A Journalist and an Historian

Well, he’s an interesting guy, with an interesting set of beliefs. And he’s much in the news, now, since he has taken Edward Snowden’s revelations public through The Guardian and The Washington Post.

But the hour-long interview that I just watched was filmed two years ago, when Glenn Greenwald was relatively unknown, and had just published his book, With Liberty and Justice for Some. The central premise of the book? That our political institutions have become so corrupted that we now have a two-tiered system of justice—one for the rich and powerful, the other for the rest of us.

A defining moment for Greenwald was Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. From then on, the idea that we had to “look forward, move on, achieve closure” meant that every president since then joins the old boys network. A classic case, according to Greenwald, was how even in the interregnum of winning the election and the inauguration, Obama was slithering out of persecution of the Bush administration for war crimes, for lying to the American people and to Congress, for launching an aggressive war. Which, by the way, was the key crime of Adolf Hitler that the United States and the world charged in the Nuremberg Trials after World War II.

And it’s a clear path—the lack of prosecution of Richard Nixon lead to the lack of persecution for Irangate and high officials in the Reagan administration, the invasion of Iraq in Desert Storm, the torture and abuses of human rights in the Bush years. And as Greenwald points out, anybody who suggests that Bush be held to justice has instantly self-marginalized himself.

What’s particularly curious is—where’s the outrage? We are, after all, living in the most connected era in history. I can now tell you that in Syria, the foreign minister has appeared to agree to demands to allow international inspection or control. A hundred and fifty years ago, people were still fighting in wars after the truce had been declared.

By now, everyone can see the problem: we have an oligarchy. Members of Congress spend half of their time—minimally—struggling to get elected. And that money doesn’t come from you and me. Unless, of course, your last name is Rockefeller….

The other curious thing is how easy it should be, hypothetically, to solve the whole thing. Look, other governments have found out or figured out ways to take the money out of politics. Why can’t we?

We could start with simply funding public elections. Punto—oh, and can we put an end to television advertising? Debates, yes—but a president or senator isn’t (or shouldn’t be) a product. Though they have become so….

The next thing to do would be to throw out all the fancy voting apparatus and go back to the paper ballot and the cardboard box. The voting machine industry, by the way, is highly technical, extremely expensive, and is dominated by about three companies, all headed by rabid Republicans.

We also are going to have to increase minimum wage. Oh, and speaking of which—and speaking also of the corrosive effect of money on public policy—here’s Bill Moyers on the other NRA.

In June, the National Restaurant Association boasted that its lobbyists had stopped minimum wage increases in 27 out of 29 states in 2013. In Connecticut, which increased its state minimum wage, a raise in the base pay for tipped workers such as waitresses and bartenders vanished in the final bill. A similar scenario unfolded in New York State: It increased its minimum wage, but the NRA’s last-minute lobbying derailed raising the pre-tip wage at restaurants and bars. The deals came despite polls showing 80 percent support for raising the minimum wage.     

Rounding back to Greenwald, he argues that we have a system in which the powerful get away—figuratively and even occasionally literally—with murder, whereas the poor are more easily incarcerated than ever.

OK—jailing is one thing we do to the poor. The other thing we do—as I learned in class today—is to use them as cannon fodder. That’s what my student taught me, as she showed me a photo on her iPhone of her nephew, who had just enlisted in the army.

Well, he thought it was all he could do. He had just turned 18, he had bad grades and couldn’t go to the university, and jobs? Are you kidding?

I tried to be hopeful; my student was near tears. But the reality is that if her nephew comes back, his life may be just as hellish as it was in Iraq. It may, in fact, become something like Iraq 2.0, with the terrors being internal and systemic, as opposed to external and random.

Oh, and the people who wrecked the system, so that there are no jobs, and kids have to off to war? The criminals in the thousand-dollar suits? They’re free, and riding a soaring stock market right now….

Greenwald also makes the point that we have blended the lines between the public and private sectors. And nowhere is this more true than in “national security.” Who would have imagined a world in which we have out-sourced granting security access? It’s madness.

And Greenwald’s observation that journalists have changed is interesting—instead of the hard-bitten, cynical, go-after-the-bastards-and-damn-the-costs guys of the past, we now have people who are employed by corporations, and who know how the corporation works. Which—news flash, here—is by smiling, going along with the herd, ducking your head and not rocking boats.

Well, I came upon Greenwald by listening to “Conversations with History,” a great, hour-long program coming out of UCLA. Yesterday, I watched William Cronon, the president of the American Historical Association and a professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Today was Greenwald.

And both men were inspiring. Oddly, both men spoke briefly of the necessity of hope. Given that Cronon is a specialist in Environmental History, and Greenwald in First Amendment and Civil Rights, one wonders…

Which man has the most reason to be hopeful?

