News from the War Fronts, Present and Future

Out of sight on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on August 31, under a collection of short news items headed, "U.S. Watch," there was a report of former Vice President Cheney’s appearance two days earlier on "Fox News Sunday." During that interview, Cheney had stated that in the waning days of the Bush administration, he advocated a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. "I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues," he boldly announced, causing the WSJ to remark that Cheney’s boast "showed just how seriously George W. Bush’s team was considering a military attack."

The fact of the matter is that we have no idea just how close we came a year ago to getting ourselves involved in still another war, this one also in what has been for the past 20 years anyway our favorite stomping grounds, the Middle East. And though Cheney is gone (somewhat), to what extent do his views on Iran prevail even in the Obama administration? Suggestion: Don’t bet the farm that we’ll continue diplomacy and ignore Israel.

Interestingly, in the same issue of the same paper, an editorial carrying the by-line, "Conflict is inevitable unless the West moves quickly to stop a nuclear Tehran," noted that "preventing Iran from getting the bomb is an Israeli national imperative, not a mere policy choice," and suggested that the U.S. drop its diplomatic initiatives and get more "serious." "[U]nless Mr. Obama gets serious, and soon, about stopping Iran from getting a bomb, he’ll be forced to deal with the consequences of Israel acting in its own defense," said the WSJ.

Now there’s wartime ingenuity for you, and a new reason to go to war — Because if we don’t the Israelis will.

Well, that clears that up.

On another front — the war in Afghanistan — there’s news about what our objective over there really is. This will come as a relief for those of us who are totally puzzled about just how our national security interests are impacted by the occupation by Taliban forces in the mountain recesses of western Afghanistan and eastern Pakistan.

You know, folks, things aren’t going wonderfully over there. On August 22, a bombing in Afghanistan killed four U.S. service members and made August the second-deadliest month since the 2001 U.S. invasion. Nonetheless, General Stanley McChrystal, our head military guy in the country, said that though conditions on the ground were "serious," the war could still be won "if the U.S. and its allies better coordinate their efforts and focus more heavily on protecting the Afghan populace from Taliban violence and intimidation." At the time of that statement, the General failed to mention that his very own formal assessment of the situation in Afghanistan is now on its way to Washington stating, in part, that he "may" ask the Obama administration for as many as eight brigades of reinforcements, that is, roughly 40,000 new troops.

But let’s go back to the rationale for all this, our national security interests in fighting a war in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, who oversees U.S. combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (and is McCrystal’s boss), told the American Legion’s national convention in Louisville on August 22, that "growing numbers of American soldiers sent to Afghanistan will encounter tough fighting," but that "improving civilian’s lives is as important to winning the war as defeating militants." I'm sure Afghan civilians will find that reassuring.

Got that? Our objective in Afghanistan is to "improve civilian lives" as well as (duh) to win the war.

(It should be noted that the latter "objective" is surely the objective of any war once you're in it; the question, however, is why are we in it?)

Well, anyway, that clears that up, too. (We're on a roll here.)

Postscript: Senator Russell Feingold, the Wisconsin Dem who has long been a critic of war efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, last week called for a "flexible timetable" to withdraw US. forces in Afghanistan. No word as yet from Senator Levin.

The Notre Dame/President Obama Controversy

In the recent issue of The Notre Dame Magazine, which I receive as a graduate of the 1964 class at the Notre Dame Law School, because of President Obama's views on the abortion issue, there appeared a number of letters to the editor criticizing the University for ever having invited him to set foot on campus, not to mention deliver the commencement address to the graduating seniors. I wrote this letter to the editors of the Magazine in response.

To the Editors:

Thanks to Richard Conklin for providing much-needed historical perspective regarding the Notre Dame/Obama controversy that dominated the July issue. Even so, however, it seems doubtful that his contribution to the discussion of the propriety of the President’s visit would pose any significant restraint on those sanctimonious alumni who wrote to declare their intention to cancel their subscription to the Notre Dame Magazine or withdraw financial support to the University, each of whom took a more pious and less tolerant position than either Pope Benedict XVI, who graciously received President Obama and his family at the Vatican on July 11, or Father Hesburgh who was pictured in the Magazine in a warm mutual embrace with the President at the time of the latter’s commencement appearance.

All of which prompted me to wonder whether those who wrote criticizing President Jenkins and the University so vociferously had taken a similar stand when President George W. Bush was awarded an honorary degree in 2000. Did they stop their subscriptions or withdraw financial support back then? Did they yell or picket or stomp on the ground upon Mr. Bush’s arrival on campus nine years ago?

