General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWe. Need. War crime. Trials. Period.
I don't think I need to say more. Do I?
And, if I do need to say more, what does it say to us about our country and our party? Do you think that the fact that a member of our party is in the White House at the moment means that we should not rock the boat? That's treating politics---the lives and well beings of our fellow human beings---as a team sport. Sure, the Republicans will blame the Democrats for the blowback---violence aimed at Americans in Muslim countries. Sure, the press will tell us that Obama and the Democratic Senate are responsible for every US flag that gets burned, because the torture report was released on their watch. They will urge us to put it all behind us and Move On. They will warn that trials will uncover more atrocities and fan the flames of third world anger and violence, and we don't want that, do we?
Do we want Cheney and Bush held liable for what they condoned? Yes, I know that the report absolves them of guilt. That's because the CIA worships the Bush family. They are willing to take a bullet for George Sr. and his brood of pampered children. The report is, in itself, a whitewash of the war crimes committed by the Bush/Cheney White House. Unless we get someone outside of politics as usual, an independent prosecutor to investigate, we will never uncover the truth---
And, when Brother Jeb finally steals his own presidential election, the war crimes will start all over again. Which is the real reason that we have war crimes tribunals. The dead are beyond helping. The victims do not magically forget their ordeal once the guilty are brought to justice. We hold war crimes trials, like those at Nuremberg, so that it will Never Happen Again.
In 1973, Noam Chomsky warned us what was going to happen under Bush/Cheney. He did it in a piece called "Watergate: A Skeptical View"
But it is likely that the major long-term consequence of the present confrontation between Congress and the President will be to establish executive power still more firmly. Nixon's legal strategy is probably a winning one, if not for him (for he has violated the rules), then for the position that the Presidency is beyond the reach of the law. Kleindienst, Ehrlichman, and Nixon's lawyers have laid the issue out squarely. In spite of their occasional disclaimers, the import of their position is that the President is subject to no legal constraints. The executive alone determines when and whom to prosecute, and is thus immune. When issues of national security are invoked, all bars are down.
It takes little imagination for presidential aides to conjure up a possible foreign intelligence or national security issue to justify whatever acts they choose to initiate. And they do this with impunity.
Welcome to the future that Chomsky imagined in 1973, a world in which baseball players are subject to Congressional investigation and federal prosecution for using steroids, but those who commit war crimes are treated as patriots---good team players. Enjoy your stay in 1984---or do something about it.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Fully agreed.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)On the particular time, place, and people involved. Might makes right, it always has. Values, morals, they're all relative and subjective.
It usually takes an external body to have those kinds of trials. Since no governing body can tell the US government no, or do anything to it, since it set up and maintains the international system, I'd say don't expect much.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Although we tend to forget, and a significant proportion of the population are little better than animals to whom torture is okay since we're the biggest kid on the block.
And no, to me it doesn't depend. Torture is against the law, and it's a biggie. Prosecute it.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)These laws were written by man, and so are always going to be malleable by man.
If they find someone to prosecute it, go nuts. Where is it going to come from though? A Congress that either went along with it, or didn't know/couldn't stop it? The UN, which nobody listens to anyway, especially without the US military backing it up? China? Russia? England? France?
tclambert
(11,087 posts)You're thinking of the pre-Citizens United concept of "one man-one vote." Nowadays we have corporations, the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, voter suppression, suspect electronic voting machines, propaganda mills calling themselves news channels, and Karl Rove's machinations to manipulate every election, so "consent of the governed" becomes more a form of purchased trickery.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)The founding fathers were clear about the source of ultimate authority.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/tree-liberty-quotation
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Clinton, Bush, Obama, Democrat, Republican, Independent, I don't care. This shit is far beyond politics.
Then trials for the banksters and their enablers.
Time to start putting the correct people in jail in this country.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)bigwillq
(72,790 posts)Amishman
(5,559 posts)Bush and his minions of course, but also including some of the more questionable drone strikes carried out under the Obama administration.
War mongers need to face penalties for the innocent people the killed.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)shraby
(21,946 posts)Solly Mack
(90,785 posts)nichomachus
(12,754 posts)Iggo
(47,565 posts)KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)the events of 1974 prove Chomsky's predictions totally and utterly wrong, at least so far as Watergate and Tricky Dick were concerned?
Pelosi said in 2006 that impeachment was 'off the table.' If that isn't code for bi-partisan support for war crimes, well, I don't know what would be.
The policy of torture and crimes against humanity had almost unanimous bi-partisan support among the political cadre. Only Barbara Lee voted against the AUMF on Afghanistan and only Feingold voted against the Patriot Act in the Senate.
