Making Money

Last night, during the intermission of the Los Angeles Master Chorale concert at Walt Disney Hall, I reached deep into the pocket of my coat and found a one-Euro coin. Today it's worth $1.30 at official exchange rates, compared to only $1.19 when I returned from Italy back in April. Needless to say, I wish all the pockets of all the clothes I brought with me from Italy were filled with foreign currency.

The dollars is taking a pounding and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Enormous budget and trade deficits are to blame. The current account deficit is accumulating at the rate of $600 billion per year. The budget deficit for FY 2004 was $412.3 billion.

For American exporters, the weak dollar is good news. It's not such good news, however, for me and my plan to return to Italy soon.

Excuse me for a moment while I go search all my pockets.

A Matter of Definition

Do Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales condone torture? No, not if we use their definition of torture. The problem, however, is that no one outside the Bush Administration believes their definition of torture is reasonable. Sonni Efron explains in yesterday's Los Angeles Times.

The Threat to Civil Aviation

Tomorrow the RAND Corporation will release a study that finds that although shoulder-fired missiles pose a serious threat to civil aviation in the United States, available counter-measures are prohibitively expensive. The study states, "Al Qaeda and its affiliates have both the motive and the means to bring down U.S. commercial aircraft with shoulder-fired missiles." Nonetheless, the $11 billion that RAND researchers believe would be necessary to equip civilian airliners with existing defenses against such missiles is almost three times what is currently being spent on transportation security by the government.

Last November, American intelligence officials revealed that there are an estimated 6,000 light anti-aircraft missiles in circulation outside the control of governments. Some of these are leftover Stinger missiles supplied by the United States to the mujahidin during the Afghan War of the 1980s. Steve Coll, in Ghost Wars, describes the CIA's failed effort to buy back unused Stingers shortly after the Taliban captured Kabul. Today, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles are thought to sell for approximately $5,000 on the black market.

As the Los Angeles Times noted back in December, LAX and other urban airports are virtually impossible to secure against the threat given the range of newer shoulder-fired missiles and the population density of the areas surrounding urban airports. The Department of Homeland Security has been looking at various means to address the threat, but progress has reportedly been slow. In fact, the Air Force initiated a secret program early in 2004 to develop defenses for civilian airliners because of its frustration with the pace of DHS efforts.

ESI Rankings

The United States ranks 45th in the world in the latest Environmental Sustainability Index. The report, produced by scholars at Yale and Columbia for the World Economic Forum, uses 75 measures of environmental sustainability, including water quality and the emission of greenhouse gases, in order to rank 146 of the world's states.

The top ten this year are:

1. Finland
2. Norway
3. Uruguay
4. Sweden
5. Iceland
6. Canada
7. Switzerland
8. Guyana
9. Austria
10. Argentina

Dead last this year among the 146 states surveyed? North Korea.

Tsunami Damage Assessment

A report prepared by the World Bank and the government of Indonesia estimates property damage in Aceh and North Sumatra at $4.4 billion. The report was presented recently at a conference in Kobe, Japan. Among the other findings (pertaining only to Indonesia):

• 700,000 people left homeless;
• 37 percent of the 110,229 people killed (the official figure as of January 14) were under 18; 13 percent were infants;
• 40,457 children lost at least one parent;
• 80,000 small businesses that had provided income to 140,000 people were destroyed.

The Guardian reports the story here.

Abu Ghraib: Blame Women in the Military

An organization in Livonia, Michigan called the Center for Military Readiness says that the Abu Ghraib scandal can be traced back to the pernicious practice of co-ed basic training in the Army. It appears (according to CMR) that co-ed basic training, "imposed on the Army in 1994," produces soldiers with less discipline. "The irreplaceable process of 'soldierization'--which transforms immature young people into disciplined soldiers--must compete with hours of 'sensitivity training.'" It gets worse. "Drill sergeants have to spend time keeping the boys and girls apart"--I am not making this up--"and distracted trainees fail to learn essential lessons about respect for legitimate authority and restraints on military power." Read it for yourself.

CMR is a non-profit organization that focuses on military personnel issues. It believes that "the armed forces should not be used for political purposes or social experiments that needlessly elevate risks, detract from readiness, or degrade American cultural values." (For the uninitiated, "social experiments" and "cultural values" are strong code words.) To be more specific, CMR opposes allowing gays in the military. (It called the admission of gays, some of whom were later dismissed, into the Defense Language Institute to study Arabic an "unconscionable waste of time and resources.") It also opposes equal opportunity for women in the military.

That there is an organization opposed to women in combat is understandable. Even feminists are divided on the issue (although feminists' reasons for opposing women in combat would ordinarily differ from those advanced by CMR). What is not reasonable is using the Abu Ghraib scandal in an effort to score points in an ongoing debate over the role of women in the military. It would be laughable if what happened at Abu Ghraib did not absolutely foreclose the possibility of laughter. Instead, it is simply absurd.

What Is Wrong with Torture

Jonathan Schell is exactly right and well worth reading.

Why It Matters Who Interprets the Law

In a comment responding to my letter to Senator Boxer concerning the nomination of Judge Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General of the United States, I was asked about my view of a recent piece in the National Review Online by Professor Douglas Kmiec of the Pepperdine School of Law. I had glanced at Professor Kmiec's essay yesterday; the comment prompted me to read it. While responding to everything that Professor Kmiec writes would be a full-time job (even as professors--and lawyers--go, he is, shall we say, prolix), and not a job that I would want, it seems worth it to address his comments on torture. Professor Kmiec demonstrates what I think is wrong with the defense of the Bush Administration's "war on terror" and, especially, the treatment of detainees in the "war on terror." Conservatives ought to be concerned about the accumulation of unchecked power in the hands of the executive like that which has occurred since the beginning of the "war on terror." Conservative law professors ought to be concerned about imaginative interpretations of law designed to support pre-ordained policy positions. Professor Kmiec's loyalty to the President seems to be more important than his conservative principles. And so, like many conservatives today, he condones loose interpretations of law that lead to unprincipled behavior, which he then calls "inexcusable."

If you're interested in Professor Kmiec's views on torture, go read this. Then, if you're interested in my response, come back here and read on.

Let's begin with the trial of Specialist Charles Graner, about which I've written several times recently (here, here, and here). Professor Kmiec writes that the court martial "established gross and indecent abuse for sport, unrelated to the acquisition of intelligence." True, but it also established–even through the testimony of prosecution witnesses–that there was abuse of detainees that was most definitely related to the acquisition of intelligence (or at least to attempts to acquire intelligence from detainees who likely had no useful information to offer). Guards were encouraged to "soften up" detainees for interrogators. They were also complimented by their superiors for some, if not all, of the abuse they perpetrated. Not surprisingly, we learned shortly after the Graner court martial that some of the officers involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal may also face charges.

Was Graner a bad apple? Most definitely. Published accounts of the court martial suggest that the jury at Fort Hood rightfully convicted him on charges stemming from the abuse of prisoners. Soldiers have a right–-an obligation, in fact–-to disobey unlawful orders and so his defense (that he was merely following orders) could not have been entirely exculpatory. But, sadly, the story doesn’t stop with Specialist Graner. Nor does it stop at Abu Ghraib. Or even at Guantanamo. This is where Professor Kmiec misses the point. Or rather it is one of the places where he misses the point. What numerous investigations, one of which Professor Kmiec refers to in his article, have made absolutely clear is that there has been a consistent pattern of abuse in the way the United States has treated detainees in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Afghanistan. It seems rather unlawyerly to be aware of a pattern and not to ask questions about the design that produced the pattern.

