It’s Time to Charge the Bush Administration with War Crimes

War Criminals

I used to believe the campaign to prosecute top Bush Administration officials as “war criminals” was a farce.

Now, I’m convinced they have a point.

Consider the revelation earlier this week which reveals (former) President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld each knew full well that many — in fact a majority — of the detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp were (and are) completely innocent.

Not a few of the detainees.  A MAJORITY.

If Bush Administration officials were aware that even a single person was innocent of involvement in acts related to terrorism, but despite knowing so still demanded the individual be held for years without due process, that disclosure alone would be scandalous.  But the allegations these top officials knew that most detainees languishing behind bars inside a military prison, some being subjected to aggressive interrogation tactics, were in fact innocent isn’t just an appalling desecration of authority, but a miscarriage of justice that demands full prosecution.

A good starting point here is to expose the facts which are now known.  An article in this month’s The Atlantic magazine written by Conor Friedersdorf makes it abundantly clear that top Bush Administration officials knowingly violated the rights of hundreds of innocent people.  Accordingly to sworn testimony in federal court now coming to light, most of the more than 700 people imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay “had never seen a U.S. soldier in the process of their initial detention and their captivity had not been subjected to any meaningful review.”

Think about this for a moment.  Holding innocent people without due process is one thing — a very wrong thing to do.  But to imprison someone for years without even launching an investigation into the validity of claims stinks of the EXACT SAME PRACTICES used during the 1970s by the most terrible South American military juntas.  That’s not hyperbole.  It’s fact.  In short, when it comes to the red herring of national security, the United States somehow transformed itself into Pinochet’s Chile while under the thumb of the Bush Administration.

Indeed, the so-called “War on Terror” gave the Bush Administration free license (and in some cases, public support) to do things that would have been unthinkable for any modern constitutional democracy.  Extended imprisonment without due process of law and the use of torture techniques made international headlines for a while and even created some political debate.  But no one in the Bush Administration has ever faced legal consequences.

So, why would Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld and their underlings want to keep hundreds of innocent people locked up in prison and muted in anonymity?  Their twisted justifications were prescribed as follows.  Here are the primary reasons are given why known innocents were not released (the text below is taken from the article which can be read in full HERE):

• It was judged to be politically impossible.

• Vice President Cheney took the position that the ends justify the means, he “had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees were innocent,” and he seemed to believe that “if hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it.  That seemed to be the philosophy that ruled the vice president’s office.”

• Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld believed that “innocent people languishing in Guantanamo for years was justified by the broader War on Terror.”

The “ends justify the means” argument is mind-boggling.  It’s the same logic used by the most horrible regimes in human history.  The argument goes that harming a lot of innocent people isn’t really that big deal because we’re protecting national security.  Just trust us.

Will Bush Administration officials ever be charged with war crimes?  Probably not.  And if the appropriate charge here isn’t really “war crimes,” might they be subject to civil lawsuits or other avenues of prosecution for violating these individual’s Constitutional rights?  One would hope so.  Then again, if a case is ever made, it will be long after the fact — probably years after those who are guilty have perished.  We’ll eventually see some masquerade like happened long after Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps during World War II.  Apologies will be made.  A few survivors will feel better.  And the guilty will have walked free.

Alas, the real odds of any of the Bush Administration junta facing justice for ruining the lives of hundreds of innocent people is practically nil.  So instead, those who believe in the cause of justice shall resort to other means.  Our means is not to forget [SEE FOOTNOTE].

This week in a nauseating spectacle, George W. Bush was honored with his own Presidential Library, which just opened on the S.M.U. campus in Dallas.  All the living former Presidents were in attendance for the grand opening.  Everyone said nice things.  Vice President Cheney and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld were also there.  Perhaps that library should be named the Ministry of Oceania.  The re-writing of history has begun.

Now there are even rumblings that George W. Bush’s presidency is being re-evaluated.  According to public opinion polls, his image appears on the mend, with 46 percent of Americans saying they now have a favorable view of the former President.  Never mind that he and his cronies nearly drove the global economy into another Great Depression and bankrupted the nation in two endless wars while enriching the wealthiest among us at the expense of the middle class and the poor.  Historians at the Ministry of Oceania are already hard at work.

But many Americans aren’t going to let this happen.  The Bush people might get away with gross constitutional violations.  But they will not escape the judgment of history.  We will remember what this awful President and his men did — not just to our country and to the world — but to hundreds of people known full well to be innocent.  For these crimes, there will be no forgiveness.  Only remembrance, exposure, and reminders of how truly repulsive the George W. Bush-era really was.

FOOTNOTE:  Sometimes, the guilty have recanted.  One of the best examples of this was former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s mea culpa towards the end of his life when he accepted partial responsibility for escalating the Vietnam War and asked history’s forgiveness.  There’s nothing to indicate anyone in the former Bush Administration is on a similar path to redemption.