War Crimes

George W. Bush, the former President of the United States, is a war criminal. His Vice-President, Dick Cheney is a war criminal too, as well as his Attorney General, John Ashcroft, his legal counsel, Alberto Gonzalez, his National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, and his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. All of them comprised the chain of command that ordered the systematic torture that resulted in the unconscionable abuse and outright murder of enemy combatants in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States of America.

On December 9, 2014 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report that detailed the crimes committed by the Central Intelligence Agency on the orders of President Bush. In excruciating detail, the report describes enemy combatants being subjected to forced nudity, confinement in small boxes not much larger than a coffin, shackled stress positions with the arms above the head for up to 22 hours, sleep deprivation for days, waterboarding, slamming against walls, and “rectal feeding”, which is physiologically impossible, and which in reality was simply state-sanctioned rape. Prisoners were threatened with guns and electric drills. Some were threatened with the wholesale death of their families.

The celebrated Union General of the American Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman once said, “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” The hell Sherman inflicted on the State of Georgia during his “March to the Sea” does not come close to the cruelty described in the Senate’s report.

Those that try to defend the actions of Bush’s CIA argue that the “EIT’s”, a convenient acronym for Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (They can’t bring themselves to call it what it is) were “effective”. That is not the issue. What is “effective” has nothing to do with what is right.

Slavery was tremendously “effective” improving the Southern economy. Does that make it right?

Apartheid was very “effective” in subjugating the majority population in South Africa. Was it right?

The holocaust was “effective” in removing more than six million Jews from the European continent. Was it right?

At the conclusion of World War Two, German and Japanese war criminals were tried for “crimes against humanity”. Many of them were imprisoned, some were hanged.

No one is going to arrest a former American President and his cabinet members and try them for war crimes. I suspect that the decision makers in the Bush White House knew that when the decisions were being made. I suspect that every time Dick Cheney defiantly says that he “would do it again” he is also thinking, “and what are you going to do about it?” Nevertheless, what was described in the report released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence are, without a doubt, crimes against humanity. 

I will never forget September 11, 2001. I will not forget where I was when I heard the news. I will not forget my anger and my desire to avenge the brazen attacks on my country. I remember wishing I was still on active duty in the Marine Corps. I was ready to go to Afghanistan and destroy anything and anybody that had the unmitigated cruelty and gall to kill innocent American men, women, and children. I made note of the fact that about 2,500 military personnel were killed at Pearl Harbor, but 2,996 civilians were killed on 9/11.

I was ready to go to war, but I was not ready to surrender my humanity.

The Senate Report was an indictment for those responsible for this stain on the American heritage. To his credit, one of President Obama’s first acts as President was to say “stop”. No more EIT’s. No more torture. But even he knew that it would have been political Armageddon for him to try to prosecute his predecessor.

The only force in the world with the power to do anything about the war crimes committed in our names are the American people themselves. The South African people called it “Truth and Reconciliation”. It was difficult, but necessary.

It would be difficult for America as well, but it might be the only way that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”