After calling what happened at Abu Ghraib "inexcusable, counterproductive, and well below the American character"--What, incidentally, is wrong with saying "well below the standards of international law" or even "well below the standards of human decency"? Is Professor Kmiec unable to concede even that much to the notion of international human rights?–-he suggests that we face a dilemma and that "necessity" may compel us to do some things that we might not ordinarily do. Here are his words: "And yet we have to come to grips with the necessity of subduing fanatical outlaws who show little respect for human life and seem well inured to any interrogation method that lacks some element of anxiety or fear."

Beware whenever "necessity" makes an appearance in a moral argument. It is a trump card and what it trumps is precisely whatever morality dictates. As Milton put it in Paradise Lost (bk. IV, l. 393),

And with necessity,
The tyrant’s plea, excused his devilish deeds.

There are in fact situations in which necessity is a legitimate plea, a plea available to those who are not tyrants. It is, however, a special plea and one that makes consequentialists of us. Is Professor Kmiec correct in suggesting that we face a situation in which the ends justify the means? The necessity, he writes, is to "subdu[e] fanatical outlaws who show little respect for human life and seem well inured to any interrogation method that lacks some element of anxiety or fear." (Beware, too, whenever euphemisms show up in a moral argument. By "any interrogation method that lacks some element of anxiety or fear," Professor Kmiec means "any interrogation without torture.") The argument is this: On the one hand, the abuse at Abu Ghraib was "well below the American character," but on the other hand we’re dealing with terrorists–-terrorists whom we may have no choice but to torture if we hope to "subdue" them.

Think for a moment about the logic of Professor Kmiec’s position. If "fanatical outlaws" (let’s call them "terrorists") are more inured to interrogation without torture than innocent people mistakenly transported from Afghanistan (or elsewhere) to Guantanamo, then terrorists are going to respond to interrogation much like innocent people who have absolutely no information to divulge. One can imagine the conversation between interrogators bound to such a view: "We’ve kept the detainee bound naked in a stress position for fourteen hours and he still won’t tell us anything about Al Qaeda’s plans." "Yeah. He’s definitely a hardened terrorist." It’s the same logic used by our less enlightened forebears to determine whether or not a woman was a witch. As Matthew Hopkins put it in a seventeenth-century treatise on witchcraft, witches could be inured to normal interrogation techniques. "Loathe they are to confess without torture. This in itself, witnesseth their guilt."

The moral problem might be mitigated if we could be sure that all of those who have been subjected to "harsh interrogations" (another euphemism) were in fact terrorists. (At least then a coherent argument about the ends justifying the means could be produced.) President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have, at various times, assured us that all of those being held in Guantanamo are terrorists-–the worst of the worst, in fact. And yet, some of the Guantanamo detainees are being released in a tacit acknowledgment that not all of them belonged there in the first place.

Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul are two of the Guantanamo detainees who have been released. Both are British citizens, born and raised in Tipton. They made the mistake of being away from home (for Iqbal’s wedding) when 9/11 occurred. They were taken by an Afghan warlord soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, transferred into U.S. custody (probably in exchange for money or weapons), and then transported (bound, hooded, and forced to urinate on themselves) to Guantanamo on January 14, 2002. After what they estimate were over 200 interrogation sessions and a great deal of anxiety and fear, the United States Government determined that Iqbal and Rasul were not terrorists. In March 2004, they were returned to their homes.

Iqbal and Rasul were repatriated after they had confessed to an association with Al Qaeda. Their "confessions" were proved by British intelligence--MI5--to have been false as, in fact, many coerced confessions are.) Other detainees have similar stories. Some will never be able to tell those stories. (At least six detainees in Afghanistan have died in American custody.) There are three other British citizens who were released and repatriated along with Iqbal and Rasul.

It is worth noting (as I did here several months ago) that Lt. Col. Anthony Christino, a twenty-year veteran of military intelligence, has insisted that claims of useful intelligence coming from Gitmo interrogations are grossly exaggerated.

But what of Professor Kmiec’s arguments concerning the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questioning of Judge Gonzales last week? He characterizes much of the questioning–-the critical part, that is-–as "posturing." Judge Gonzales’s Senate critics were off base, Professor Kmiec suggests, in questioning him about a Justice Department memorandum he "requested but didn’t write on torture." How Judge Gonzales views the opinions expressed in that memorandum (that "physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death") seems to me to be a very important question to ask of someone nominated to be not just the President’s chief legal adviser but the Attorney General of the United States.

Professor Kmiec defends Judge Gonzales’s reading of the Geneva Conventions and their applicability to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. I agree that Judge Gonzales was correct in suggesting that members of Al Qaeda did not qualify for protection under the Geneva Conventions. He was wrong, however, with respect to the Taliban. Professor Kmiec applauds Judge Gonzales’s reliance on the authority of the President to decide legal questions that the President asks his legal counsel to assist with. (Judge Gonzales practically said in his legal analysis, "Whatever you say, boss," and for this Professor Kmiec commends him.) What Professor Kmiec does not do is defend Judge Gonzales’s analysis of the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the Taliban. Instead, he says that President Bush made it a moot point on February 7, 2002 by deciding to apply Geneva to the Taliban, even though he was not legally obliged to do so. (But, of course, what we know about conditions in Guantanamo since that time indicate that the President didn’t really mean it. If Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applied to the Taliban as the President said it would, then Americans have been committing war crimes at Guantanamo.)

Toward the end of his essay, Professor Kmiec lauds Senator John Cornyn’s questioning. (Cornyn "turned to the substance of Gonzales’s legal thinking.") Cornyn’s brilliance was evident, Professor Kmiec seems to suggest, when he asked the witnesses critical of Judge Gonzales if "they agree[d] that all lawful means to gather intelligence likely to save American lives should be permitted." "They all answered affirmatively," Professor Kmiec notes. Gotcha! What Professor Kmiec fails to point out–-and this is the crux of the matter--is that "lawful" means something different to the Bush Administration than it did to witnesses who are experts in international law.

It matters a great deal who determines what is "lawful" in the United States. Judge Gonzales is on record having determined that, with respect to the "war on terror" at least, "lawful" is whatever the President wants it to be. And with respect to interrogations, Judge Gonzales permitted a very tortured definition of "torture" to stand as "lawful" for over two years. The confirmation of Judge Gonzales as Attorney General will send a very bad message to the world.

MLK on Dissent

"A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world."

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

(Via Sojourners.)

Second Term

The JibJab guys have a new film on-line.

Casing Iran

There's a story in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh that is currently creating a bit of a stir. It concerns U.S. preparations for a war against Iran. Kevin Drum offers a Cliffs Notes version (with a few comments) here. (Thanks to Ben Young for the tip and the link.)

The Role of the Siloviki

Today's New York Times has a fascinating story about the efforts of Ukrainian intelligence agencies to support the "Orange Revolution" and prevent Viktor Yanukovich from stealing the election. Senior intelligence officials (the siloviki) provided opposition candidate Viktor Yuschenko evidence of election fraud during the election and, on November 28, thwarted government plans to disperse demonstrators in Kiev in what might otherwise have become a crackdown comparable to the events in Beijing's Tienanmen Square in 1989.

Read C. J. Chivers' story here.

Sending the World a Message

17 January 2005

The Honorable Barbara Boxer
United States Senate
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Boxer:

I write on the day set aside to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of our nation’s greatest advocates of human dignity for all, to urge you to act vigorously to help restore the respect for human rights that Dr. King did so much to promote. Soon after the Senate reconvenes on January 20, you will be asked to exercise your constitutional responsibility to give "Advice and Consent" to the nomination of Judge Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General of the United States. I urge you to act on behalf of your constituents (and, indeed, the vast majority of Americans) who reject the repeated and persistent violations of human rights with which Judge Gonzales has been associated by voting against the nomination.

