Nothing is New

I said this long before the blog:

Okay... I've taken a deep breath. But [insert name of whatever Deity or Virtue you choose] - how can anyone be surprised that Abu Ghraib happened? The Resident and his cronies have been fostering a "we're above the law of nations" mindset for a long time now. And maybe we can see why W & Co are so dead set against the International Court, maybe they've always had war crimes on their minds.

Look. Americans are not angels. We're "a little lower than angels" to quote W's favorite book. Maybe a lot lower. We've a long and inglorious history of turning our enemies into something not quite human, something we can kill and maim and rape and torture ... look at how many patriots treated Tories during the Revolutionary War, to start with, and move on up through My Lai. "Constitutions are chains with which men bind themselves in their sane moments that they may not die by a suicidal hand in the day of their frenzy," says Robert Stockton, and he's right. And so are treaties and conventions.

We know how badly we can behave. Usually, we try to behave better. This administration encourages us to behave as badly as we wish, because we're afraid. Or because our enemies are bad.

Well, that doesn't cut it. We're meant to be better than that. Than them.

Than this.

So it begins to look like I was right (damn it!). Why else is the White House scrambling to rewrite laws to protect themselves against prosecution?

As R. Jeffrey Smith writes in The Washington Post:

"The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments. . . .

" 'People have gotten worried, thinking that it's quite likely they might be under a microscope,' said a U.S. official. Foreigners are using accusations of unlawful U.S. behavior as a way to rein in American power, the official said, and the amendments are partly meant to fend this off."

Smith explains: "The amendments would narrow the reach of the War Crimes Act, which now states in general terms that Americans can be prosecuted in federal criminal courts for violations of 'Common Article 3' of the Geneva Conventions, which the United States ratified in 1949. . . .

"Common Article 3 is considered the universal minimum standard of treatment for civilian detainees in wartime. It requires that they be treated humanely and bars 'violence to life and person,' including murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. It further prohibits 'outrages upon personal dignity' such as 'humiliating and degrading treatment.' And it prohibits sentencing or execution by courts that fail to provide 'all the judicial guarantees . . . recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.' . . .

"Former Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo . . . said that U.S. soldiers and agents should 'not be beholden to the definition of vague words by international or foreign courts, who often pursue nakedly political agendas at odds with the United States.' . . .

"But [retired Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey S.] Corn, the Army's former legal expert, said that Common Article 3 was, according to its written history, 'left deliberately vague because efforts to define it would invariably lead to wrongdoers identifying 'exceptions,' and because the meaning was plain -- treat people like humans and not animals or objects.' "

I really wish those guys would do something to surprise me for once.

(And speaking of "naked political agendas" ... Have these people no shame?) (And yes, I know the answer. It was rhetorical.)