Or didn’t they bother to check the record and learn that George W. Bush, during his six years as governor of Texas, presided over the execution of 131 Texas inmates, more than any other governor in the nation’s recent history? Did they learn that Mr. Bush was advised on many of the executions by his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, later Attorney General of the United States, in cursory execution summaries usually presented on the day of execution and in oral briefings that usually lasted less than 30 minutes? Did they know that Mr. Bush himself rarely, if ever, personally reviewed a petition for clemency?

Did they know that the most notorious of those executions — that of Karla Faye Tucker in early 1998 — followed upon Mr. Bush’s refusal to consider evidence that Ms. Tucker, though having viciously murdered two sleeping persons with a pickaxe, had in the intervening 15 years in prison become a "born again" Christian, an exemplary inmate, an outspoken opponent of addictive drugs, and a "role model," as it were, for a multitude of depraved and suffering women? Did they know that Mr. Bush ignored evidence that Ms. Tucker had been abandoned by her parents when very young, had first smoked pot with her sisters when she was eight years old, was shooting heroin by the time she was 13, followed her mother into prostitution when only 14, and that from the very beginning her life revolved around drugs and violence? Or that Mr. Bush had turned a deaf ear toward hundreds of clemency pleas for Ms. Tucker from around the world including those of religious leaders (such as Pope John Paul II), foreign heads of state (such as Vladimir Putin), celebrities (such as Bianca Jagger), and even right-wing evangelists (such as Pat Robertson)?

Did they bother to check to find out that Mr. Bush, himself "born again" after overcoming addiction to alcohol and who at the time was widely promoting himself as a "compassionate conservative," publically defended his intransigence toward Ms. Tucker’s case for clemency by saying he was seeking "guidance through prayer," and abjured his statutory responsibilities as governor with the pious pronouncement that "judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority"? Did they learn that Mr. Bush had no clue whatsoever about what he was saying, and that if, as he suggested, commutation of death sentences ultimately comes to rest in resort "to a higher authority," then all the clemency statutes in the land have been relegated to the trash heap?

And did they learn that Mr. Bush had told the journalist Tucker Carlson while traveling during the presidential campaign in 1999 that he had refused to speak with Larry King when he had come to Texas for his famous death row interview of Ms. Tucker. Or that when Mr. Bush was asked by Carlson what Ms. Tucker had said in response to King’s question about what she would say personally to the Governor if she had the opportunity, Mr. Bush famously answered by derisively whimpering, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "Please, please, don’t kill me"?

The long and short of it is that George W. Bush personally had his fingerprints all over the execution of a large number of inmates during his six years as Governor of Texas. Whatever his beliefs, or whether or not you agree with them, I don’t think you can say anything comparable about President Obama and the deaths of any unborn children.

Everyone Okay With this Brand of Justice?

I.

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Letter to three students (1967)

Imagine this scenario: The Second World War has come to a conclusion. The Nazis and the Japanese fascists have been defeated, the great powers have met and decided who will occupy and control what territory, and the armed forces of the Allies are returning to their homelands. And so attention is turned to prosecuting those believed to be guilty of war crimes, the trials of which in the European theater are to take place in the German city of Nuremberg. But wait. Representatives of the four major allies — the U.S., Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — have met with the top 20 defendants and have reported that these guys are not so bad after all, they are very sorry for what they did, and they promise they’ll never do it again. So, the four major allies have decided not to look backwards, but to look to the future. We’ll not hold any of those Nazis responsible for the crimes they allegedly committed in Nazi-occupied countries or in the concentration and extermination camps in Germany and eastern Europe. We'll just send them home.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

II.

I beseech your Majesty, let me have justice, and I will then trust the law.

Elizabeth Hoby Russell (1528-1609)
English diarist and courtier
Spoken to King James I, 1603

Or, imagine this scenario: On April 19, 1995, a bomb planted in a panel truck outside the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City goes off killing 168 people and injuring 450 in the deadliest act of terrorism ever to occur within the United States prior to September 11, 2001. Following an amazingly proficient investigation and some very good luck, three days later Timothy McVeigh is arrested and charged with 11 federal offenses. Although federal prosecutors intended to prosecute McVeigh for his crimes and, if convicted, seek the death penalty, just before his trial is to commence, the prosecutors hold a press conference and state that they have talked at length with the subject and found him not so bad after all, that the guy was sorry for what he did, and that he promised never to do it again. So, despite the trauma to the nation, they decided it was best not to look backwards, but to look to the future. Pursuant to a plea agreement, McVeigh would be sentenced to two years probation, required to wear an electronic monitoring device for six months, prohibited from leaving the country, and would be released on his own recognizance.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

III.