The Senate, I believe, should tell President Bush to defer the appointment of Judge Gonzales until there has been an independent investigation of the torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment that have occurred at the hands of Americans in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan, and other locations around the world. Only if such an investigation can establish that the August 1, 2002 memorandum that Judge Gonzales prepared for the President played no role in promoting the behavior that has shamed the United States should his nomination even be put to a vote.

Quite apart from the matter of the torture memorandum, there is much in Judge Gonzales’ record on the bench in Texas that should give us all pause. Nonetheless, his rise from poverty as the son of migrant workers is rightly praised as a great American success story. This and the symbolism of his status as the first Latino nominated to be Attorney General of the United States would ordinarily be a cause for celebration of our nation’s commitment to equality and support for the human dignity of all. Unfortunately, Judge Gonzales has come to represent, both in the United States and perhaps even more so overseas, American disregard for the human rights of our enemies and disdain for fundamental norms of international law. Judge Gonzales’ carefully rehearsed (but also frequently qualified) responses before the Senate Judiciary Committee to questions about torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment cannot undo the damage his previous efforts to find legal warrant for such activities has done to his own reputation and, more importantly, to the reputation of the United States.

I would remind you that the first question put to Judge Gonzales by the Judiciary Committee (by Senator Specter) was this: "Do you approve of torture?" When in the history of the United States Senate has it been necessary to put such a question to the President’s nominee to be Attorney General of the United States?

Senator Boxer, the world is looking to the United States Senate to determine whether or not there remains any part of our government willing to speak–and, more importantly, to act–unequivocally against torture and against those who promote it. Sadly, many people around the world see the United States now being gripped by the "arrogance of power," in the phrase made famous a generation ago by the late Senator J. William Fulbright. I urge you not only to vote against the confirmation of Judge Gonzales to be Attorney General but to do everything in your power to see that the nomination is defeated so that we may begin to restore the reputation that Dr. King helped to create for our country as a place where human dignity is respected.

Sincerely yours,

Robert E. Williams

Up the Chain of Command

Although the superior orders defense failed to convince the jury in the court martial of Specialist Charles Graner to exonerate the defendant, the proceedings increased the prospect that some officers involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal may face charges according to today's New York Times. No one, however, is yet suggesting that prosecutions--or even investigations--will involve those who were not actually present at Abu Ghraib. As was the case with the Graner trial, there is always the possibility that military trials will reveal the existence of unlawful orders thus prompting investigators to move up the chain of command.

"The higher up they go, the more problems they have with people leading to the Pentagon," said Harvey Volzer, who represented Megan Ambuhl, who was discharged from the military as part of a plea bargain in the Abu Ghraib abuses. "[Col. Thomas M.] Pappas gives them [Gen. Ricardo] Sanchez, and they don't want that. Sanchez can give them Rumsfeld, and they don't want that.

"Rumsfeld can lead to Bush and Gonzales, and they definitely don't want that," Mr. Volzer said, referring to President Bush and to Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel and attorney general nominee, who argued in a memorandum that parts of the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and "obsolete."

The Center for Constitutional Rights, meanwhile, is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's role in establishing the policies that led to prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

More Trials to Come

The Guardian notes that more military trials are on the way:

The Pentagon plans to put at least 20 more US troops before military courts for abuse of detainees in the wake of last week's high profile trial of the ringleader in the Abu Ghraib scandal, military spokesmen said yesterday.

The Guardian also points out that "informal polls by newspapers on US army bases found troops believed low-ranking troops such as Graner have been singled out for exemplary punishment, while senior officers--who knew of the abuse for months--have gone free." Only one soldier facing charges in the detainee abuse scandal is known to be an officer.

Ten Years

Specialist Charles Graner (now demoted to private), described as the "ringleader" of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

On this date in 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Named at birth Michael Luther King for his father, his name was legally changed when he was a child (along with his father's) to honor the leader of the Protestant Reformation.

Of his leading role in the American Civil Rights Movement, King said, "History has thrust me into this position. It would be both immoral and a sign of ingratitude if I did not face my moral responsibility to do what I can in this struggle."

Contrary to the expectations of many, both black and white, that such a strategy would not succeed, King led a non-violent struggle. Addressing himself to those responsible for racial injustice, he said, "We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. . . . We will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process."

Of his belief in the morality of non-violent resistance, King said, "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."

In 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Four years later, on April 4, 1968, he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

On Wednesday, January 19, at 10:00 a.m., Martin Luther King III, one of four children of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, will be speaking at Pepperdine.

Torture and Public Opinion

Last weekend, USA Today conducted a poll that, among other things, asked about attitudes toward some of the issues that have been raised in connection with the prisoner abuse scandals in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. How would you respond to these questions?

Here is a list of possible interrogation techniques that can be used on prisoners. Do you think it is right or wrong for the U.S. government to use them on prisoners suspected of having information about possible terrorist attacks against the United States?

A. Forcing prisoners to remain naked and chained in uncomfortable positions in cold rooms for several hours

B. Having female interrogators make physical contact with Muslim men during religious observances that prohibit such contact

C. Threatening to transfer prisoners to a country known for using torture

D. Threatening prisoners with dogs

E. Strapping prisoners on boards and forcing their heads underwater until they think they are drowning

F. Depriving prisoners of sleep for several days

To compare your responses with the poll results, go here (and look for question #38).

A Verdict at Fort Hood

Earlier today, Specialist Charles A. Graner, Jr. was found guilty on all charges (with one charge reduced) by the ten-person jury in his court martial at Fort Hood, Texas. The sentencing phase of the trial began immediately. Graner faces up to fifteen years in prison for his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

No Regrets

In an interview with Barbara Walters to be aired tonight on ABC's 20/20, President Bush says that he has no regrets about invading Iraq in spite of the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found. He also states that "the removal of Saddam Hussein has made America safer."

The President does, however, admit regretting saying in July 2003 (with respect to the insurgency in Iraq), "Bring it on." Insurgents have recently used the phrase in an English-language propaganda video, which can be viewed here.

Never Admit a Mistake

Incredibly, the list of statements cited here in The RS Blog is not exhaustive.

On Power and Secrecy

"Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous."

--Sen. William Proxmire

Human Rights Watch World Report 2005

Each year, Human Rights Watch issues a report based on the organization's investigations into global human rights abuses. The 2005 edition, released today, leads with essays focused on "large-scale ethnic cleansing in Darfur in western Sudan, and detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, symptomatic of a broader problem of torture and mistreatment of detainees by U.S. forces."

The End of the ISG

The Washington Post reports today that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ended before Christmas. The White House and the Pentagon determined that, with the U.S. presidential election having passed without incident the previous month, there was no further political benefit to be gained from a charade that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and nearly a dozen lives of those working with weapons inspectors.

There are several disturbing aspects of this story, beyond the obvious point that the United States waged a preemptive war, spent almost two years searching for WMD, and now owns the world's most dangerous insurgency all for the purpose of confirming what U.N. weapons inspectors were telling the Bush Administration all along. The Post reports, for example, that "Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified." Also, the Post notes that in spite of the fact that the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) determined over a year ago that none of the Iraqi scientists being held had worked on WMD since the Persian Gulf War, some continue to be imprisoned by the U.S. without having been charged with a crime.

Those who have supported the war in Iraq should read this plain, factual statement from the Post story--"President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States."--and then click on the Post's link to "Faces of the Fallen."

