Oh please. An attorney is the defendants “advocate” only in the sense of seeing that the defendant gets all the protections afforded by due process.
Do your really believe that the lawyers for Charles Manson, Jeffrey Daumer, et al were their “advocates” in the sense of promoting their actions as good things to do on a dull weekend?
John, I think you’re mostly right, but I don’t think you’ve answered my objection to Ravenman. I read him to complain that Clark is an example of a negative tendency for high-profile lawyers to take cases they think gives them a bully pulpit for the issues they find important. I may agree with you that Clark does a bad job of this and therefore infuses his favored claims with an air of nuttiness that they don’t deserve (and that does us all a disservice). Sure. But that’s not a facial objection to the notion that lawyers take cases for the bully pulpit; it’s an objection as applied to Clark – and it’s not Raven’s objection that Clark is somehow morally compromised because he wants to take the bully pulpit, but it’s an objection that he does a crappy job of it. That doesn’t impugn the value of the strategy, or it’s moral propriety, and the way I read Raven, that what he thought he was doing.
–Cliffy
don’t ask what is it that you do for a living?
–Cliffy
No, but if a person had specifically lobbied to be part of the defense team for Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Daumer, and was known to have given a speech at the Donner Party Appreciation Dinner in which he stated, “Eventually, society will accept you as equals”, then I think I’d have a right to consider him an “advocate”.
Don’t judge Ramsey Clark in a vacuum, and don’t assume his detractors are doing so, either.
Cliffy, my reading of what Ravenman said is akin to, “Don’t honor him for performing a valuable service for noble reasons of justice; his true reasons are much baser.”
I’ve seen a lot of people jump in with statements akin to “we need people to defend even the most depraved and horrible and obviously guilty of criminals; Clark is doing that, and therefore providing a noble service” and they seem to imply that the only reason Clark is doing this is because it is a noble service to be done, and therefore Clark is noble for doing it. Note the very freaking title of the thread.
But Clark’s motives aren’t noble. Hell, in my opinion they’re close to treasonous: he wishes to destroy the United States’ capitalist system and replace it with a communist system, and by making the U.S. government look bad he advances his goal.
Therefore, I agree with Ravenman on this one: Clark is performing a valuable service, but only in the “a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while” sense. Describing Clark as “noble” or “honorable” when he is, in fact, a glory hound looking for a public platform to decry the inherent villainy of the United States, seems to me foolish.
Argh. To clarify, please read that as
“Don’t judge Ramsey Clark**'s defense of Saddam** in a vacuum, and don’t assume his detractors are doing so, either.”
Stop for a minute. Yes, every accused cannibal and mass murderer deserves due process, and therefore deserves a competant lawyer. And that lawyer must advocate for the cannibal or mass murderer. It is not unethical in and of itself to represent a murderer, cannibal, or genocider.
However, wouldn’t you agree that–while a cannibal mass murderer deserves a defense–there are ethical ways to defend your cannibal mass murdering client and unethical ways. John Gotti deserves a lawyer. But that doesn’t mean the lawyer can ethically have witnesses killed, does it? A lawyer cannot commit perjury on behalf of his client, he cannot allow his client to commit perjury. And a lawyer is obligated to put his client’s interests about his own goals, if Ramsey Clark isn’t prepared to put Saddam’s defense ahead of making the US look bad then he’s an unethical lawyer.
Saddam is entitled to a defense. Defending Saddam doesn’t automatically make someone a scumbag. However, in fact, Ramsey Clark IS a scumbag. Defending Saddam doesn’t make him a scumbag, Ramsey Clark is a scumbag, and he’s defending Saddam Hussein because he’s a scumbag. You’ve got cause and effect backwards here. I can certainly imagine someone volunteering to defend Saddam because they believe in justice for all, however, Ramsey Clark is not that person. I can also imagine an ethical lawyer defending John Gotti, that doesn’t mean that I believe most mob lawyers are heroes.
I think that if Clark were acting out of a high-minded conviction that everyone deserves a vigorous defense, that might be considered admirable. But Clark’s record to date seems to indicate that this is not why he is acting.
He just likes anyone who is an enemy of the US. Which is the point of the Cheney example. I expect that Clark would not defend him. Therefore his motive can’t be that everyone deserves a vigorous defense - just those who hate the US deserve a vigorous defense. (And encouragement and support while they are still in power.)
Because, as David Simmons seems to be saying, Clark is saying that what Saddam did is a good idea, as he is likely to do no matter what the enemies of the West do. Clark isn’t defending Saddam because Saddam might be innocent; he is defending Saddam because he agrees with him that the US is bad.
Certainly that might mitigate against Clark’s effectiveness as an advocate. If Clark spends his time ranting against the US instead of trying tactics that might get his client off, then that would play well with the anti-US factions inside Iraq and out, but not be very good advocacy. It might be that, on some level, Clark realizes that the conviction of Saddam is a foregone conclusion, and therefore sees it merely as another chance to attack his enemy and garner publicity for himself and his cause of “down with the US”.
Regards,
Shodan
I would probably agree with you except Ramsey Clark is not defending SH, he’s advocating that the trial is not legal. The only logical outcome to that defense is to stop the trial.