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)There were no consequences for the war crimes that he and Kissinger committed in Cambodia, Chile etc. Americans and especially the corporate media proved that they did not care how many brown folks in other countries got murdered as long as rich white Americans were treated with respect. Nixon fell because the AG at the time, John Mitchell decided to put Katy Graham's "tit in the wringer" to quote him, threatening her media empire. Since the illegal bombing of Cambodia did not threaten anyone's media empire, no one in the MSM gave a rat's ass about it. The fact that Henry Kissinger was part of the Bush/Cheney administration and probably responsible for a great many of their war crimes proves that Chomsky was correct.
easychoice
(1,043 posts)we as a country knew what they were doing when they were doing it and no one could do a damned thing to stop them.
What good is your trial going to do?
Get a rope.
ncjustice80
(948 posts)calimary
(81,466 posts)DinahMoeHum
(21,809 posts). . .which unfortunately is not fit for public discussion.
louis-t
(23,297 posts)where a Nazi prison guard returns after the war to the camp he ran to relive the 'good old days'. He is then visited by the ghosts of the people he tortured. I wish the same for the entire cabal of criminals.
Mira
(22,380 posts)and sing that song.
TexasTowelie
(112,417 posts)If we don't pursue a war crimes trial then the United States has abandoned international law and treaty obligations. Why should we expect any foreign government not to torture our soldiers and citizens if they are detained in the future?
WHEN CRABS ROAR
(3,813 posts)geardaddy
(24,931 posts)Cleita
(75,480 posts)It's time for some Nuremberg style trials.
JawJaw
(722 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)But nothing associated with G W Bush has ever involved Justice. Remember he was appointed to the office of the President after he lost the election.
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)His dumb brother once again gets in the way of success for Jeb. Let's dig ALL the way through the Bush shit shall we. Let's go back to the Bay of Pigs, Nov 22nd 1963, and the day planes penetrated steel and concrete like a hot knife through butter with NO fallout of plane pieces or resistance. Or that the Bush family was responsible for the security of the Trade Center. Call me crazy.
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)Aerows
(39,961 posts)to anyone that has been paying attention and has read a little bit of history.
It isn't conspiracy theory, it is FACT.
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)to set in motion, and that will require a different Supreme Court and Congress, and that will require another couple of Nov. 2008 game changers, and that will require another couple of Obamas. I'm sure they're out there, but it might be a decade or two before this wish comes true. Hope I'm wrong.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)....it will go nowhere even if they have some mock up trials.
It will be turned and used to excuse the truly guilty.
But, yes, let's try.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Actual writing on offical CIA website, circa Dec 2001:
"The extreme obstacle for the CIA is currently having a way to program American military to turn on American civilians."
I am paraphrasing, but that remark was on those pages. Not somebody's blog about the CIA - this was the CIA's actual website.
The war the USA has waged against the people of Iraq, and the people of Afghanistan, and many places where Muslims live, in part that war was brought about to install in soldiers the notion that only their safety was important. The brutality by which American service people enetered people's homes, slammed the men women and children to the ground, and then rounded up the men and took them off to infamous black holes such as Abu Ghrab, all those tactics were brought about to re-condition human beings into the equivalent of Nazi Storm troopers.
We now see the murderous rage with which the police across our nation respond to any and everything.
Our legislatures across the nation are filled with like minded Nazis. In Illinois, on Dec 2nd, 2014, the state legislature had language inside a bill making it a felony to photograph or in any way record any police activity, without prior permission!
ellennelle
(614 posts)would not be surprised if that was their policy, or at least their aspiration, but such an inflammatory accusation requires you anchor it with evidence.
thx.
ellennelle
(614 posts)however, i'm sure you are aware of anthony romero's, head of the aclu, plea to obama to pardon bush and cheney. and he lays out a compelling case.
a pardon at least establishes that these are crimes, and he points out that already there are loud noises that torture is ok and the report is wrong (we all know where to find those voices). so there would continue to be a 'debate' with a trial, whereas the pardon would just put at least an official lid on all that.
ma trial would also just stir up that debate and allow those who claim its ok to get that balanced voice out there. most importantly, there is always - especially with the legal team bush and cheney could put together - the chance they could walk. legally and officially. i mean, hell; OJ walked. money talks, loud.
and, last but not least, the pardon puts bush and cheney in such a delicious (or some other less inappropriate term) bind. think about that; what are they gonna do? reject it? then the admin is legally obliged to prosecute, or turn them over to the world court, to which we dont even subscribe, so were legally bound by treaty to prosecute them ourselves. plus, not sure as they could actually reject it, especially without those consequences. accept it silently? thats even more, erm, delicious.
i kinda like that last one. the image of especially cheney finally gagged forever from ever piping up for an interview or opinion that does not also put this chapter of his life front and center. that is truly delicious. and if they do pipe up, esp. dick, he will look even more churlish and nasty than he already is, to be biting the hands that freed him.
yup; i do believe im all in with this pardon. and it may well inform my position on nixons pardon, as well. giving it, ford established that what that particular dick did was wrong, too.
not the ideal result, but cleverly best for now.
and i'm impressed with romero for putting it out there; now if obama ignores it, he's complicit. which of course he already sorta is, despite his call to end torture. sadly, extra-judicial killings are also against international law.