The "Salvador Option"

Newsweek reported over the weekend that the Pentagon is considering a plan for Iraq that would involve the creation of Iraqi death squads to target insurgent leaders. The name of the proposal recalls the government's use of death squads in El Salvador's civil war from 1980 to 1992. Recalling that tragic story should have put an end to any discussion of American-trained death squads, but Newsweek indicates that "the Pentagon is intensively debating" the proposal.

Consider the following:

• One victim of the death squads was Archbishop Romero, gunned down while celebrating mass in the chapel of a hospital on March 24, 1980. (In September 2004, a federal court in Fresno, California entered a $10 million judgment in a civil suit filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act against Alvaro Saravia for the death of Romero.)
• The human rights organization Americas Watch estimated that 30,000 Salvadorans (in a country with a total population of 5 million) were murdered by the government of El Salvador from 1980 to 1983.
• In 1985, after international pressure had been put on the Salvadoran government to improve its human rights record, President Jose Napoleon Duarte boasted that there were "only" about 30 murders per month being committed by death squads. Outside observers placed the figure much higher.

For almost ten years I have been associated with El Rescate, an organization founded in 1981 to assist the thousands of Salvadorans who fled to the United States to escape war, political repression, and death squads. During the 1980s, the organization accumulated an enormous archive of materials documenting human rights abuses in El Salvador, including the thousands of murders committed by death squads. Thousands of people living in Los Angeles today--including some who work for El Rescate--left their homes in El Salvador because they were threatened or because loved ones had disappeared. When I traveled to El Salvador in 1994 to work as an election monitor in the first postwar presidential election, the fear of political violence remained palpable.

Perhaps someone in the Pentagon should ask a Salvadoran about the "Salvador Option."

Specialist Graner's Court Martial

The trial of Specialist Charles Graner began today at Fort Hood, Texas with prosecutors showing previously unseen photographs from Abu Ghraib. While the prosecution portrayed Graner as a sadist who went far beyond what was authorized in the way he treated prisoners, the defense maintained that Graner merely followed orders and that his superiors often complimented his work.

The defense case was bolstered by the testimony of one of the prosecution witnesses, according to the Washington Post:

Army officers and CIA operatives at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison condoned the beatings and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners there and repeatedly praised the enlisted soldiers who abused the inmates, a former guard testified as the first military trial stemming from the prison scandal got underway Monday.

Pvt. Ivan L. Frederick was called as a prosecution witness in the Army's criminal case against Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., the alleged ringleader of the abusive guards at Abu Ghraib. But his testimony tended to support a key element of Graner's defense--that he was following orders from higher-ranking officers when he punched and beat the prisoners and forced them to wallow naked in freezing mud outside the prison.

(The Post also provides Abu Ghraib prison photos and a brief video clip.)

Although many of the Americans at Abu Ghraib committed crimes and deserve to be punished (even if they were following orders), it is worth remembering that there were also those who acted courageously.

Witnesses said that most of the soldiers at the prison responded to abuse of inmates by laughing and joining in the mistreatment. But two soldiers--Spec. Matthew Wisdom and Spec. Joseph Darby--testified that they were so disgusted by the conduct of their fellow soldiers that they reported it to superiors. Wisdom's warning, in November 2003, was ignored. But two months later, Darby gave Army investigators photographic evidence of the abuse. That led to the public scandal, the congressional hearings and Graner's court-martial.

Iraq Update

By the time President Bush declared an end to "major combat operations" on May 1, 2003, 140 Americans had been killed in action. Since then, 1,213 Americans have died in combat in Iraq. According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, the total now stands at 1,353 killed and 10,252 wounded in Iraq since the beginning of the war. Seven American troops were killed in a single roadside bomb explosion on Friday.

Determining how many Iraqis have died remains a matter of conjecture or statistical analysis. However, the United States admitted yesterday that a 500-pound bomb was mistakenly dropped on a residence near Mosul killing at least five "possibly innocent" people. The owner of the house claims that fourteen people were killed, including seven children.

Emily Greene Balch

On this date in 1867, Emily Greene Balch was born. Balch was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946, only the second American woman so honored.

A member of Bryn Mawr College's first graduating class in 1889, Balch went on to study economics at Harvard and the University of Chicago. She taught economics and sociology at Wellesley College until World War I when she became a founder of the Women's International Committee for Permanent Peace, an organization that would later become the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Balch worked for--and on behalf of--the WILPF for much of her life. She donated her share of the Nobel Peace Prize money to the WILPF as well. Vladimir Simkhovitch, Professor of Economic History at Columbia University, said, "I have never met anyone who has, as she has done, for decade after decade given every minute of her life to the work for peace between nations."

During the 1920s, Balch participated in many activities of the League of Nations, and in the 1930s she worked to assist those who were persecuted by the Nazis. Her opposition to fascism led her to put aside her earlier pacifism in exchange for a more militant approach to the defense of human rights.

Emily Greene Balch died on January 9, 1961, one day after her ninety-fourth birthday.

Post-Tsunami Satellite Photos

If you haven't already seen before and after satellite photos of the region affected by the tsunami, take a look at these.

(Thanks to Larry Crino for passing along the link.)

Original Sin

It is, I believe, increasingly apparent that the Bush Administration's first mistake after 9/11--and the one from which all others have flowed--was the decision to declare a general (but very ill-defined) "war on terror." With different leadership--more restrained leadership--such a determination might have been acceptable given the enormity of the crime committed on 9/11. But the neocons are not realists and do not understand the dangers of moral crusading. Nor are they idealists who understand the dangers of unrestrained power.

In Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War (p. 8), James Carroll indicates one of the reasons why declaring a "war on terror" was a mistake:

Instead of perceiving unconnected centers of inhuman violence–tribal warlords, mafia chieftains, nationalist fighters, xenophobic Luddites–President Bush projects the grandest and most interlocking strategies of conspiracy, belief, and organization. By the canonization of the war on terrorism, petty nihilists are elevated to the status of world-historic warriors, exactly the fate they might have wished for. This is why the conflict readily bleeds from one locus to another–Afghanistan now, Iraq then, Iran or some other land of evil soon–and why, for that matter, the targeted enemies are entirely interchangeable–here Osama bin Laden, there Saddam Hussein, here the leader of Iran, there of North Korea. They are all essentially one enemy–one "axis"–despite their differences from each other, or even hatred of each other. (italics added)

In Iraq, we are engaged in an bloody struggle with "petty nihilists," but every time the President speaks about the war, he suggests that our enemies are the enemies of freedom and the sole obstacles to peace and justice in the world.

There are other reasons why the "war on terror" is Bush's Original Sin. I will discuss some of them in the next several weeks. Meanwhile, William Butler Yeats' famous line from "The Second Coming" seems appropriate: "Things fall apart; the centre will not hold."

Superior Orders?

Jury selection was completed today at Fort Hood, Texas in the court-martial of Specialist Charles A. Graner, Jr., who stands accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. Graner's attorney, Guy Womack, insists that Graner was merely following orders to "soften up" prisoners for interrogators.

Whether Womack has plans to mount a superior orders defense is unclear. Such a defense would be difficult. (One need only recall how lucky Tom Cruise was to get Jack Nicholson to admit on the witness stand that he had ordered a "Code Red" in A Few Good Men.) As Dr. Michael Nutkiewicz pointed out in a lecture at Pepperdine last November, orders to torture prisoners are rarely explicit.

Colonel Allen Batschelet, one of the two potential jurors dismissed by the judge in the Graner case, explained to reporters the reason for his inability to be impartial: "As an Army officer, I was embarrassed by what I saw in the media. The values I hold dear as a soldier were called into question by the whole affair." This explains why twelve former generals and admirals, including the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, took the unprecedented step of writing a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging the rejection of the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general of the United States.

