Geneva conventions that have defined human rights in this world for half a century. In a mockery of justice, we lock away terrorism suspects for years and give them no real day in court. We deny the lessons of Nuremberg, of universal rights to justice.

George Bush�s fight against the International Criminal Court

The purpose of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is to prevent the most heinous of crimes that cannot or will not be addressed at the national level. More specifically, its purpose can be gleaned through selected excerpts from the preamble to the 1998 Statute:

Mindful that during this century millions of children, women and men have been victims of unimaginable atrocities that deeply shock the conscience of humanity,

Recognizing that such grave crimes threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world,

Affirming that the most serious crimes of concern � must not go unpunished�

Determined to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of these crimes and thus to contribute to the prevention of such crimes,

Resolved to guarantee lasting respect for and the enforcement of international justice.

Philippe Sands, a lawyer specializing in international law, provides a great primer on international law and how the Bush administration (and Tony Blair) has undermined international law, including the ICC, since taking office, in his book �Lawless World � The Whistle-Blowing Account of How Bush and Blair Are Taking the Law into Their Own Hands�.

Though the Bush administration provides many excuses for its hostility to the ICC, the underlying issue appears to be that it cannot tolerate the possibility that an American could ever be tried before the Court. For example, Bush claims that the Court�s jurisdiction cannot extend to Americans because that will undermine �the independence and flexibility that America needs to defend our national interests around the world�. Sands poses the following pertinent rhetorical question to that excuse:

The flexibility to do what? The flexibility to commit war crimes? The flexibility to provide assistance to others in perpetrating crimes against humanity? The flexibility to turn a blind eye when your allies commit genocide?

Consequently, though President Clinton signed the Statute, George Bush announced in 2002 that he was unsigning the statute. And he has gone well beyond non-participation, to active sabotage. For example, the American Service members� Protection Act authorizes the American President to �use all means necessary and appropriate� to release any American national who is �being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the ICC�; it prohibits all American cooperation with the ICC; it prohibits participation of American troops in UN peacekeeping operations unless they are granted complete immunity from the ICC; and it prohibits the U.S. from providing military assistance to any country that is a party to the ICC (with some exceptions).

The world is very aware and has been addressing Bush administration crimes

Use of the ICC
Much of the world, including George Bush himself, is quite aware of the potential of the ICC for holding George Bush and others in his administration accountable for their crimes. Professor Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild, explains, in an article titled �Bush and Co. Fear Prosecution in the International Criminal Court�:

Non-governmental organizations and individuals from sixty-six different countries have filed 499 "communications" � or complaints � with the International Criminal Court (ICC), between July 2002 and July 2003. Many of them urge the ICC to investigate the United States conduct in the war on Iraq. The primary charge is that the U.S. committed an act of aggression against Iraq. The ICC has jurisdiction to punish the crime of aggression.

Cohn describes actions against the Bush administration in the ICC by Belgium and Greece�s Athens Bar Association:

In June, Belgium indicted Bush, Tony Blair, Paul Wolfowitz, John Ashcroft, and Condoleezza Rice for war crimes�. Belgium isn�t alone in indicting Bush and Blair for war crimes. In July, Greece�s Athens Bar Association filed a complaint in the ICC against the two for crimes against humanity and war crimes, this time in connection with their war on Iraq.

International Commission of Inquiry on �Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration
The International Commission of Inquiry on �Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration of the United States� has charged Bush with �wars of aggression� and �torture, rendition, illegal detention and murder�. Discussing the conduct of the Iraq War, Howard Zinn states in the preamble to the Commission�s report that it:

has now reached the point of crime, crimes against humanity� a charge that peoples all over the world, and now more and more people in the United States, are beginning to level against this administration� The Bush administration has been reserving to itself the right to act unilaterally� presumably in the interests of democracy and liberty, but actually in the interests of business, big business, the oil business in this instance.

