Hullabaloo

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

 
Moral Clarity

by digby

Remember that? it seems like only yesterday we were being told that our foreign policy had been distilled to a distinct, black and white battle between good 'n evul.

Here's what it is in practice:

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “The Legal Rights of Guantanamo Detainees” this morning, Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser at Guantanamo Bay, repeatedly refused to call the hypothetical waterboarding of an American pilot by the Iranian military torture. “I’m not equipped to answer that question,” said Hartmann.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who asked the hypothetical, pushed Hartmann on his answer, asking him directly if it would be a “violation of the Geneva Convention”:

GRAHAM: You mean you’re not equipped to give a legal opinion as to whether or not Iranian military waterboarding, secret security agents waterboarding downed airmen is a violation of the Geneva Convention?

HARTMANN: I am not prepared to answer that question, Senator.

That's moral clarity for you.

It's obvious to me that that because the administration has clearly committed war crimes, they have to take the Alberto Gonzales position that the Geneva Conventions are quaint artifacts of an earlier time and simply abrogate them altogether. They are left with relying on the "good for me but not for thee" conventions in which, like children (or sociopaths) the United States will declare its goodness in the face of evil as justification for anything it might do and dare the rest of the world, and its own citizens, to defy it.

This Air Force General, a legal advisor for Guantanamo, is unwilling to say that waterboarding an American airman is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. That means that the new policy of the United States is that waterboarding is a-ok.

Bush has made his position quite clear:

Bush said, "It doesn't make any sense to tell the enemy whether we use those techniques or not."

In other words, he wants the world to believe we torture our enemies if they are captured. There can be no other point to that statement. Once you've said that, then the Geneva Conventions are no longer operative because we are saying that we don't believe we are bound by them, which means that other signatories can feel justified in saying they aren't bound by them either. (Certainly, since we know for a fact that we actually do torture, all bets are off.)

The United States has clearly abrogated the Geneva Conventions. In fact, the treaties may now just be dead altogether. The Bush administration killed them.

With other recent revelations of America's complete disregard for international law, (like this) and the fact that there seems to be little outcry here in the United States against it, we are going to find ourselves in an increasingly isolated position in the world.

Moral clarity simply means the US can do whatever it wants and I have a feeling the rest of the planet might not find that reassuring these days.



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digby 12/12/2007 10:45:00 AM |