Friday, June 30, 2006
Hanson and Guantanamo
The president has indicated that he is willing to go to Congress (gasp!) to ask them to rewrite American Law to allow military tribunals to determine the fate of detainees. The Hamdan Ruling yesterday has forced his hand.
Victor Davis Hanson has published his syndicated column maintaining that military tribunals are the best way to go.
Of course, he can’t write about any issue regarding law or politics without taking some time to slap Europe around. It’s part of the conservative code: try to discredit the ACLU, the NAACP, Europe, college professors, liberals, and human rights groups.
Hanson starts his writing with a series of one-sided arguments and begging the question. That is not honesty. He mentions that there are roughly 450 prisoners there, “many of them killers,” without adducing any evidence as to how many is “many” and how he knows some are killers. He can’t know because no evidence against these men has come to light in an impartial court. He’s taking the good word of the administration on this one, despite the fact that the vast majority of inmates were captured not by the US military but by Pakastani intelligence officials and Northern Alliance warlords back when there was a bounty for suspects.
Even if we are to cede the point to Hanson that “many” are killers that still means that many aren’t. How are we to sort the wheat from the chaff, so to speak?
He mentions that they are “treated as well as inmates in either Europe or the U.S.” That certainly begs the question. First of all, we know from government reports and Human Rights Watch that inmates have been abused at Guantanamo. Secondly, Guantanamo isn’t open to the Red Cross or the press in general. So Hanson is just going to trust the good word of the jailers that all those abuses are in the past now.
International and U.S. law maintain that prison facilities must be open to the Red Cross, but Hanson doesn’t mention that.
Hanson echoes the conservative cant that this is an “unprecedented post-modern war of few good choices in which the enemy does not wear uniforms, adhere to the Geneva Convention or distinguish civilians from soldiers.”
This is Bill O’Reilly’s language. This is an ugly war so we have to be ugly to win it. We need a new Phoenix Program. This is the language of Senator Pat Roberts, Mr. “Rights won’t do us any good when we’re dead.” This is the language and the thinking, in fact, of the republican majority in control of Congress. This is the reasoning from the writers at the Weekly Standard, including Bill Kristol, who argue that the use of torture is necessary to win the War on Terror and the War in Iraq. This is the language of Laura Ingraham, of Michael Savage, of the entire right-wing establishment.
Wrong. As Max Weber said, “from no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent the ethically good purpose ‘justifies’ the ethically dangerous means and ramifications.” Torture, indefinite detention, and the elimination of the fourth amendment are not moral and they never have been, and the “ethically good purpose” does not justify the “ethically dangerous means and ramifications.”
But we have to break the law to pursue the bad guys, because, according the Hanson, it would be too troublesome to try them using standard or martial courts. He says, “By doing that we would be inviting thousands of lawyers and public defenders to argue, on behalf of their clients, that we are not in a real war but simply prosecuting common criminals. Numerous trials and appeals would likely follow.” See? Too much of a pain in the ass. And even then, “Europeans would still object, since the U.S. would be exposing foreign nationals to possible death penalty sentences.”
They might object to the death penalty, but Victor painting the Europeans as impossible to please is extraordinarily cynical. Europe didn’t exactly level an embargo against the United States when we invaded Iraq ahead of any UN authorization, nor when it was revealed that hundreds of detainees had been abused and sometimes tortured. I suspect their criticism of US practices would be pretty muted if the US gave detainees a fair trial.
So this provides an opening for Hanson to go on yet another anti-European diatribe. All those Europeans, all of those hundreds of millions of people, love to “vent their much larger love-hate frustrations with their protector and rival…By ankle-biting America on Guatanamo, the Europeans sound moral and tough while ignoring the real dangers…”
Good Lord. Just listen to the man. First of all, he cynically asserts that Europeans aren’t really concerned with human rights. That’s just a vehicle for their emotional frustrations. And then he describes their criticism as “ankle-biting.”
Hanson’s cultural arrogance is offensive, and I have written about it before. I still write about it because it is shared by all conservatives. I can’t turn one page of the latest National Review without stumbling across WFB saying the same things.
Hanson doesn’t know anything about the secret, passionate feeling of Europeans. Notice how he doesn’t refute the human rights argument here: he just launches an ad hominem attack against the invisible intentions of his political target. Then he dismisses them as “ankle-biters.”
I wonder what he might say if Europeans did the same thing, if Europeans dismissed his concern over security as a false front for America’s secret desire to rule the world.
They might actually have some evidence to back up their claim. They might point out that Iraq never had anything to do with terrorists more so than Uzbekistan, and that there never were any WMDs. They might point out the fact that the American Provisional Authority eliminated tariffs in Iraq that allow US and transnational corporations to dump goods in Iraq. They might point out that we abandoned Afghanistan to insurgents to invade Iraq. They might point out that terrorist attacks worldwide have risen every year Bush has been in office. They might point out the fact that America turns a blind eye to the terrorism originating in Saudi Arabia because of our massive financial involvement there. So isn’t this War on Terror just a cover for imperial hegemony?
Europeans aren’t alone in their condemnation of US detention policies, but Hanson might start sounding ridiculous if he said “So the Europeans are just jealous whiners. Oh yeah, and the Canadians, too. Central America…well, they’ve never liked us. South America? Jealous. Asia? All jealous. THE WORLD is jealous, just jealous of our enormous power.”
They aren’t jealous, though, Victor. Europe isn’t jealous because they don’t spend nearly as much of their GDP on a massive military even in times of peace. They aren’t trying to replace America as a military superpower.
Victor finally surmounts Mt. Arrogance and accuses the Europeans of living in a “dream world,” safely protected by big, strong America. Because we all know Great Britain has never had to deal with Irish terrorists. France never suffered from Algerian-sponsored terror. Italy never endured terror attacks from a massive variety of sources in the late twentieth century. No European planes were ever hijacked by “islamofascists.”
Of course, in the real world, Europe has had to deal with terrorism for generations. In fact, Europe has far, far more experience with terrorism than the United States. They don’t live in a “dream world.” In fact, it would be fair to say we might learn something from their tactics, their mistakes and successes, if we truly seek to understand terrorism and the best ways to eliminate it.
But Victor, though a historian by trade, has a stunningly feeble grasp of history. That, or, more likely, he actively seeks to ignore history when it suits his purposes.
Europe has always been a bone in the craw of conservatives, what with its social programs setting a bad example for Americans and its politicians frequently criticizing the worst of American policy. Conservatives like Hanson won’t convince any intelligent people to dismiss Europe when it’s the policies of the United States that are flawed.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 3:28 PM 
