Here’s a bizarre post by a person named Clayton Cramer that I wandered across. It’s titled “The Sheer Injustice Of It!” and he has linked an article about some lawyer who claims to be representing Saddam Hussein making allegations that the US has tortured Saddam while he has been in detention. Clayton, who describes himself as “a conservative with libertarian sympathies” isn’t disputing the allegations. He seems rather more gleeful at the idea that they might be true because there would be “a certain justice to it.” He goes on to recount some old stories about Saddam, like the discredited people shredder story, to demonstrate why it would be just to torture Saddam.
This is a common argument among the type of “conservatives” who would make an old rightist shudder and they’re pretty much the Bush base, which is one of the reasons the US ended up in the Abu Ghraib mess in the first place. As an example, get a good look at Mary L. Walker, the born-again lead lawyer on the DoD torture-justification memo.
By this logic, Bush should have a Tomahawk missile fly up his butt, shouldn’t he? After all he did it to Ali first, right? Anyone who wished to dispense “justice” could unleash Shock and Awe on the White House. (That might not be such a bad idea, but I wouldn’t call it just.) I wonder how far “conservatives” would be willing to go with this argument? If they ever have Islam Karimov in custody are they going to start boiling people?
So, to return to Mr. Cramer, what can we say about a person who expresses humanitarian outrage about human rights abuses and then abuses the person they were so outraged about? What makes atrocities just if someone else does them first? The conservatives – or is it the Republicans? – should consider making “Saddam did it first!” their slogan.
But the big thing is this: President Bush is absolutely responsible for everything that happens in his administration, and to the extent that the Pentagon memo conditioned policy, he is first in line for blame. HOWEVER. President Bush is no one’s idea of a legal mind. He may have initiated the project that became the memo, but he didn’t draft the thing. High-level government lawyers, most of them undoubtedly political appointees, did that. What that means is that there is systemic corruption in the Republican Party as an institution – “Bush’s Willing Torturers” we might call them. These are people that came up with the idea that the Constitutional phrase “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” meant
authority to set aside the laws is “inherent in the president.”
They represent a deadly danger to the American system and they are multiple. It’s not one guy somewhere, it’s a movement. Until the Republican Party roots them out, that Party is the enemy, not just of libertarians, but of anyone who values individual freedom and republican government. From the standpoint of liberty, there can no longer be any justification for preferring the Republicans to the Democrats.
UPDATE: To clarify, this isn’t just another Unqualified Offerings anti-torture item. The issue now goes beyond torture to the very structure of American government. Torture is the symptom. The concept that the President is not just himself above the law, but a supralegal authority, is the malady.
[emphasis mine]