Or the most need?

Right, Dammit….

Well, well—the Alien Tort Statute rears its lovely head again!

Yesterday’s post was on the struggle of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) to bring an American evangelical minister, Scott Lively, to justice for the crime of going to Uganda and creating a climate of sufficient hate that a law was very nearly passed with the death penalty for some types of homosexual behavior. A federal judge ruled last week that the case could proceed.

And today?

According to Yes!, an online magazine, an attorney, D. Inder Comar, representing a single Iraqi mother has filed a class action suit against George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz; she alleges that they committed a “crime of aggression” under international law. Why? Because the war was not in self defense, nor was it approved by the United Nations.

Sundus Shaker Saleh, the single mother behind the suit, was living peacefully in Iraq before the invasion, and the picture she paints, if not idyllic, is certainly much better than now. People, she said, slept with their doors unlocked, there were no militias or patrols, the infrastructure was intact. After the invasion?

Well, we’ve seen what happened. Saleh no longer felt safe in her home, so she fled to Jordan. Nor was she alone in leaving the country, according to the United Nations High Commissioner, two million other people did as well, and 2.7 million people were internally displaced. That’s over 15% of the population, which was estimated at 31 million in 2009.

The case is based on several claims. First, six decades ago, we walked into the Nuremburg Trials and made some bold assertions; here, from the lawsuit Saleh vs Bush filed in the district of Northern California, is what was said at that trial:

16. In his opening statement to the Tribunal, Chief Counsel for the United States Robert H. Jackson stated “This Tribunal . . . represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of 17 more, to utilize international law to meet the greatest menace of our times – aggressive war.”           

17. Chief Prosecutor Jackson argued, “The Charter of this Tribunal evidences a faith that the law is not only to govern the conduct of little men, but that even rulers are, as Lord Chief Justice Coke put it to King James, ‘under God  and the law.’” (Id.) (emphasis added).

18. Chief Prosecutor Jackson argued, “Any resort to war – to any kind of a war – is a resort to means that are inherently criminal. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of liberty, and destruction of property.” (Emphasis added).

19. He continued, “The very minimum legal consequence of the  treaties making aggressive wars illegal is to strip those who incite or wage them of every defense the law ever gave, and to leave war-makers subject to judgment by the usually accepted principles of the law of crimes.” (emphasis added).

20. Chief Prosecutor Jackson recognized that the crime of aggression applied to the United States. He argued, “We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.” (Id.)

In the suit, Comar also alleged that the planning for the Iraq war was planned by what would be Bush administration officials as far back as 1998, or five years before the actual invasion.

Here’s another copy and paste from the suit:

26. On January 26, 1998, Defendants RUMSFELD and      WOLFOWITZ signed a letter4 to then President William J. Clinton, requesting that the United States implement a “strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power,” which included a “willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing.” Removing Saddam from power had to “become the aim of American foreign policy.” (Emphasis added).

27. From 1997 to 2000, PNAC produced several documents advocating the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein.5

28. On May 29, 1998, Defendants RUMSFELD and WOLFOWITZ signed a letter to then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott in which they advocated that “U.S. policy should have as its explicit goal removing Saddam Hussein’s regime from power and establishing a peaceful and democratic Iraq in its place,” which included the use of “U.S. and allied military power . . . to help remove Saddam from power.”

So, the question becomes—can this work? Comar argues yes; my gut tells me no, despite wishing deeply that it could. And there is some legal ground—the Westfall Act of 1988—that protects government officials when they are acting within their “scope of employment.”

That’s the first argument that Paul Stephan, a professor at the University of Virginia, brings forth. The second? The crime didn’t take place on U.S. ground. And lastly, the courts are reluctant to get into political issues.

Comar travelled to Jordan, where Saleh had fled with her four children, to meet her; he is now representing her pro bono. But he needs help to meet expenses, to apply pressure on the court, and to raise awareness. Here’s what he writes in the Peope to People blog:

Please join me to make this trial a reality. You can help by supporting our fundraising campaign at indiegogo, by spreading the word about the lawsuits, and by reaching out to me if you want to get involved.

Look, screw the legal aspect of all of this. The damage done by George W. Bush and his government has been incalculable. More, there was no good reason to believe that there were weapons of mass destruction—Hans Blix, the UN inspector, had told both Rice and Tony Blair that in the weeks before. And the Bush administration deliberately lied to the American people—and the congress—in the weeks before the invasion.

In the weeks leading up to the invasion, I kept reading, reading—trying to find something that I had missed in the debate. The argument for the invasion of Iraq appeared the crassest, most errant display of greed, stupidity, and arrogance; surely there must be something I couldn’t see? Could any man be so depraved? Could any country allow a leader to commit such atrocity? I had to be wrong.

I was right.