Pundit Country

Good news: It looks like Attorney General Eric Holder’s DOJ has largely cleared them of wrongdoing in the legal ground work that established a torture regime by Bush officials.

Bad news: Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon is proceeding with his investigation of illegal methods of interrogation used by the U.S. military on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. If you remember, Garzon was the judge who used Spain’s ‘universal jurisdiction‘ statute to prosecute Argentina’s former ruler, Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity. If I were the Bush crew, I would plan my foreign travel very carefully for the next few years.

“Yesterday, our president mused about the inevitability of war, war’s instrumentality in the pursuit of peace and just wars. It is important for us to reflect on his words, because once we believe in the inevitability of war, war becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Once we are committed to war’s instrumentality in pursuit of peace, we begin the Orwellian journey to the semantic netherworld where War IS Peace, where the momentum of war overwhelms hopes for peace.  And once we wrap doctrines perpetuating war in the arms of justice, we can easily legitimate the wholesale slaughter of innocents.  The war against Iraq was based on lies.  Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are based on flawed doctrines of counter-insurgency. War is often not just; sometimes it is just war. And our ability to rethink the terms of our existence, to explore the possibility of peace without war, may well determine whether we end war, or war ends us.”

-Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH, 10th)

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I don’t venture too much into foreign policy on this blog, but this piece Gary Will caught my eye. In it, he counters the over-stated opinion that leaving Afghanistan will besmirch the memories of those who have fallen by asking what is it worth to stay in an unwinnable war and how many lives is the President willing to sacrifice for it.

It’s an apt question and one that I haven’t heard asked before by anyone who is not only opposed to our continued presence there, but definitely opposed to escalating it further by placing more boots on the ground. Willis put it well:

One of the strongest arguments for continued firing up of these wars is that none of these presidents wanted to serve only one term (even Lyndon Johnson, who chose not to run for a second full term). But what justification is there for buying a second presidential term with the lives of hundreds or thousands of young American men and women in the military?

…

It is unlikely that we will soon have another president with the moral and rhetorical force to talk us out of a foolish commitment that cannot be sustained without shame and defeat. If it costs him his presidency, what other achievement can match it?

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would rather be a one-term president than give up on his goals. Here is a goal no other president we can imagine would have a possibility of reaching. Presidents who just kick the can down the road are easy to come by. Lost lives and limbs are not.

While I didn’t list his piece as a Must Read, it’s worth your time if you are having rising doubts about “the good war”, but especially if you don’t. He may give you some food for thought.

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The Washington Independent is reporting about the case of Mohammed Jawad, a detainee the U.S. picked up in 2002 when, according to the original charges, he threw a grenade at U.S. troops. Jawad, a teenager (possible 12 years old)  at the time of his arrest, was held in Afghanistan where he was tortured, then sent to Gitmo where he was tortured some more and was threatened with the execution of his family if he did not confess.

This week, the U.S. District Court Judge adjudicating the case, Ellen Huvelle, told the prosecuting attorneys that she has seen the evidence against Jawad and found it to be unsupportive of the charges against him. The government has announced they are dropping the military case against Jawad, but will not let him go. Officially, their reasoning is that they are waiting to hear from other departments to see if they want to try him in a civil case (where the burden of proof is considerably less). However, few in the media and legal circles are finding the excuse reasonable and commenting that this system of indefinite dentention looks similiar, if not identical to the one employed by the Justice Department under the Bush administration.

I would have to agree. While there is a circuit court ruling that says that federal courts cannot compel the government to release a detainee onto U.S. soil, the best thing the government can do right now is return Jawad to Afghanistan, which is said to be interested in charging and trying him in their own courts. Unfortunately, this appears, on the face of things, to be yet another case of the Obama administration keeping the failed policies of the Bush administration alive and well, despite pleas to change it and bring it firmly back into the rule of law. The longer Holder and Obama allow it to continue, the longer it can claim justification for its existence and maintain it as precedent.

[update 7/30] directly from the Washington Independent:

Mohammed Jawad, the Afghan boy seized for allegedly throwing a grenade at U.S. troops and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay ever since, may be on his way home to Afghanistan within three weeks.

In another tense hearing this morning at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Judge Ellen Huvelle granted his petition for habeas corpus and ruled that the government must notify Congress within seven days of his impending release, and prepare to send him home 15 days after that.  Under a recent Supplemental Appropriations law, Congress must be given 15 days’ notice of the release of any Guantanamo prisoners to a country other than the United States. Congress cannot stop the release, however.

Still, as I explained yesterday, the government has not relinquished its right to charge Jawad again under the federal criminal laws, and it has repeatedly suggested that it may do so.

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• Government Might Allow Trial in U.S. for Detainee (nytimes.com)
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