More than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way: They are no longer a problem for the United States. . . . One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.

President George W. Bush
2003 State of the Union Address

Or this one: In March 2004, members of the United States military are found by a commission headed by Major General Antonio M. Taguba to have committed the following acts of “intentional abuse of detainees” at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq: “punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture; photographing a male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee; and taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.”

Following publication of what became known as the Taguba report, one male military policeman is sentenced to ten years in a military prison, one female military policewoman is sentenced to three years, and a female commissioned officer is demoted. Not one person higher in command, military or civilian, is touched by the military justice system. Meanwhile, the reputation of the United States world-wide is trashed, the military demoralized, the nation embarrassed and outraged, the Bush administration reduced to stupid and inane retorts and excuses — and, oh yes, Major General Taguba forced into retirement for effectively carrying out his assignment. That done, our government decides it’s best not to look backward, but to look to the future.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

IV.

We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might want to look at these laws, and that might provide comfort to you.

President George W. Bush
after being asked if torture was justified
June 10, 2004

We need to get to the bottom of what happened — and why — so we make sure it never happens again.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D.VT)
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee

And how about this one? Following the issuance of legal memoranda by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice in 2002, the Pentagon and the CIA develop an “enhanced interrogation program” (as former Vice President Cheney recently called it) at several prison sites including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and a number of secret or “dark” sites located elsewhere in the world (Syria, Morocco, Thailand, Poland). The techniques authorized in connection with this system include waterboarding (simulated drowning), walling (use of a plastic neck collar to throw detainees against a wall), head slapping, sleep deprivation, light deprivation, excessive exposure to light, excessive exposure to sound, exposure to extreme hot and cold temperatures, stress positions, removal of clothing, threats to family, wrapping a detainee’s head in duct tape, use of military dogs — the list goes on and on. (Some of these techniques meet the internationally accepted definition of torture, some are referred to cynically as “torture light.”)

After years of detention (often in solitary confinement) without being charged, without the benefit of an attorney, and without trial, and after more than seven years of habeas corpus litigation in federal courts resulting in four important Supreme Court decisions favoring the detainees, as well as continuing requests by the ACLU for the production of documents and photographs pursuant to a federal statute, some of the procedures and some of the persons involved in the development and implementation of these procedures are brought to light. At this point, despite investigations and findings by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Senate Armed Forces Committee, not one person, military or civilian, responsible for enhanced interrogation practices is touched by either the military or civilian justice systems. Nonetheless, the president states that the CIA operatives who administered torture would not be prosecuted criminally; and, indeed, should they be sued in civil court by their victims for their wrongdoings, the United States would pay any judgment entered against them and pay their attorney fees as well. In addition, although several federal courts order release of the photographs of the acts of torture, the Obama administration announces it will oppose their release in further court proceedings. The reason? It’s time to “move beyond a dark and painful chapter in our history,” said the president.

Everyone okay with this brand of justice?

By using torture, we Americans transform ourselves into the very caricature our enemies have sought to make of us. True, that miserable man who pulled out his hair as he lay on the floor at Guantanamo may eventually tell his interrogators what he knows, or what they want to hear. But for America, torture is self-defeating; for a strong country it is in the end a strategy of weakness. . . . [T]he road back — to justice, order and propriety — will be very long. Torture will belong to us all.

Mark Danner
Author and Journalist
“We Are All Torturers Now”
New York Times (January 6, 2005)



And oh, by the way, as I'm sure you know, the first two scenarios are fictitious. The last two are true (so far).

Where Have All the Protests Gone?

On Monday of this week (May 11), IndyFlix sponsored a showing of “Finding Our Voices” at the State Theater in downtown Traverse City. This is a film about the ways in which Americans expressed their dissent to the war in Iraq over the past eight years. It features the voices of six persons: the mother of a New York City fireman killed on 9/11 at the World Trade Center; the mother of a young soldier who was killed in Iraq, three weeks after he returned, reluctantly, for his second tour of duty; a soldier who was a squad leader in Baghdad who, when furloughed home refused to follow orders to return to Iraq, went AWOL, became a conscientious objector and spent nine months in a military prison; another soldier who became entirely disenchanted with what he saw and did in Iraq and founded an organization of Iraq veterans against the war; a social activist and the founder of Code Pink; and a black Christian minister-activist from New York City. The most recent peace demonstration shown in the film took place at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis last summer.