The Significance of Alberto Gonzales

I have recently begun reading Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror by Mark Danner. The first part of the book consists of several essays that Danner wrote for the New York Review of Books in 2004. The bulk of the book, however, consists of primary sources: the "torture memos," the Abu Ghraib photographs, and the various investigative reports that have been completed thus far. In the introduction to the book, Danner says,

As I write, less than five months after the [Abu Ghraib] photographs were first broadcast, few of the major facts about what went on in Abu Ghraib remain hidden. Thanks to investigations, but even more to the leaks that occasioned them, we know, certainly in broad outline, what happened at the prison and how what happened there derived from decisions made in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and, ultimately, Washington, D.C. This makes Abu Ghraib a peculiarly contemporary kind of scandal: like other scandals that have erupted during the Iraq war and the war on terror, it is not about revelation or disclosure but about the failure, once wrongdoing is exposed, of politicians, officials, the press, and, ultimately, citizens to act. The scandal is not about uncovering what is hidden, it is about seeing what is already there--and acting on it. It is not about information; it is about politics.

Today on the op-ed page of the New York Times, Danner makes the same point with respect to the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general of the United States. Danner suggests that

perhaps it is fitting that Mr. Gonzales be confirmed. The system of torture has, after all, survived its disclosure. We have entered a new era; the traditional story line in which scandal leads to investigation and investigation leads to punishment has been supplanted by something else. Wrongdoing is still exposed; we gaze at the photographs and read the documents, and then we listen to the president's spokesman "reiterate," as he did last week, "the president's determination that the United States never engage in torture." And there the story ends.

Gonzales is going to be confirmed by the Senate. And when he is, those senators who vote for him will be sending the message to the world--in the name of the people they represent--that although the United States may investigate acts of torture committed by its citizens, it will not punish those who are ultimately responsible. On the contrary, the United States in 2005 rewards those who advocate torture.

Good Question

Josh Marshall asks an interesting question:

We know that Al Gonzales has been White House Counsel for the last four years and that he's played an instrumental role in several legal findings and memos which have given legal sanction to torture (or what I guess we might call "the act formerly known as torture"). What if Gonzales had had some roughly equivalent position in Argentina or Chile in the late 1970s? Would he have faced subsequent legal vulnerability and/or consequences?

Of Job and the Tsunami

Once again, James Carroll offers words of wisdom in the face of tragedy.

No to Gonzales

The Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings on the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales to be Attorney General on Thursday. While the nomination of a Latino to serve as the nation's highest law enforcement official would ordinarily be good news, the Senate should reject Gonzales because of his role in promoting the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. Torture is a violation of U.S. and international law and should not be tolerated under any circumstances. In legal terms, the right not to be subject to torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment is non-derogable.

As Counsel to the President, Gonzales wrote a memo dated January 25, 2002, that argued that the Geneva Conventions (one of the legal foundations of the international prohibition of torture) were "obsolete" and "quaint." Gonzales later argued that even U.S. citizens could be detained and denied the basic rights belonging to those accused of crimes for as long as the president considered it necessary. This position was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 in the case of Rasul v. Bush.

The president has a right to get legal counsel from a trusted friend and experienced attorney. The president also has the right to nominate whomever he wants to serve as Attorney General of the United States. The Constitution, however, gives the Senate the right to judge the fitness of the president's nominees to high executive and judicial offices. Because Alberto Gonzales, acting as Counsel to the President, urged President Bush to violate both domestic and international law (with disastrous consequences for the United States), the Senate should not hesitate to exercise its constitutional prerogative and declare Gonzales unfit to serve in the nation's highest law enforcement post.

Now would be an opportune time to call or e-mail the senators from your state about this important matter. Once again, the reputation of the United States as law-abiding nation is at stake.

A Warning on Nuclear Security

Lawrence J. Korb, who served as an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan (and who spoke at Pepperdine last fall), wrote yesterday in the Boston Globe about the Bush Administration's record on nuclear security. As Korb points out, one thing that George Bush and John Kerry agreed on during the presidential campaign was the need to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists. Read what Korb has to say about the Administration's record on what President Bush said, in the first presidential debate, was "the biggest threat facing this country."

Chisholm and Matsui

Two individuals who fought in the United States Congress for human rights died this weekend. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, was a strong advocate for the rights of women and minorities during a congressional career that lasted from 1968 to 1982. In 1972, she sought the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Once when she was asked how she wanted to be remembered, she said, "I'd like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts. That's how I'd like to be remembered."

Robert Matsui, who experienced internment as a Japanese-American during World War II, was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Sacramento. At his death, he was one of the highest-ranking Asian-Americans in the history of the U.S. Congress. In 1988, Rep. Matsui spear-headed the effort to legislate an official apology and token compensation to those who had been interned during World War II.

The South Asian Disaster

The enormous (9.0 on the Richter scale) earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated so many coastal areas in the Indian Ocean basin occurred at a time when many of us were focused on family and not on the wider world. In fact, initial aid efforts were hampered by the fact that many western NGO representatives who normally live and work in the region were away on holiday vacations when the disaster struck. The tragedy is too enormous to try to recount. Photo essays in the New York Times and the Washington Post (just click on "Interactive graphics and photos" and "Photos," respectively, under the papers' front-page stories on the disaster) are useful sources for those trying to gauge the enormity of what happened. (Be sure to see the satellite images.)

Indonesia, where officials are now estimating that over 100,000 people were killed, and Sri Lanka, with roughly 25,000 killed, bore the brunt of the disaster. But there were also fatalities related to the tsunami in Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Tanzania, and Somalia.

States and international lending agencies have pledged $2 billion in humanitarian assistance with the government of Japan accounting for a quarter of that amount. The U.S. initially pledged $15 million, then hastily upped that amount to $35 million before settling on the significantly higher sum of $350 million. Those experienced in coordinating responses to humanitarian disasters are skeptical concerning how much of the money pledged will actually be delivered. Of $1.1 billion pledged by for the reconstruction of Bam, the Iranian city devastated by an earthquake exactly one year before the Indian Ocean tsunami, only $17 million has been delivered thus far. Governments, like individuals, do not always make good on their pledges.

Equally troubling is the fact that, historically, disaster relief contributions tend to come at the expense of existing humanitarian commitments. For this reason, humanitarian efforts in Sudan and the Congo are expected to suffer.

Taking a Break

I will be taking a week or so off. Please check back for more posts sometime around the first of the New Year.

Happy Holidays!

Christmas and Politics

James Carroll's column in yesterday's Boston Globe recounts the politics of the Christmas story. Read it here.

Final Exam

Posting has been light recently due to the demands of end-of-the semester grading. For those who didn't have the privilege of taking International Organizations and Law this semester, here's the final exam:

SANTA’S NASTY LITTLE SECRET

On Christmas morning, you are surprised to find a handwritten note inside a present you’ve just opened. It reads:

HELP!!! I am being held along with over 400 of my fellow citizens in a forced labor camp in the Kingdom of North Pole. We are forced to work making toys 364 days a year. We are paid only a few dollars each day. The factory doors are locked from the outside so that we are confined to the workplace 24 hours a day. Although we have beds here and are given food each day, we are treated like prison inmates or slaves. Please, help us.

[signed] Biff
President,
North Pole Elf-Determination Council

As a young international human rights lawyer, you recognize the significance of this plea for help and you decide to investigate further. A quick internet search turns up (1) references to sweatshops in North Pole in each of the last two editions of the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices; (2) a series of three articles in the Washington Post focusing on allegations of serious human rights abuses in North Pole; and (3) a Human Rights Watch report entitled Santa Claus or Satan Claus? The Use of Forced Labor in North Pole. North Pole, you learn, is a state party to each of the major international human rights covenants and their optional protocols.