The Constitution provides for impeachment for what it calls �high crimes and misdemeanors.� � This is a clear case for the removal of a president for committing �high crimes�. What could be a higher crime than sending the young people of a country into a war against a small country� which is no danger to the United States, and in fact a war which is condemned by people all over the world and a war which results in, not only the loss of American lives and the crippling of young Americans but results in the loss of huge numbers of people in Iraq? These are high crimes.

Human rights organizations
Human rights organizations also have their eyes on the Bush administration. Amnesty International recently created a film titled �Justice without Borders�. Here is a preview for that film. It begins by saying:

Human rights is all about trying to preserve the dignity of the human being� In much of the world those, especially those who have the highest degree of responsibility for ensuring that life is respected and that human dignity is respected, are often the ones who are committing some of the worst crimes against humanity. We are committed to ending that culture of impunity.

This preview does not mention George W. Bush by name. However, previous communications by Amnesty International leave no doubt regarding where it stands with respect to Bush administration crimes:

We're in a struggle for the soul of our nation� Outraged, and in response, Amnesty International has launched a new campaign that will fight to restore our traditional American values of justice, rule of law, and human dignity. In the coming weeks and months, we will as a nation either end some of the worst human rights abuses of the Bush administration or continue down this destructive path. Amnesty is fighting for the America we believe in, the America that leads the world on human rights�

Possible significance of these developments to George Bush and his cohorts in crime

Some may think that the above developments don�t mean much � that George Bush is too powerful to have to worry about these kinds of things. But George Bush is (we hope) going to be out of office before too long, and there are a lot of people in the world who don�t like him very much, to understate the situation. It seems likely that even Bush and his cronies are aware of the potential dangers. Marjorie Cohn talks about the vehement reaction of the Bush administration against the ICC:

Why has the Bush administration resisted it so vehemently? Bush�s handlers were likely prescient about how the world would react to the United States� illegal invasion of Iraq, which was not executed with Security Council approval or in lawful self-defense. They evidently knew they and their boss might be vulnerable to prosecutions for the unlawful killing of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the destruction of the civilian infrastructure, and the use of weapons of mass destruction � cluster bombs and depleted uranium � by "coalition forces."

She also explains the nature of universal jurisdiction, which is a primary feature of the ICC:

Under the treaty, the ICC can take jurisdiction over a national of even a non-party state if he or she commits a crime in a state party�s territory. The U.S. vehemently objects to this. But it�s nothing new. Under well-established principles of international law, the core crimes prosecuted in the ICC � genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression � are crimes of universal jurisdiction. That means that an alleged perpetrator can � and always could � be arrested anywhere.

U.S. law is irrelevant to the charge of war crimes or crimes against humanity

No doubt one major reason for George Bush�s vehemence in pushing through the Military Commissions Act (MCA) was to immunize himself against punishment for the many crimes he has committed. By legalizing Bush�s abuse of his prisoners, that MCA violates our Fifth and Sixth Amendment guarantees to due process and a fair trial, as well as the Geneva Convention requirements for the treatment of prisoners of war. Bush�s attempt to nullify the Congressional �torture ban� attached to the MCA by issuing a signing statement to the effect that he is not obligated to be restricted by it, signaled his intention to violate our Eighth Amendment protection against �cruel and unusual punishment�, as well as the Geneva Conventions and The international Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984.

Of course, neither the MCA nor any other law that Bush might demand or Congress might pass in the future either nullifies our Constitution or makes it legal to violate international law, as far as the international community of nations is concerned. As was made quite clear at the time the Nuremberg Tribunal was created, international law applies to ALL the nations of the world. As much as George Bush, Dick Cheney, or certain members of Congress or the U.S. public may not like it, those laws apply to our country now just as much as they applied to the Nazis for whom the Nuremberg Tribunal was created in 1945. Robert Jackson, the Chief U.S. prosecutor for the Nuremberg Tribunal, made that quite clear. He said:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole � If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.