The film, and the lives of those it featured, was inspiring. But the predominant feeling I had watching it was sadness, sadness over the fact that we in this country have lost our way and that in spite of the good things that have happened since last November, we still haven’t found it. Dazzled by the election, dazzled by the inauguration, dazzled by the first 100 days, we are, sadly, still lost. I had the feeling that if my one of my highschool-age grandkids would have seen the movie with me, she might have said, “Grandpa, this movie is sooo over, it’s sooo yesterday.”

Which reminded me of the piece by Dexter Filkins that appears in the current issue (May 20) of The New Republic (www.tnr.com). Filkins is a reporter for the New York Times and is one of the most respected war correspondents in the world today; he covered the war in Iraq since its inception (out of which came his acclaimed book, The Forever War) and is now doing it all over again in Afghanistan. I’m not going to tell you what Filkins said in his article (which is a review of Thomas Ricks’ new book on the surge, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008); I’m going to quote verbatim its first two paragraphs:

“From centrality to banality: perhaps no other event in modern American history has gone from being contentious to being forgotten as quickly as the war in Iraq. Remember the war? It consumed a trillion American dollars, devoured a hundred thousand Iraqi lives, squandered a country’s reputation, and destroyed an American presidency. Given the retreat of the American press — the first American withdrawal from Iraq, you might say — one could almost be excused, in the spring of 2009, for forgetting that 140,000 American troops are still fighting and dying there.

“That an undertaking as momentous and as costly as America’s war in Iraq could vanish so quickly from the forefront of the national consciousness does not speak well of the United States in the early twenty-first century: not for its seriousness and not for its sense of responsibility. The American people, we are told, appear to be exhausted by the war in Iraq. But exhausted by what, exactly? Certainly not from fighting it. The fighting is done by kids from the towns between the coasts, not by any of the big shots who really matter. And they are not exhausted by paying for it, either: another generation will do that. No, when Americans say that they are tired of the war in Iraq, what they really mean is that they are tired of watching it on television or of reading about it on the Internet. As entertainment, as Topic A, the agony has become a bore. 'A car bomb exploded today in a crowded Baghdad marketplace killing 53 and wounding 112.' Click.”

There were about 25 people there to watch the film Monday evening, one of the lowest turn-outs of the IndyFlix series at the State.

“Finding Our Voices.” Ho-hum.

It was so over, so yesterday.

Click.


Postscript

I shouldn’t mislead you. Despite his intelligence and incisive reporting, you’re probably not going to find Dexter Filkins in the front lines of an anti-war demonstration. He’s too much a “realist” for that and, besides, he (and Thomas Ricks) are of the view that the United States has so terribly and so tragically screwed things up in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East that we can’t in good conscience just get up one morning, blow a bugle, and march out of there.

Moreover, he and Ricks are also of the view that, though the results are not all in, the surge appears to have been a success, at least for the short term. Filkins writes: “Today, in the spring of 2009, it no longer really matters whether Bush was brilliant or stupid, a man who listened to reason or an idiot savant struck, Forrest Gump-like, by a fleeting insight. Whatever one’s view of the war, it is impossible to deny that in the eleventh hour Bush was right. The gamble has worked, at least so far.”

Nonetheless, the “greatest irony of the surge,” says Filkins, is that, even if temporary, even if “the outcome of the war in Iraq is still up for grabs,” its success has “all but ensured an even longer American commitment to the people of Iraq. And, we might as well add, to the people of Afghanistan.” Filkins then comes on with this admonition: “America, take note: we are still in the middle of two terrible and complicated wars, and we are likely to be fighting them for many years to come, even if we lose.”

So much for over. So much for yesterday.

Maybe, just maybe, with this realization, the peace movement in this country — and in our community — can find its voice, once again.

Double Standard?

On Friday, April 17, an article appeared on the front page of the local Traverse City newspaper stating that “President Barack Obama absolved CIA officers from prosecution for harsh, painful interrogation of terror suspects,” which is to say, absolved them from prosecution for the acknowledged crime of committing torture. Contemporaneous with this announcement, the White House released four Bush-era legal memoranda graphically detailing — and authorizing — such tactics as slamming detainees against walls, slapping detainees, waterboarding them, and keeping them naked and cold for long periods. A couple of days later it was revealed that waterboarding, which now meets everyone’s definition of illegal torture, was used by the CIA 266 times on just two “key prisoners” alone. It goes without saying that where the tactics amount to torture, their use constitutes a war crime.

