This blog was intended to address not just Virginia politics. Yet, because over the past four months the Virginia story has been a compelling one with national implications, Commonwealth Commonsense has focused on the Old Dominion.
But today, even though a budget is still elusive, I must think globally.
This administration and to an extent the Democratic response has shamed this country and placed us at the precipice of what Joe Wilson, the former ambassador who wife’s CIA identity was allegedly exposed by the Bush administration, called last night a “strategic catastrophe.”
The treatment of Iraqi prisoners has revealed Americans to be hypocrites. And it is the Bush administration’s arrogance that has allowed the human rights violations to fester and then infect the world’s view of all of us.
The Washington Post editorializes today of a “System of Abuse.”
The foundation for the crimes at Abu Ghraib was laid more than two years ago, when [Secretary of State Donald] Rumsfeld instituted a system of holding detainees from Afghanistan not only incommunicado, without charge, and without legal process, but without any meaningful oversight mechanism at all. Brushing off his violation of the Geneva Conventions, Mr. Rumsfeld maintained that the system was necessary to extract important intelligence. But it was also an invitation to abuses….
What has struck me in some of the coverage were remarks by military and civilian personnel articulating the rights of the perpetrators. Several officials have referred to the “judicial process” that will hold the abusers accountable. Have we afforded the judicial process to the detainees in Guantanamo or Iraqi prisoners?
It is hypocritical for us to offer U.S perpetrators the protections we won’t offer our enemies. As The Post editorializes and most Americans have conveniently ignored, we have been in violation of the Geneva Conventions on war. According to Wilson, journalists told him they have been fearful of pursuing stories about Guantanamo detainees because they were threatened by the administration of loss of access to the White House. Their papers in effect would be banned from the White House press room. Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, has raised concerns since the Afghan war and now has called for a review of all U.S. detention centers, including the secret ones of the CIA.
Clearly, someone other than the soldiers and contractors who committed these abuses must be held accountable. But according to reports I heard last night, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) has suggested that Rumsfeld should resign. It should certainly be considered. If we get, as I fear, retribution that is limited to the soldiers and low level commanders, the Arab world will rightly see it as a whitewash.
Moreover, if we can hold Iraqis and Afghans without access to legal rights, then a fair turnabout is to turn over the accused to the Iraqi system of justice. If we can judge their perpetrators, they should judge ours. If we think they are ready for democracy, then they should mete out justice.
President Bush is due today to submit to two 10-minutes interviews on Arab media. One hopes that, despite his arrogance, he will clearly and with not “but’s” apologize for America’s failure to live up to our own standards.
But he must do much more.
He must call for an independent investigation of prisoner abuse by the military and its contractors. Instead, we have GOP hatchet man Congressman Tom Delay (R-Texas) declaring that to have such an investigation is “like saying we need an investigation every time there’s police brutality.” Never mind that he insults African-Americans who are more often than whites to be the victim of such brutality, but he suggests prisoner torture and abuse doesn’t need transparent congressional oversight
Bush should also declare that the right of the Iraqis includes their right to democratically elect a theocracy. We cannot continue to insult Muslims by saying their systems of government are unacceptable. We can certainly refuse to trade with them or implement other non-violent sanctions if we disagree with their civil rights policies and discrimination against women. But it is not our place to judge their religion.
One thing Bush is already doing is demonstrating that he can flip and flop with the best of them. In today’s Post, a headline reads “US Retreats from Bush Remarks on Sharon Plan.”
In another example of this administration’s total lack of diplomatic and political savvy, Bush has endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral plan to maintain permanently the illegal occupation of the West Bank. Those “settlements” are in violation of UN resolutions. The Arab world is outraged.
And so should we. But few Americans will voice such opposition, including Jews and non-Jews alike, because of fear of the reaction. Any opposition to Sharon’s murderous regime is quickly translated by his supporters as anti-Semitism.
One can believe in Israel’s right to exist and believe that Arabs too have a right to a homeland. One can condemn the suicide bombings as well as Sharon’s assassinations that also claim the lives of innocents. On can believe that terrorism is diabolical and yet understand that the Palestinians may have legitimate causes that must be addressed.
Instead, we get Bush and Sharon strutting to the podium a few weeks back saying, in essence, “We’ve decided a couple of big issues for you, Palestinians, no right of return and a fragmented homeland with large pockets of Israel in your midst to threaten you when necessary.”
Last night’s Nightline included interviews with two Arab journalists. They painted a bleak picture of our prospects of convincing Arabs that we respect them. One ray of hope came from one of them who said that Arabs may not hate all Americans but they hate the Bush administration and the neocons that surround them.
Unfortunately, our alternative is John Kerry. He is all that we feared during the primary. He is timid, calculating, indecisive and unable to articulate another vision. Ted Koppel prefaced a question last night by saying that Kerry’s foreign policy on Iraq “has no major differences” from Bush’s.
And Kerry makes the same mistakes. He fell all over himself endorsing the Bush-Sharon agreement. Now he’ll fall all over himself distancing himself now that Bush has.
The coverage I’ve read today hasn’t quoted Kerry much.
I hope John Kerry says the prisoner abuse scandal has been a disgrace and an embarrassment to all Americans.
I hope he says that this administration has made the world much less safe and more dangerous.
I hope he say that our Iraqi and Afghan policies have critically damaged our ability to be an honest broker between countries in conflict.
I hope he says that if he becomes president he’ll demand that Israel dismantle all West Bank settlements and that he will implement a Marshall-type program of recovery for Palestinians to help end the violence.
I hope he says that he will open the U.S justice system to all Afghan and Iraqi prisoners and will turn over U.S. torturers to the Iraqi justice system.
I hope he says that he welcomes UN leadership and troops for security and announces a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
I hope he says that taxes must be levied to protect us adequately. (I heard a report today that airport security agents will be decreased by 10 percent due to cost pressures.)
I hope he says he has a plan to turn our foreign policy in a dramatically different direction, one that clearly tells Muslims worldwide that we see them not as terrorists to be defeated but partners in a world community.
But don’t bet on any of it.
Strategic catastrophe, indeed.