You attempt to contact Biff by phone, but a receptionist disclaims any knowledge of a person named Biff, an organization called the North Pole Elf-Determination Council, or a toy factory in North Pole. Based on the Department of State and Human Rights Watch reports, you feel certain the factory exists and that the note you have received is not a hoax.

Issue 1. Has a human rights violation occurred in Biff’s case? What specific rights, if any, have been violated? Does your answer to either of these questions change depending on whether the sweatshop in which Biff lives and works is state-owned or privately owned?

Issue 2. Within the human rights system of the United Nations, what are your options for obtaining relief for Biff? What conditions must be satisfied before you can pursue these options?

Your work within the human rights system of the United Nations succeeds in forcing the sweatshop in which Biff works to make some modest improvements in labor conditions. In fact, during one of the brief vacations that workers are given, Biff and several of his colleagues leave North Pole and make their way to the United States where they apply for refugee status. Biff contacts you and urges you to file suit on his behalf against Santa Claus, the operator of the notorious North Pole slave labor camp. Having never been given the pony you always wanted for Christmas when you were a child, you are only too eager to sue Santa.

Issue 3. To which court do you take your case? What argument do you make for the jurisdiction of that court? How would the determination that Santa Claus is the head of state for North Pole affect your legal strategy?

Last-Minute Shopping

Did you know that your Amazon.com purchases can benefit Amnesty International? Enter the Amazon.com web site via AI USA's home page here (look for the blue "Shop at Amazon and Support Amnesty" link) and a percentage of your purchases will be donated to Amnesty.

On the other hand, maybe shopping at Amazon isn't such a good idea for those of us dreaming of a Blue Christmas.

(How's that for a mixed message?)

Letelier's Son Speaks

On Monday, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was declared fit to stand trial and was placed under house arrest by Judge Juan Guzman. Today in the Los Angeles Times, Francisco Letelier tells the story of his father's death at the hands of Pinochet in 1976. Orlando Letelier, the Chilean ambassador to the United States under President Salvador Allende, whom Pinochet ousted, was killed when his car exploded in Washington, D.C. The orders for the assassination came from Santiago according to Michael Townley, who planted the bomb.

Falluja on Film

The dust hasn't settled yet, but already there are plans for a movie based on the battle for Falluja according to The Guardian. In fact, Harrison Ford has been selected to star in the role of Gen. Jim Mattis who led the aborted assault on Falluja over six months ago.

Asylum in Iceland?

The Washington Post reports that Iceland is offering former chess champion Bobby Fischer asylum should he be deported from Japan. Fischer, an American, has been in jail in Japan since July. He is fighting extradition to the United States where he faces charges of violating economic sanctions against Yugoslavia by traveling there to play a chess match in 1992. Iceland was the site of perhaps the most widely followed match in the history of chess, Fischer's win over the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky.

PTSD

The New York Times has an interesting report on mental health issues facing soldiers returning from Iraq:

An Army study shows that about one in six soldiers in Iraq report symptoms of major depression, serious anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, a proportion that some experts believe could eventually climb to one in three, the rate ultimately found in Vietnam veterans.

It will be many years before we are able to calculate the real cost of the war in Iraq.

Litigating Global Warming

Is global warming a human rights issue? Those who live on islands vulnerable to rising sea levels think so. So do the Inuit (or Eskimos) who see in the melting of Arctic ice the disappearance of their way of life. Representatives of the Inuit plan to take the issue to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, according to the New York Times:

The Inuit plan is part of a broader shift in the debate over human-caused climate change evident among participants in the 10th round of international talks taking place in Buenos Aires aimed at averting dangerous human interference with the climate system.

Inuit leaders said they planned to announce the effort at the climate meeting today.

Representatives of poor countries and communities--from the Arctic fringes to the atolls of the tropics to the flanks of the Himalayas--say they are imperiled by rising temperatures and seas through no fault of their own. They are casting the issue as no longer simply an environmental problem but as an assault on their basic human rights.

The Inuit will be supported in their petition before the IACHR by Earthjustice (formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) and the Center for International Environmental Law.

Earlier this year, eight states (including California and New York) filed suit against five major utility companies in an effort to force them to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The right to a livable environment is part of a group of third-generation rights that are increasingly being recognized in international law. If the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights agrees that Inuit rights are being violated by greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, lawsuits may follow. Eventually, courts may compel the United States to act on a matter that neither the Bush Administration nor Congress has been willing to address. It is worth recalling that the civil rights movement in the United States was jump-started by a similar strategy in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

God's Clock

James Carroll, a columnist for the Boston Globe, has been one of my favorite writers since I read An American Requiem at Dan Caldwell's suggestion a few years ago. His most recent book, Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War, although a collection of newspaper columns, is one of the best things I've read on the Iraq War.

Carroll's column in the Globe today, entitled "God's Clock," is a very eloquent meditation on--and a timely reminder of--the relationship between religion and the transcendent.

Afghan Detainees

Human Rights Watch has uncovered evidence concerning three more deaths of detainees in American custody in Afghanistan, bringing to six the number of detainees allegedly killed by American forces there. The New York Times reports the story here.

Sadly, this makes the comments that Ambassador Pierre Prosper made at Pepperdine last month (casting doubt on the veracity of news coverage of detainee deaths) look more and more like outright obfuscations--to be polite. (Streaming audio of the session at Pepperdine is available here [part 1] and here [part 2]. My comments at the session in response to Ambassador Prosper, in which I note the reporting by the Los Angeles Times of the death of Jamal Naseer in American custody in Afghanistan, begin about 50 minutes into the first part.)

Kyoto, 2004

The United States' position on global warming is getting the cold shoulder from the rest of the world as parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (to which the Kyoto Protocol is an amendment) meet in Buenos Aires. The Los Angeles Times has details:

BUENOS AIRES — The United States is the big odd man out as diplomats, scientists and environmentalists from more than 190 countries gather here at the 10th meeting of the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The focus of the convention is the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which mandates reduction of greenhouse gases that cause global warming and will take effect next year.

Discussions of new limits are expected to begin here when official delegations arrive Wednesday, near the end of the 12-day conference.

Among major industrial countries, only the U.S. and Australia have failed to ratify the accord, which commits signatory nations to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases to 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012.

Observers here say the U.S. is increasingly being shut out as the rest of the world adopts global mechanisms by which each country will meet its targeted reductions, including one that allows companies to trade reductions in carbon emissions in a kind of global pollution market.

The U.S., which accounts for about a third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, pulled out of the agreement in 2001.

U.S. officials last week acknowledged a global rise in temperatures caused by human activity but said the increase had not yet reached the "dangerous" levels that equired drastic action.

They reiterated that the Bush administration would not push for U.S. ratification of the accord.

Read the rest here.

Kyoto, 1997

It was on this date in 1997 that over 150 states convening in Kyoto, Japan adopted an agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The Kyoto Protocol will enter into force on February 16, 2005, ninety days after Russia's ratification put the agreement over the threshold mandated by the treaty. (The agreement specified that entry into force would occur upon the ratifications of a combination of states accounting for over 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in 1990. Russia's ratification brought that figure up to 61.6 percent.) The thirty industrialized states that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol are committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 5 percent by 2012.

The United States has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Women, War and the Environment

Here, on International Human Rights Day, are two powerful statements from women. The first, from Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, speaks eloquently of "Trees for Democracy." The second, from Myrna Cunningham, addresses the impact of war on women.