In issuing what in effect was a grant of immunity, the president said he wanted to move beyond “a dark and painful chapter in our history.” “Nothing will be gained,” he added, “by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” by which he meant the past seven years. Attorney General Eric Holder said, “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.” Holder, in fact, went a great deal further when he gave assurances that the CIA officials who were involved would be given free legal representation in any legal proceeding or congressional investigation related to the program and would repay any financial judgment reandered against them.

In legal parlance, the Obama Administration has, first, contrary to the precedents emanating from the Nuremberg Trials, recognized the defense of “following orders” as an absolute bar to criminal or civil legal action against those persons who committed torture. Second, it has undertaken not only to hold harmless those responsible for torturing detainees in our name, but will indemnify them for all judgments and costs, including attorneys fees, they may incur in the process of defending themselves for their criminal acts.

✧

Two days earlier, on Wednesday, April 15, the same Traverse City newspaper, this time on page 6A, reported that 89-year old John Demjanjuk, an accused Nazi death camp guard who now suffers from multiple serious health problems, had been removed in his suburban Cleveland home in his wheelchair by six immigration officers. Federal officials planned to place him on a stretcher, sedate him heavily, and, together with a physician, a nurse, and a guard, fly him to Germany. He was to be deported to Munich where he would stand trial for allegedly being an accessory to thousands of deaths committed during World War II at the Sobibor Prison Camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. As the van into which he was placed left his home, Vera, Demjanjuk’s wife, “sobbed and held her hand to her mouth. As the van moved down the street, Vera turned and waved, sobbing in the arms of a granddaughter.”

Later that day, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of the deportation order. Demjanjuk was returned to his home and, for the time being, that’s where he remains.

Ivan (John) Demjanjuk was born in 1920 in Kiev, Ukraine. In 1940, at the age of 20, he was recruited into the Soviet army and was captured by German troops in May 1942. While in a German prison camp Demjanjuk, allegedly in return for some measure of freedom and security, was either enticed or volunteered to become a German prison guard, for which he was trained in the Trawniki Concentration Camp in eastern Poland. It is alleged that he later spent time as a guard at Treblinka and Sobibor where the atrocities of which he was later charged were allegedly committed. Demjanjuk denied the charges, and asserted that he was imprisoned by the Germans until the end of the war when he was liberated by the Russian army.

After the war, Demjanjuk, his wife, and his daughter made their way to the United States, ultimately residing in Cleveland. He worked for the Ford Motor Company. The family obtained citizenship in the Untied States. But Demjanjuk’s alleged past caught up with him, and after much legal wrangling, he was deported to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. He was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to death by hanging. In 1993, however, his conviction was reversed by a unanimous Israeli tribunal largely on the basis of testimony of other prison guards and the conclusion that his identity as “Ivan the Terrible” had likely been mistaken. By then, Demjanjuk had spent six years on death row and eight years in solitary confinement. Israeli authorities decided not to retry him for the reason, among others, that to do so would constitute double jeopardy.

After his release, Demjanjuk returned to the United States where his citizenship was restored in 1998. However, the Justice Department again filed civil charges against him in 1999 and again in 2001, and, in 2004 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals again ordered that he be stripped of his American citizenship. A year later, Demjanjuk was ordered deported to Ukraine, a decision which over a couple of years was upheld all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the summer of 2008, however, Germany’s top Holocaust crimes prosecutor filed extradition papers designed to bring Demjanjuk to Germany for trial, and in March of this year he was formally charged in Germany with being an accessory to the commission of 29,000 murders at the Sobibor extermination camp in eastern Poland in 1943. The United States was in the process of carrying out the German extradition order when the order staying Demjanjuk’s deportation was issued on April 14.

✧

One can only wonder why the United States has such an abiding interest in forcibly sending a seriously ill, 89-year old man, a citizen of the United States, 3,000 miles to another country for what must be about the tenth time he has faced trial for war crimes that were allegedly committed 67 years ago, and for which he has been tried and acquitted by the State of Israel, the nation of the people most affected.

One can only wonder why the United States has such an intense interest in granting immunity and indemnification to an unknown number of United States citizens, operatives of the CIA, for the acknowledged commission of war crimes, the details of which have been documented in detail, against at least 28 citizens of foreign countries, during a war that is still going on and which crimes were committed within the past seven years, for which the perpetrators have never even been charged.

This wouldn't amount to a double standard, now would it?