The selection of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General is a declaration that this is to be, once again, the most divisive and partisan administration in modern history.
It is not just a declaration that the president and his party are at war with the Democrats. It is a declaration that they are at war with our liberal democratic past and it is a re-declaration that America considers itself to be above the law and beyond the law and will answer to nothing and nobody.
Alberto Gonzales is the man who advised the White House that they should build a defense in advance against someday being charged with war crimes. He advised that we should declare the Geneva conventions as inapplicable, so as to be free to commit actions that would otherwise be considered war crimes. He was the man that advised the White House that the president’s orders, as commander-in-chief, superseded all other law, specifically our own war crimes act, and therefore anybody who committed a war crime in the belief that he was following orders would have a valid defense.
If Alberto Gonzales had been a defense attorney for the Nazi war criminals at Nuremburg, he would not have even been allowed to offer that argument as a defense. The tribunal at Nuremburg, created by Americans and run primarily by Americans, was about responsibility. Individual responsibility. That if an officer said, “shoot those women and children,” an enlisted man had a right, more than a right, a duty, to say “No.” Because it was a criminal act. If an officer said “torture these prisoners,” and the enlisted man tortured the prisoners, both the officer and the enlisted man could be prosecuted and “I was only following orders” was an inadmissible defense.
In those days Americans took the position that individuals were responsible.
In those days, America was leading the world into a future of ideals, where there would a set of civilized standards to avoid war and, if war somehow was necessary, to conduct war with as much decency and respect for humanity and the ideal of a rule of law, as was humanly possible. We set that standard and much of the world followed.
Now we have declared that is a new world and the as we have all the force we might as well believe that the rule of force should supersede that world of rules and the rule of law.
If Democrats had any shred of any foolish delusion that there would be reaching across the aisle or sweet sharing bi-partisanship, they should be over it by now.
What the Democrats, and any of their allies who believe in law and civilization and the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremburg Laws against War Crimes, should do, is seize this opportunity to be the idealistic opposition.
It may be impossible to block the appointment of Gonzales. It may actually not be important. Whoever the administration would replace him with would be no better.
The administration will play him the way the Bush the First played Clarence Thomas, using the race card and the up from poverty card and trying to make any opposition out to be anti-Hispanic and anti-Catholic. There’s no stopping them either.
But it’s not to hard for a Senator opposing him to say that “I love Hispanic Catholics but I would not want to a Hispanic Catholic who would have argued that Adolf Eichmann should have gotten off because the orders of the commander-in-chief supersede any other rules, should be the attorney general of the United States.”
As the idealistic opposition the Democrats should seize this opportunity to question Gonzales closely about war crimes. About who he talked to about war crimes. About his understanding of war crimes. About whether he advised the president that he would be authorizing actions that could be considered war crimes under US and international law and if the president said, that’s fine, I want to do them anyway. They should also ask Gonzales about holding people without trial. About defining people so that they have no rights. About whether he sees any connection between his legal theories and the torture of prisoners. Not just those at Abu Ghraib, but in Guantanamo and in Afghanistan and in co-operation with other regimes.
The Democrats should turn this into a circus. And they would be right to do so. Because it would not be a circus about embarrassing sexual practices or secret personal issues. It would be a circus of ideals and ideas. About whether the top law enforcement officer in the land believes that power should triumph over laws. That if the laws get in the way they should be evaded and subverted.
When they’re done with that, they should ask him about Enron.
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