Global Dominance

excerpted from the book

The Twilight of Democracy

The Bush Plan for America

by Jennifer Van Bergen

Common Courage Press, 2005, paper

The Patriot Act

p110
The PATRIOT Act creates a structure that allows too much power in the executive branch. The Act creates an enabling structure for fascism and oligarchy. It is a structure that could consume democracy. The mere existence of such a structure in our government should alarm us.

How is it that the PATRIOT Act, purportedly designed to protect us from terrorists, can be a democracy-consuming monster? It is really very simple. The "foreign intelligence" provisions allow the Executive to avoid having to adhere to the Constitution, the immigration provisions set dangerous precedents for arbitrary use of power against persons, and the criminal provisions mix in with the foreign intelligence and immigration provisions to create a legal morass. All these together create "an entire federal investigatory, surveillance, intelligence and law enforcement apparatus, a disturbing amount of unchecked power :..in the Executive.

...The Threats to Civil Liberties

The main civil liberties threats of the PATRIOT Act are (1) the threat to due process, (2) the threat to freedom of association, (3) the Fourth Amendment threat to the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures and a consequent threat to privacy.

***

Global Dominance in Action

p153
James Madison, The Federalist Papers

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

p154
The United States Constitution expressly incorporates international treaties as "the supreme law of the land." Article VI of the United States Constitution states:

The Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

All executive and judicial officers and members of Congress are bound by oath to support the Constitution, including Article VI. The term "treaties" includes those signed by the President and ratified by the Senate, as well as those not ratified or simply part of "customary international law"-mean those principles which are recognized by most nations.

p154
The Geneva & Hague Conventions

The Geneva and Hague Conventions were signed and ratified by the United States in 1956. They have a long history. They were developed through many wars, starting in 1864. Their present versions arose out of the depredations of World War II. As the Geneva Convention requires, the United States codified their enforcement in the U.S. Code.

Geneva forbids "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." It is forbidden under the Hague Convention "to declare abolished, suspended, or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party." ,

... the Geneva Convention not only requires due process by regularly constituted courts, but also requires that every captured person "whose status is in doubt" have his status determined by a "competent tribunal." The official Geneva Commentary states that "[t]his amendment was based on the view that decisions which might have the gravest consequences should not be left to a single person ... The matter should be taken to court." Because combatants might be subject to capital punishment, a further amendment was made, "stipulating that a decision regarding persons whose status was in doubt would be taken by a 'competent tribunal,' and specifically not a military tribunal." A unilateral determination by the President that captives are "unlawful enemy combatants" does NOT meet the requirements of the Geneva Convention.

Some detainees have already been deported to other countries. (Some were deported to countries that use harsher interrogation methods than we do.) The 1945 Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) forbids the deportation (not to mention the ill-treatment or murder) of "civilian population of or in occupied territory" for "any ... purpose." Geneva forbids the "unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person ... or willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial." Geneva defines protected persons as those "who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals."

While Geneva makes rules for how combatants and civilians are to be treated, it also makes rules that apply to the nation who captures them-and to those that violate the treaty. The Geneva Conventions "were the first treaties to require States to prosecute violators, regardless of their nationality or the place where the offence is committed." Furthermore, under Geneva, "States must not only respect but 'ensure respect' for [international humanitarian] law."" The 1929 Geneva Convention abolished the provision that the Convention is binding only if all the belligerents are bound by it. In other words, Geneva is binding on all, no matter what.

Finally, Geneva is applicable in all circumstances. This means that "no Power bound by the Convention can offer any valid pretext, legal or other, for not respecting the Convention in all its parts." Whether the war is just or unjust, a war of aggression or of resistance to aggression, all parties are bound, not merely to take the necessary legislative action to prevent or repress violations, but to search for, and prosecute, guilty pars. No signatory can evade this responsibility.

p157
The War Crimes Act

The United States enacted section 2441 of Title 18 of the United States Code to enforce the Geneva Conventions. Section 2441 states that "[w]hoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death." In its pertinent part, subsection (c) defines a war crime as:

(1) a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;

(2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the

Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907;

(3) which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party ...

***
Epilogue

p169
Torture

A lawless administration cannot be expected to engender anything but lawless subordinates. As Human Rights Watch says:

This pattern of abuse [at Abu Ghraib] did not result from the acts of individual soldiers who broke the rules. It resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to bend, ignore, or cast rules aside. 1'

Abu Ghraib was not the beginning. The Administration recruited and elevated several previously indicted war criminals ... Bush's frequent use of the death penalty and his indifference to human suffering while he was governor of Texas are well-established. John Negroponte, who was implicated in human rights abuses in El Salvador in the 1980's, recently was appointed ambassador to Iraq." Bush attempted to appoint Henry Kissinger, who is under indictment for war crimes in numerous countries, to head the 9/11 commission.

... Neither human wickedness nor human laws or justice are new. What the Bush Administration did was to turn the clock back to barbarian times. With the invasion of Iraq, the indefinite and unlawful detentions, the disappearances, 17 and the torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere under American hands, we are but one step short of deciding to create a class of gladiators to quench the artificially-aroused public appetite for blood and violence.

p179
In October 2003, Mark Bowden, a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, wrote an in-depth look at The Dark Art of Interrogation. Bowden endorses what Radu calls "the old Leninist 'dual-track' approach to the conquest of power: simultaneous use of legal organizations under the pretext of freedom of speech or religion and illegal, underground, and violent structures engaged in terrorism." Bowden writes:

The Bush Administration has adopted exactly the right posture on the matter. Candor and consistency are not always public virtues. Torture is a crime against humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced. Those who protest coercive methods will exaggerate their horrors, which is good: it generates a useful climate of fear. It is wise of the President to reiterate U.S. support for international agreements banning torture, and it is wise for American interrogators to employ whatever coercive methods work. It is also smart not to discuss the matter with anyone.

This appears to be exactly what the Bush Administration did, "We now know that at the highest levels of the Pentagon there was a shocking interest in using torture and a misguided attempt to evade the criminal consequences of doing so," said Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. Roth added, "[i]f [the Pentagon's] legal advice were accepted, dictators worldwide would be handed a ready-made excuse to ignore one of the most basic prohibitions of international human rights law."

U.S. officials will answer that they are not encouraging dictators, they are fighting a "just war" against terrorism, fighting for democracy. Army General John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command that oversees Iraq, is quoted in Time as saying "Our openness about [the prison abuse] is a lesson about the rule of law" and Bush, who a few years back joked about how much easier it would be if he were a dictator, told Arab interviewers: "A dictator wouldn't be answering questions about this. 1 guess we should be relieved.

The Twilight of Democracy

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