White House to Fight War Crimes by Rewriting Laws

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Bush administration has decided to try to amend the War Crimes Act passed in the mid-1990s. The White House believes that some acts prohibited by the law shouldn’t be. Legalizing behavior that is implicitly against the Geneva Conventions brings a new perspective things. Rather than prosecuting “evil-doers,” the Busheviks will simply get rid of crime by legalization. In this neo-con Twilight Zone, smoking pot will remain illegal, but abusing prisoners of war will not.

The whole mess stems from the Supreme Court’s decision in June (the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case) which boiled down to requiring the US to follow Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. So, rather than be bound by a Supreme Court decision (wasn’t the Bush White House supposed to support this conservative Court?), the White House wants to change the law. The Washington Post says, “The amendments would narrow the reach of the War Crimes Act, which now states in general terms that Americans can be prosecuted in federal criminal courts for violations of ‘Common Article 3’ of the Geneva Conventions, which the United States ratified in 1949.”

What this looks like to people outside the administration, which admittedly holds the Geneva Convention as “quaint,” is a unilateral rewriting of the agreement. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales doesn’t like the fact that the Convention uses a vague term, “outrages upon personal dignity.” He worries that, “if left undefined, this provision will create an unacceptable degree of uncertainty for those who fight to defend us from terrorist attack.”

Retired Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn, former chief of the war law branch of the Army’s Office of the Judge Advocate General, explained that the language was “left deliberately vague because efforts to define it would invariably lead to wrongdoers identifying ‘exceptions,’ and because the meaning was plain -- treat people like humans and not animals or objects.” Terms like “dereliction of duty” and “conduct unbecoming an officer” aren’t spelled out in military law, but they are certainly still enforceable.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England said in a hearing on July 7, “I mean, what is degrading in one society may not be degrading in another, or may be degrading in one religion, not in another religion. And since it does have an international interpretation, which is generally, frankly, different than our own, it becomes very, very relevant” to define the terms. The Supreme Court hasn’t ever defined “obscene” but one knows it when one sees it. The same applies to “outrages upon personal dignity.” Perhaps “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is a good enough rule for now.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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