 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
From: "Friends" <friends2b@sbcglobal.net>
Mailing-List: list lightenlife@yahoogroups.com
America's Moral Crisis, a History of Hitler's Secret Prisons and
a Brief on
the Illegality of Bush's War
Three Books to Wake You Up
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Since his retirement by Ronald Reagan, President Carter has
given active
service to the causes of human rights and peace. He has written
a number of
books, and now he has delivered a humdinger: Our Endangered
Values (Simon &
Schuster, 2005) in which he takes the Bush administration to
task.
Jimmy Carter is an uncommonly decent and sincere person to have
gone so far
in American politics. His presidency failed because it coincided
in time
with three crises: economic malaise resulting from the
exhaustion and
failure of postwar Keynesian demand management, the outburst of
long-simmering hatred in Iran of US interference in Iran's
internal affairs,
and a run-up in the oil price (small compared to what Bush and
Cheney have
achieved).
President Carter finds it unpleasant to write his assessment of
the Bush
administration, but he steadfastly makes it clear that the
Bush/Cheney/neocon "war on terror" is in fact a war on America's
reputation
and civil liberties. He points out that the Bush administration
has used the
"war on terror" to justify actions "similar to those of abusive
regimes that
we have historically condemned." Consequently, "the United
States now has
become one of the foremost targets of respected international
organizations
concerned about these basic principles of democratic life."
Carter reports that the deception, naked aggression, and torture
that define
the Bush administration have caused a tremendous setback for
human rights
throughout the world. At an international human rights
conference in June
2005, "Participants explained that oppressive leaders had been
emboldened to
persecute and silence outspoken citizens under the guise of
fighting
terrorism . . . The consequence is that many lawyers,
professors,
doctors,and journalists had been labeled terrorists, often for
merely
criticizing a particular policy or for carrying out their daily
work. We
heard about many cases involving human rights attorneys being
charged with
abetting terrorists simply for defending accused persons."
Carter is
especially disturbed that the Bush administration is encouraging
these
abusive policies in the name of "fighting terrorism."
Who among us ever expected to hear an American president, vice
president,
and attorney general justify torture as essential to the
protection of the
American way of life? Carter quotes attorney general Alberto
Gonzales, who
sounds more like a third world tyrant than an American when he
dismisses the
Geneva Convention's provisions as "quaint." Bush threatened to
veto any
congressional limitation on his right to torture, and Donald
Rumsfeld's
Pentagon declared that "the president, despite domestic and
international
laws constraining the use of torture, has the authority as
Commander in
Chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions
during
interrogation, up to and including torture."
It is not only Carter who is disturbed, but also members of the
previous
Bush administration, including the current president's own
father and former
National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft. Carter quotes Dr.
Burton J. Lee
III, President George H.W. Bush's White House physician as
follows:
"Reports of torture by US forces have been accompanied by
evidence that
military medical personnel have played a role in this abuse and
by new
military ethical guidelines that in effect authorize complicity
by health
professionals in ill-treatment of detainees. . . . Systematic
torture,
sanctioned by the government and aided and abetted by our own
profession, is
not acceptable. . . . America cannot continue down this road.
Torture
demonstrates weakness, not strength. . . . It is not leadership.
It is a
reaction of government officials overwhelmed by fear who succumb
to conduct
unworthy of them and of the citizens of the United States."
Carter notes that the illegal detentions following 9/11 were
hurriedly
legalized by dubious methods which violate a number of
constitutional
protections of civil liberties. Carter is distressed that
children as young
as 8 years old are being held in indefinite detention and
tortured.
Confronted by Seymour Hersh, a Pentagon spokesman replied that
"age is not a
determining factor in detention."
The similarity of Bush administration policies to " those of
abusive regimes
that we have historically condemned" is brought home to us by
historian
Nikolaus Wachsmann's Hitler's Prisons (Yale University Press
2004).
Wachsmann's book is a detailed history of the conflict and
cooperation
between the traditional legal/judicial/prison system on the one
hand and the
police/SS/concentration camp system on the other. He does not
mention George
Bush or Bush's "war on terror." However, the similarities leap
off the
pages.
Just as 9/11 was a crystallizing event for Bush's seizure of
executive power
to suspend civil liberties, detain people indefinitely without
evidence, and
spy on American citizens without warrants, the Reichstag fire of
27 February
1933 was followed the next morning by Hitler's Decree for the
Protection of
People and State. This decree became the constitutional charter
of the Third
Reich. It "suspended guarantees of personal liberty and served
as the basis
for the police arrest and incarceration of political opponents
without
trial."
In a frightening parallel to our own situation, Wachsmann
writes: "Various
police activities during the 'seizure of power' clearly damaged
legal
authority. Indefinite detention without due judicial process was
incompatible with the rule of law. But, on the whole, there were
no loud
complaints or protests from legal officials." I read this
passage the same
day I heard on National Public Radio University of Chicago law
professor
Eric Posner defend President Bush's use of extra-legal,
extra-Constitutional
authority to protect the people and state from terrorists.
The precedent for Alberto Gonzales' declaration that Bush is the
law was
Reich Minister of Justice Franz Gurtner, who agreed in a cabinet
meeting on
3 July 1934 that "Hitler was the law." Bush's claim that
extraordinary
powers are necessary for him to be able to defend our country
under
extraordinary circumstances is identical to Hitler's claim that
he was
entitled to ignore the rule of law because he was "responsible
for the fate
of the German nation and thereby the supreme judge of the German
people."
What is the difference between HItler's claim and the US
Department of
Defense's claim that President Bush has the right to violate
domestic and
international laws?
Wachsmann's book shows that it is extremely easy for
extraordinary measures
in the name of national emergency to become permanent.
Germans did not understand that the Decree for the Protection of
People and
State was the beginning of legal terror.
Carter, being a former president, must write with restraint.
Wachsmann
sticks closely to his subject. But Robert Higgs in his
Resurgence of the
Warfare State (Independent Institute 2005) lays it all on the
line.
With ruthless logic Higgs shreds every claim of the Bush
administration and
its apologists. Reading Higgs leaves no doubt that the Bush
administration's
invasion of Iraq was an illegal act based in deception. Under
the Nuremberg
standard established by the US itself, Bush's invasion is a war
crime.
Widespread slaughter of the civilian Iraqi population and
torture of
detainees are also war crimes. In one of his best chapters Higgs
destroys
the claim that US "smart weapons" are expressions of our
morality in warfare
because they target only enemy combatants.
Higgs explains that the accuracy within a few yards of smart
weapons is
meaningless. The blast, heat, and pressures from the weapons
destroys
everything within 120 yards of the hit. No one within 365 yards
can expect
to remain unharmed. Injuries can extend to persons 1000 yards
away from the
blast. The odds are zero, Higgs writes, that the use of such
weapons on
towns and cities will not kill and maim large numbers of
civilians.
And they have done so. American forces in Iraq have killed far
more Iraqi
civilians than they have insurgents. It is safe to say that
Iraqis never
experienced such terror from Saddam Hussein as they have
experienced from
the American invasion and occupation.
Bush claims that his war crimes are justified because they are
committed in
the name of "freedom and democracy."
The entire world rejects this excuse.
Sooner or later even Bush's remaining Republican supporters will
turn away
in shame
from the dishonor Bush has brought to America.
-Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments
and has
contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as
Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His
graduate
economics education was at the University of Virginia, the
University of
California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of
The Tyranny
of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
<http://counterpunch.org/roberts12282005.html>http://counterpunch.org/roberts12282005.html
|
|
|