As much as I enjoyed listening to him besmirch the troops in harms way I think maybe we should support Clark’s efforts and demand the immediate release of SH into the loving arms of his constituents.
Exactly. People don’t realize that Clark is not some unbiased man who places the righteousness of the judicial system above all moral failings of defendants. If he did I would respect the man. Ramsey Clark is a diehard leftist and would defend anyone who is an enemy of the US. I’m sure I’ll get a few :rolleyes: for pointing out the obvious here but so be it. Is it wrong to have his political views? No, it is not seriously wrong (it is wrong to put human rights behind politics, but alot of people all over the political spectrum do that, not just Clark), but he is not some man who actually, deeply cares about the judicial system itself. I personally doubt that he would defend Oliver North or Donald Rumsfeld.
Saddam deserves a quality defense team, everyone does. But if you look at the cases he has defended
Many are positions which place him in the opposite position of the US & Israeli governments, no matter what their governments stood for.
John, I tihnk we’re talking past each other. To siplify:
I read it the same. But Ravenman is wrong that that’s a base motive. It’s not treason either.
–Cliffy
Then my argument is not aimed at your viewpoint, because I think we may agree that Clark has only taken up Saddam’s defense as a political grandstand for himself (Clark).
As others have accurately stated, my argument is aimed at those who believe that Clark is taking up Saddam’s defense because of the noble cause that everyone deserves a defense. If Clark is so dedicated to that proposition, he should have no problem at all with providing a US government official with a defense in an international tribunal. But, for obvious reasons, I don’t see that happening.
It appears readily evident that Clark’s test for whether to become involved in a case is whether the case is a good platform to bash the US. If a lawyer is willing to be an advocate for only those who have a certain political agenda, fine – I don’t think anyone should argue that environmental attorneys should take the side of big business once in a while.
But if one only takes cases based on a kind of partisanship, then one should be judged on the merits of that partisanship, not honored for motives that are only a transparent cover for one’s real agenda. If Clark’s defenders want to come out an say they like him for bashing the US at every turn (and I recall at least one poster did in the other thread on this), then that’s their view. But it is dishonest to argue that Clark is a credit to all lawyers because he’s fulfilling a moral obligation to provide everyone with a defense, no matter how awful the person, because Clark is not doing that if he’s not willing to take the cases of persons he does not agree with.
Am I to gather from this that you don’t like Ramsey Clark? I don’t know and I think you don’t know what form Clark’s part of the defense will take. My post was specifically addressed don’t ask’s post which implied that Clark was an advocate in the sense of arguing that what Saddam did, or is alleged to have done, is OK. What a difference a few years makes. The US of A once was a supporter of Saddam and his actions.
I would prefer to wait until we see what Clark does rather than make claims about what he will do.
I think that sums it up pretty well. Look at the events of the last day of the trial. They sound like the work of a team that realizes they need to turn this into a circus. I don’t know that Clark thought of that and I’m not saying he did, but it doesn’t speak well for anyone’s commitment to the principles of justice.
That shit again? :rolleyes:
Past behavior is still the best predictor of future behavior.
I think you are conflating “forming an alliance for the purposes of stability” with “condoning mass murder in Iraq or the former Yugoslavia”. There’s a bit of a difference. We had alliances with a bunch of nasty types thru out our history, back to WWII and before. That doesn’t mean that we defended their wrong doings, as Clark seems to have done.
Besides, I bet that if Saddam were an ally of the US, and therefore not in the dock, Clark would be a lot less interested in defending him. I don’t see Ramsey leaping to the defense of Israelis being accused of war crimes.
He doesn’t seem to sympathize much unless you are already an enemy of the US.
Regards,
Shodan
:dubious: BTW, John, and in case you’ve forgotten, it is possible to be anti-capitalist without being anti-American, or treasonous. (On that point I say nothing about Clark, just stating a general principle.)
I think Clark is doing something that needs to be done, but there’s too many aspects of his life outside of this that would make it impossible for me to ever be proud of him.
Plus, deep down, this is just victor’s justice. Just like Nuremberg was.
So, if my political views are that all non-Aryans should be put up against a wall and shot, there’s nothing wrong with that?
Ramsey Clarke has defended genocide. He’s defended Stalinist regimes that murder and torture people en masse. He defended Saddam while Saddam was still in power. He supports murderous thugs in every way he can. In his current ‘defense’ of Saddam, his argument is that razing an entire village to ‘set an example’ is something that pretty much any leader would do, so why should Saddam be held to a different standard?
He’s an evil man.
And you know what’s especially annoying? What’s especially annoying is hearing people on this board do flips and twists to defend the man, while jumping on every claim against Bush they can find to show that Bush is evil. There’s a serious lack of perspective evident in a mindset like that.
I have met people who feel Ramsey Clark’s biggest evil was just being anti-american. I don’t agree with that, no. I agree that he is a moderately evil person though as anyone who puts human rights behind idealogy is a tyrant, however if he ran a country I doubt he’d be committing genocide or pogroms. If you examine the tyrannies of the 20th century they all seem to involve the idea that human rights don’t matter if they violate political will. My point was that Clark was not evil for being anti-american.
I agree completely.