I think the likelihood is very slim that anyone will face charges for what’s being done by the Bush administration, but it seems to me that it’s fairly obvious that the administration’s policy has been to ignore any national or international standards regarding the treatment of persons held in captivity.
Questions:
Is there any reasonable debate regarding the question of whether the Bush administration policy at the very least constitutes serious violations of the spirit of human and civil rights and might very well constitute war crimes?
What is the likelihood that anyone in the Bush administration responsible for putting such policies into effect will be called to answer for them in court?
“Reasonable debate”, “might very well constitute”? Are these firm questions or ambiguous questions? Any side in any war might “reasonably” “violate the spirit of human and civil rights” which “might very well constitute war crimes”, no matter how righteous that side may be in engaging in war.
None. Zero. Zip. Absolutely impossible. I will bet you every dollar I make for the remainder of my life, here and now. Who will “bring them to justice”? How will such a judgment be enforced? What judicial body has jurisdiction over the United States that could try these people for war crimes? The answers, respectively, are Nobody, It can’t, and None. That’s the bottom line.
I would say that there is little or no debate that launching a war of aggression and imprisoning hundreds or thousands of people for years, without charge and specifically not as prisoners of war, could reasonably justify the bringing of war crimes charges. I am of course, not at all expert on the applicable laws and therefore could be wrong on one or both counts.
Even if international charges are eventually brought on members of the Bush administration, IMO the chance of any of the defendents seeing the inside of a courtroom are only slightly above that of my being struck by a meteor in the next 24 hours.
Yeah, there would probably be a debate on that. I’m not sure exactly what constitutes ‘war crimes’ exactly, but I assume that some have been violated either by the invasion itself (though I’m unsure on this point) or by some of our subsequent actions (like the imprisonment, torture, etc…though again, no idea if the whole ‘enemy combatant’ thingy would or wouldn’t work as a definition). The thing is though, afaik there really IS no body of law or agency of enforcement for ‘war crimes’, so it seems rather a moot (or mute perhaps) point.
Snow balls in hell have a better chance. Again, exactly who would be bringing charges, who would they be bringing them to, and who would be enforcing them? Anyone COULD bring such charges, but if there is no body of law or enforcement, what exactly would the point be?
Has there been any war that we were engaged in that we didn’t commit what could be considered war crimes? And I’m talking about people at the very top. I suppose the First Gulf War might have been “clean”… but Kosovo/Serbia? Vietnam? Korea? even WWII? If we’d lost any of those wars, I can easily see us charged with war crimes.
There is a little thing called The Geneva Convention to which the US is a signatory. From there:
Unfortunately it looks like the International Court in the Hague probably would not get to hear the trial. The US is not a signatory to the ICC and the ICC’s jurisdiction is not universal (they can only prosecute those in member states…which seems absurd but that is how it is).
The loop hole to this is a recommendation from the UN Security Council in which case they could go after those in non-member states. Except I am pretty sure the US has a veto on the Security Council so could stop it there unless a new president agreed and instructed that it should be allowed through. But I very seriously doubt any US politician would have the guts for that.
So Bush is probably safe.
Of course each country could try Bush and find him guilty and if he ever comes to their country he’d be arrested pretty much meaning Bush could never leave the US. Not a big deal but could be done.
Or a country could pull off an Adolf Eichmann maneuver like the Israelis did where they kidnapped Eichmann and returned him to Israel to be hanged. Yeah yeah…I know not possible (partly because Bush has Secret Service protection forever and for an ex-president we’d probably view that as sufficient provocation to attack militarily) but a guy can dream.
It would be nice if the next President, be it McCain or Obama, actually had enough honor to turn Bush over for trial on the choices he’s made over the years. Yes, many of our nation’s actions would make us vulnerable.
But no, it’ll never happen. Not ever. Not in a million years. Not only will no American leader send his predecessor to possible imprisonment at foreign hands, he wouldn’t want to establish the precedent should he (or she) feel that the rule of law has to be violated in order to preserve national security.
I don’t know a whole lot about it, but understanding is that the Red Cross gives these reports secretly to the government whose behavior it is criticizing, with the hope of persuading it to change its ways.
I dont know that its a stupid law. While there is always the potential of violence to a former pres, only George H Bush had any kind of threat that we know of. Enough anyways to bomb saddam in the interval between desert storm and OIF.
Unless its some sort of retirement perk for the Secret Service guys , better to have them redeployed for other duties. Coverage for any one ex president can be resumed at the direction of the current president depending on threat level.
On 10 February 2006, the Prosecutor published a letter responding to complaints he had received concerning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[115] He noted that “the International Criminal Court has a mandate to examine the conduct during the conflict, but not whether the decision to engage in armed conflict was legal”, and that the Court’s jurisdiction is limited to the actions of nationals of states parties.[115] He concluded that there was a reasonable basis to believe that a limited number of war crimes had been committed in Iraq, but that the crimes allegedly committed by nationals of states parties did not appear to meet the required gravity threshold for an ICC investigation.[6
When they were discussing this book on NPR the other day, it was speculated that at the end of his term Bush would issue a blanket pardon for anyone involved in (for example) aggressive interrogation techniques. This would prevent anyone (including himself) for every being prosecuted in a US court. As for an international court, I pity the nation that would try to arrest a former high-ranking executive branch official. Sadly, in real life, the bad guys usually get away with it.
“Therefore, former President Bill Clinton will be the last president to receive lifetime protection, and President George W. Bush will be the first to receive protection for only ten years.”
Heh…funny thing is he is probably the first president who needs lifetime protection more than any other past president.
In Ambrose Bierce’ satirical fantasy collection Lands Beyond the Blow, he wrote of a country where the chief executive rules for one ten-year term and is then executed, on the grounds that anyone who has held supreme power for that long must have committed enough crimes to warrant death even if none can be specifically proved.