International Human Rights Day

Today marks the fifty-sixth anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states in Article 1, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. " This radical assertion of the fundamental equality of all human beings compels us to look beyond the many characteristics that separate us from one another--sex, race, nationality, age, religion, wealth, education, and more--and to focus on what unites us. It calls us to avoid dehumanizing others--even our enemies--and to work to affirm "the inherent dignity . . . of all members of the human family." It asks us, in short, to do what all respectable religions have always asked their adherents to do.

Mark the day.

• Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• Act to protect the human rights of others.
• Learn about human rights abuses in another part of the world.
• Pray for the victims of human rights abuse.

The Genocide Convention

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was approved by the United Nations General Assembly on this date in 1948. It entered into force on January 12, 1951.

Article 2 states:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The United States signed the Genocide Convention on December 11, 1948. Ratification came almost forty years later, on November 25, 1988.

On January 11, 1967, Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin began a personal crusade to secure U.S. ratification of the Genocide Convention. He gave a speech that day on the floor of the United States Senate urging ratification. It was the first of 3,211 original and unique speeches--one each day that the Senate was in session--that he would give over the course of the next nineteen years regarding the need to ratify the Genocide Convention.

Can't Anybody Count?

The British refuse to count Iraqi war dead, too.

Yesterday Tony Blair rejected a call from more than 40 diplomats, peers, scientists and religious leaders who pressed for an independent inquiry for a civilian death toll.

"Figures from the Iraqi ministry of health, which are a survey from the hospitals there, are in our view the most accurate survey there is," he told parliament.

The Guardian discusses the issue of counting here.

Jeannette Rankin

On this date in 1941, one day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war [.wav file]. Congress promptly responded with a resolution that was nearly unanimous in both Houses. The report on the front page of the New York Times on December 9, 1941 tells the story:

Washington, Dec. 8.--The United States today formally declared war on Japan. Congress, with only one dissenting vote, approved the resolution in the record time of 33 minutes after President Roosevelt denounced Japanese aggression in ringing tones. He personally delivered his message to a joint session of the Senate and House. At 4:10 P. M. he affixed his signature to the resolution.

There was no debate like that between April 2, 1917, when President Wilson requested war against Germany, and April 6, when a declaration of war was approved by Congress.

President Roosevelt spoke only 6 minutes and 30 seconds today compared with Woodrow Wilson's 29 minutes and 34 seconds.

The vote today against Japan was 82 to 0 in the Senate and 388 to 1 in the House. The lone vote against the resolution was in the House that of Miss Jeanette Rankin, Republican, of Montana. Her "No" was greeted with boos and hisses. In 1917 she voted against the resolution for war against Germany.

Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), a pacifist and a leader in the women's suffrage movement, was instrumental in securing the right to vote for women in Montana in 1914, six years before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave all women in the United States the franchise. In 1916, Rankin was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Montana becoming the first woman ever elected to Congress. Rankin was defeated in her bid for election to the U.S. Senate in 1918 at least in part because of her vote against American entry into World War I.

For the next two decades, Rankin was active in the international peace movement, particularly through the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She ran for Congress again in 1940 on an isolationist platform and was elected to the House. Her vote on December 8, 1941--the lone dissent against war with Japan--was extremely unpopular. She chose not to run for reelection in 1942.

Rankin's commitment to pacifism never wavered. In the 1940s, she became interested in Gandhi's campaign of non-violent resistance. She went to India in 1946, the first of seven trips she would make there during her lifetime. In 1968, at the age of 87, Rankin led 5,000 women--the Jeannette Rankin Brigade--in a march on the Capitol to protest the Vietnam War.

John F. Kennedy said of Rankin, "Few members of Congress have ever stood more alone while being true to a higher honor and loyalty."

The Environment and the Apocalypse

If this speech had been given by anyone else, I might have dismissed it as a diatribe by someone with profoundly anti-religious views. The speaker, however, is Bill Moyers--one of America's most respected journalists and, more to the point in this instance, an ordained Baptist minister with a divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He takes Christianity (and Christians) seriously and rejects simplistic caricatures. For all of these reasons--and others--his comments on receiving the Global Environment Citizen Award from the Harvard Medical School deserve careful attention.

Read the speech here.

Forbidden Photo

This is one of the photos that the Pentagon has asked the media not to show. It depicts the return of American war dead from Iraq to Dover Air Force Base on board an Air Force C-130. The Memory Hole obtained the photo (and 287 others like it) through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Via Kevin Kumala, who keeps me informed about political developments in East Asia, comes word that Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma's pro-democracy movement, has recently had her house arrest extended for an indeterminate period by Burma's military junta.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who is universally acknowledged to be the leader and the personification of Burma's pro-democracy movement, was inspired by the non-violent methods of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1990, her National League for Democracy won a convincing victory in national elections, but the military government, refusing to accept the election results, extended the term of a house arrest that had been imposed the year before.

For a brief biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, see this BBC story or the chronology and selected bibliography associated with her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. (Here [.wav file], via the American Heritage Dictionary, is the proper pronunciation of her name.)

The A. Q. Khan Network

On the front page of the Los Angeles Times today is a story about the International Atomic Energy Agency's efforts to determine the scope of A. Q. Khan' s nuclear network. The investigation, according to the article, "has stalled in a clash of national interests that threatens a full accounting of [Khan's] secret partners and clients."

Khan, the father of Pakistan' s nuclear bomb, was arrested in December of last year for transferring nuclear technology to Libya. He was promptly pardoned by Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf. Since then, the Pakistani government has refused to allow IAEA inspectors to interview Khan in spite of the fact that he was responsible for "the world's worst case of nuclear proliferation," in the words of the LA Times article.

Killing Those Who Count the Dead?

Are United States forces in Iraq attempting to suppress reporting of civilian casualties in Iraq? Naomi Klein thinks so.

Last week, Klein stated (in The Nation and in The Guardian) that "in Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone--doctors, clerics, journalists--who dares to count the bodies." The comment drew the ire of Acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom David T. Johnson. In response to Ambassador Johnson's challenge, Klein presents her case in today's Guardian. Her conclusion recalls General Tommy Franks comment that "we don't do body counts" and states,

The question is: what happens to the people who insist on counting the bodies--the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them? In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being systematically silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained physical attacks.

Judge for yourself whether her evidence supports this claim.

From the Killing Fields to UNESCO

In 1976, Sichan Siv escaped across the border of Cambodia into Thailand, having spent a year in forced labor camps. While in Thailand, he became a Buddhist monk. A short time later, he was resettled as a refugee in Wallingford, Connecticut. He worked for a time as a cab driver in Manhattan before taking on a variety of positions in international development and government relations.

During the administration of George H. W. Bush, Siv served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Public Liaison and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs. From 1993 to 2001, he worked in banking and finance before becoming the senior adviser to the International Republican Institute. In October 2001, he was appointed to his current position: U.S. Representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council.

Ambassador Siv's story--from refugee to ambassador--is the classic tale of the American dream. (Even more remarkable, however, is the transformation from Buddhist monk to prominent Republican.)

Exit Strategy: Bosnia

Nine years ago, NATO forces entered Bosnia in order to end a brutal conflict and campaign of ethnic cleansing. Their specific responsibility was to implement the Dayton Accords. That mission, IFOR (for Implementation Force), and its successor, SFOR (for Stabilization Force), successfully brought to an end Europe's most destructive war since World War II.

The peacekeeping operation, NATO's first, has been turned over to the 7,000 troops in the European Union Force (EUFOR). Meanwhile, NATO has established a headquarters in Sarajevo to help the Bosnian government reform its military and to support Bosnian efforts to move toward entry into the EU and NATO.

