The Rule of Law
CNN published an article on 12/23/08 concerning the agreement by the US Army to honor the US prisoners of war turned into slave laborers by the Nazis for being or "looking" Jewish. The article was available at the time at:http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/23/slave.camp.honor/index.html
IT is the best example I know of for enforcing rules of law withrespect to captured soldiers or combatants. All human beings arecapable of depraved behavior under stress--witness the famous Milhimeexperiments at Yale. It is the responsibility of leadership in ademocracy to insist upon the rule of law, not to seek ways to evade it.As we are beginning to learn from the partial records of the Guantanamofiasco, a government cannot afford to let the military, or thegovernment itself, set its own rules of conduct. I have no doubt thatthere are dozens of legitimate war criminals at Guantanamo. If I werethe king, I would throw those people off the top of the Empire StateBuilding one at a time and sell popcorn to the audience. Let's justmake sure we throw the right ones!But what about the poor guy who was just "waiting for a bus" when thewar came by. It seems to me, as a sideline observer and one who by anystandard is staunchly conservative on national security issues, that alot of these people were simply "guilty of being an Arab" at the wrongtime and place. Let's make damn sure that justice is served for theprisoners of Guantanamo who really committed no offense punishable byyears in prison without recourse to a judge. And let's make sure theserial bunglers who authorized or at least gave comfort to Abu Ghraib,Guantanamo--Rumsfield, Cheney, Gonzales and so forth-- are heldaccountable by history for disdaining the very virtues we Americanscherish--justice for all!Bob Sweeney
posted by Robert E. Sweeney, DA, MS @ 8:27 AM
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