Although I live an almost entirely-blessed existence, I regularly find myself despairing of life when I am reminded just how much horror and evil remains in the world. This despair comes primarily because my country has come to stand more for torture and hegemony than for freedom and opportunity.
Though I did not vote for him, I bear my tiny part of responsibility for George W. Bush's election in that I am a citizen of a nation that would place him in office. He is my President, too, though I despise how he has conducted himself. Although my responsibility for his occupancy of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is miniscule to the point nearly of invisibility, the horrific nature of the crime he has committed in this country's name -- leading a government which sanctioned and encouraged the torture and murder of fellow human beings -- is so repugnant that even that tiny whiff of guilt that wafts down to me as an individual citizen makes me feel profound shame.
At one time, as a child, I felt proud that America stood taller than the barbarous regimes of history. I know that Abu Gharaib, Hidatha and Guantanamo are not the first instances of American military cruelty, but they represent a Rubicon of sorts, in that Rumsfeld and Cheney and (likely) Bush knew and approved of it, rationalized it somehow (God knows how), so that those beneath them in the chain of command felt emboldened (and empowered) to add torture to their arsenal. That's not what America is, not to me.
This came to me as I read a piece on Howard Stringer in the June 5, 2006 issue of "The New Yorker." Stringer is currently the CEO of Sony Corporation, a Welshman who immigrated to New York at 22, intending to make this his home. Three months after his arrival, he was drafted to serve in Vietnam. Rather than return to England and avoid service, as he could easily have done, he reported for duty. The article quotes one of his letters, and it is those words that reawakened my depression: "The VC prisoners we take are stained with the mud of rice paddies...They are truly out of touch, and their reaction to medical treatment and kindness is often staggering."
"Medical treatment and kindness." Isn't that what we extend to our prisoners of war? Rather than covering them with feces, or making them feel as if they are drowning, or cramming them into a box for days at a time? For lack of a more straightforward way of saying it, aren't we better than that?
Apparently not, and now that we have proved that to the world, we have lost -- perhaps forever -- the "moral high ground." How can we now ever say that democracy, liberty and the rule of law are the best paths to social order and the common good, when we have now shown that it is capable of an evil such as the ones some of our soldiers carry out with the blessings of the Secretary of Defense and, by extension, our President.
If this betrayal of our values, in our name, is not a high crime or misdemeanor, I'm not sure I know what is.
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yeoman's quotation is from the majority opinion in the Decision of the Supreme Court regarding Docket 05-184 HAMDAN v. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, ET AL. Majority opinion June 29, 2006, pdf page 80.
Paraphrasing then, this President is an abhorrant outlaw of the Rule of Law, and his administration is commiting a High Crime against the Constitution and People of the United States. i aim to briefly justify this interpretation on the basis of the Hamdan decision.
The Hamdan opinion also includes a quote by Justice Frankfurter in a 1951 case involving fascists,
“'[t]he plea that evidence of guilt must be secret is abhorrent to free men'”_Hamdan, pdf page 79-80, (footnote #67).
i suggest you read the opinion yourself. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05slipopinion.html
To read the opinion, find the Hamdan decision on the page and open up that pdf. the pertinent page is pdf "page 80".
When that court says
"But in undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction", IMHO it is an indictment of all the administration complicit in a High Crime, and these in addition to members of congress to the extent the high crime continues.
Redefining words, as some propose, will not elimate this violation of the Rule of Law. IMHO, what we have here is a High Crime committed by "RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, ET AL."
the severity, and the nature of this high crime is undescored in footnote 67, on pages 79 and 80.
Here is the text for which that footnote was prepared:
"Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 71
Opinion of STEVENS, J.
"We agree with JUSTICE KENNEDY that the proceduresadopted to try Hamdan deviate from those governingcourts-martial in ways not justified by any “evident practical need,” post, at 11, and for that reason, at least, fail to afford the requisite guarantees. See post, at 8, 11–17.
"We add only that, as noted in Part VI–A, supra, various provisions of Commission Order No. 1 dispense with the principles, articulated in Article 75 and indisputably part of the customary international law, that an accused must, absent disruptive conduct or consent, be present for his trial and must be privy to the evidence against him. See §§6(B)(3), (D).67"
footnote 67 clarifies this text saying, [embolding and italics mine]
"67The Government offers no defense of these procedures other than to observe that the defendant may not be barred from access to evidence if such action would deprive him of a “full and fair trial.” Commission Order No. 1, §6(D)(5)(b). But the Government suggests no circumstances in which it would be “fair” to convict the accused based on evidence he has not seen or heard.[/i]
Cf. Crawford v. Washington, 541
U. S. 36, 49 (2004) (“ ‘It is a rule of the common law, founded on natural justice, that no man shall be prejudiced by evidence which he had not the liberty to cross examine’ ”
(quoting State v. Webb, 2 N. C. 103, 104 (Super. L. & Eq. 1794) (per curiam)); Diaz v. United States, 223 U. S. 442, 455 (1912) (describing the right to be present as “scarcely lessimportant to the accused than the right of trial itself”);
Lewis v. United States, 146 U. S. 370, 372 (1892) (exclusion of defendant from part ofproceedings is “contrary to the dictates of humanity” (internal quotation marks omitted));
Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 123, 170, n. 17, 171 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) (“[t]he plea that evidence of guilt must be secret is abhorrent to free men”
(internal quotation marks omitted)). More fundamentally, the legality
of a tribunal under Common Article 3 cannot be established by bare
assurances that, whatever the character of the court or the procedures
it follows, individual adjudicators will act fairly.
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