In Washington at the State Department, Secretary Powell noted that "over 500,000 servicemen and women from 43 nations, including 90,000 Americans, served in Bosnia and Herzegovina without losing a single soldier to hostile action."

Pinochet

General Augusto Pinochet has, for the second time, been stripped of his immunity from investigation and prosecution by a Chilean court. In this instance, he faces an investigation into his role in the murder of General Carlos Prats who, exiled from Chile, was killed along with his wife in 1974 when their car exploded. Pinochet, who faces other charges including tax fraud, may never appear in court due to his declining health.

(Thanks to Ben Young for the tip on this story.)

Danforth Resigns

John C. Danforth, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, resigned his post in a letter to President Bush dated November 20. He became the U.N. ambassador on July 1 when his predecessor, John Negroponte, left to become the United States Ambassador to Iraq immediately after sovereignty was transferred to the Iraqis.

An ordained Episcopal minister who served three terms in the U.S. Senate from Missouri, Danforth was known--both in the Senate and at the United Nations--as a man of unassailable integrity. His long association with the Senate, his tendency to speak bluntly at the U.N. (a tendency often muted by the State Department), and his character invite comparisons to the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served as U.N. Ambassador from 1975 to 1976.

Moynihan, in his 1980 book A Dangerous Place, an account of his U.N. service, wrote, "The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with not inconsiderable success." Danforth's experience in his tenure was somewhat different. He was given the task of making the United Nations more effective, at least in response to the genocide in Sudan, but met with little success. But not for lack of effort.

Omarska

The pictures and descriptions of the concentration camp at Omarska that were revealed to the world in 1992 played a major role in the decision of the United Nations Security Council a year later to create the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Television images broadcast in August 1992 of gaunt, half-naked men crowded behind barbed wire were eerily reminiscent of scenes encountered during the liberation of the Nazi death camps a generation earlier.

Ed Vulliamy, a reporter for the Guardian who visited Omarska in August 1992, wrote, "The internees are horribly thin, raw-boned. Some are almost cadaverous, with skin like parchment folded around their arms. Their faces are lantern-jawed, and their eyes are haunted by the empty stare of the prisoner who does not know what will happen to him next." When the PBS program Frontline profiled Radovan Karadzic in a documentary entitled "The World's Most Wanted Man" in 1998, much of the focus was on the Omarska death camp. (Mark Danner's article for The New York Review of Books entitled "The Horrors of a Camp Called Omarska" provides a thorough, but disturbing, overview of what we know about Omarska.)

On November 2, 2001, five defendants were convicted by the ICTY of war crimes and crimes against humanity for acts performed at Omarska. The findings of fact in the judgment of the court are often revolting, as in the following description:

Witness Y described having to collect dead bodies from inside the white house and the red house and load them onto a truck. In the white house, the witness discovered "very big stains in that room. Almost all of the floor was covered in very dark stains, bloodstains. And on the radiator, I noticed some hair, parts of the head , brains, pieces of skull .… [A body in the room] was stiff. The joints around the elbows and in the area of the ankles were cut, and the throat was cut almost to the middle". A pile of bodies lay outside the red house, and "the dead bodies were still warm; the skulls were fractured; their jaws were fractured; there were bodies with throats slit".

Omarska was the site of iron ore mines. Now, the United Kingdom's richest man, Lakshmi Mittal, has purchased the old mines in order to return them to production. Survivors of the Omarska camp and relatives of those who perished there are urging Mittal to insure that the memory of what happened in Omarska is preserved in an appropriate way.

Mittal's partner in the joint venture, however, is the government of the Republika Srpska, the Serbian enclave within Bosnia. The Serbs are not eager to acknowledge the existence of a concentration camp that was run by Serbs. (For an example of historical revisionism from a Serbian perspective, see this site.) As a result, Mittal finds his mining venture caught in the middle of a dispute about the past.

Universal Jurisdiction and Abu Ghraib

On Sunday, Nicole Garcia e-mailed me to ask whether it would be possible for a country other than the United States, employing the universality principle of jurisdiction, to prosecute Americans for the crimes at Abu Ghraib. (Under the concept of universal jurisdiction, any state may prosecute a crime that is deemed to violate the “law of nations.” Such crimes–-including crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, torture, slavery, and piracy–-are held to be so heinous that they constitute crimes against the international community as a whole. Consequently, those who commit these crimes are hostis humanis generis–-enemies of humankind–-and may be prosecuted, on behalf of the international community, by any state.) When Nicole and I talked a day or two later, I said that while the universality principle would provide legal grounds for another state to assert jurisdiction over Americans responsible for torture at Abu Ghraib (or at Guantánamo, for that matter), it was not likely to happen given the fact of American power. After all, sometimes what is legal is not politically expedient.

Apparently my faith in the power of law is not as strong as that of Michael Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

Here’s how the CCR describes the action it took yesterday: “In a historic effort to hold high-ranking U.S. officials accountable for brutal acts of torture including the widely publicized abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib, on Tuesday November 30, 2004, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and four Iraqi citizens filed a criminal complaint with the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office at the Karlsruhe Court, Karlsruhe, Germany.”

Michael Ratner, the CCR’s president, said:

From Donald Rumsfeld on down, the political and military leaders in charge of Iraq policy must be investigated and held accountable. It is shameful that the United States of America, a nation that purports to set moral and legal standards for world, refuses to seriously investigate the role of those at the top of the chain of command in these horrible crimes. Indeed, the existence of “torture memos” drafted by administration officials and the authorization of techniques that violated humanitarian law by Secretary Rumsfeld, Lt. General Sanchez and others make clear that responsibility for Abu Ghraib and other violations of law reaches all the way to the top.

The four Iraqi citizens listed, along with the CCR, as plaintiffs in the case are all former prisoners of the United States in Iraq. Two were detained and allegedly tortured at Abu Ghraib. The ten defendants include Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Director of the CIA George Tenet, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Dr. Stephen Cambone, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, and six other high-ranking officers.

One of the ironies of this situation is that the German legal system, which the United States had to reform so thoroughly after World War II, now presents itself as the one legal system in the world that is most hospitable to an investigation of American human rights abuses.

For further reading:

The CCR’s account of its legal action is here. Reuters reports the story here. For those who can read German (or who know how to use AltaVista Babel Fish Translation), the Frankfurter Rundschau article on yesterday’s filing is here.

Incidentally, I picked up the story from Matthew Gross who, in turn, got it from Blue Lemur. (That’s how it often works in the blogosphere.)

The Day My God Died

A stirring documentary entitled "The Day My God Died" aired on KCET last night. The film examines the issue of human trafficking by telling the stories of several girls sold into sex slavery in the world's largest red light district in Bombay, India. Also profiled in the film are the efforts of several organizations (including the International Justice Mission, whose founder, Gary Haugen, is featured prominently) that are working to rescue victims of human trafficking.

One of the issues addressed by the documentary is the spread of HIV/AIDS to and by the girls forced into prostitution. In addition to the horrendous human rights abuse represented by human trafficking, many of the victims--even those who are among the lucky few rescued from the brothels--have, as a consequence of their experience, what amounts to a death sentence. Sex trafficking is both a terrible human rights abuse and a significant factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS.

For more about the documentary, see the KCET web page devoted to the program here. (Be sure to click on the "Learn More" and "Get Involved" links.)

Unfortunately, no re-broadcast appears to be scheduled, but perhaps a showing can be scheduled by an IJM chapter near you. (Please let me know if you see the documentary scheduled on another public television station.)