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TechnoratiThe Truth Commission
When a distinguished American military commander accuses the United States of committing war crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way forward.
"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report on American torture from Physicians for Human Rights. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
The first step of accountability isn't prosecutions. Rather, we need a national Truth Commission to lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing.
That was what South Africa did after apartheid, with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and it is what the United States did with the Kerner Commission on race and the 1980s commission that examined the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Today, we need a similar Truth Commission, with subpoena power, to investigate the abuses in the aftermath of 9/11.
We already know that the United States government has kept Nelson Mandela on a terrorism watch list and that the U.S. military taught interrogation techniques borrowed verbatim from records of Chinese methods used to break American prisoners in the Korean War - even though we knew that these torture techniques produced false confessions.
It's a national disgrace that more than 100 inmates have died in American custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo. After two Afghan inmates were beaten to death by American soldiers, the American military investigator found that one of the men's legs had been "pulpified."
Moreover, many of the people we tortured were innocent: the administration was as incompetent as it was immoral. The McClatchy newspaper group has just published a devastating series on torture and other abuses, and it quotes Thomas White, the former Army secretary, as saying that it was clear from the moment Guantánamo opened that one-third of the inmates didn't belong there.
McClatchy says that one inmate, Mohammed Akhtiar, was known as pro-American to everybody but the American soldiers who battered him. Some of his militant fellow inmates spit on him, beat him and called him "infidel," all because of his anti-Taliban record.
These abuses happened partly because, for several years after 9/11, many of our national institutions didn't do their jobs. The Democratic Party rolled over rather than serving as loyal opposition. We in the press were often lap dogs rather than watchdogs, and we let the public down.
Yet there were heroes, including civil liberties groups and lawyers for detainees. Some judges bucked the mood, and a few conservatives inside the administration spoke out forcefully. The Times's Eric Lichtblau writes in his terrific new book, "Bush's Law," that the Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, James Ziglar, pushed back against plans for door-to-door sweeps of Arab-American neighborhoods.
The book recounts that in one meeting, Mr. Ziglar bluntly declared, "We do have this thing called the Constitution," adding that such sweeps would be illegal and "I'm not going to be part of it."
Among those I admire most are the military lawyers who risked their careers, defied the Pentagon and antagonized their drinking buddies - all for the sake of Muslim terror suspects in circumstances where the evidence was often ambiguous. At a time when we as a nation took the expedient path, these military officers took the honorable one, and they deserve medals for their courage.
The Truth Commission investigating these issues ideally would be a non-partisan group heavily weighted with respected military and security officials, including generals, admirals and top intelligence figures. Such backgrounds would give their findings credibility across the political spectrum - and I don't think they would pull punches. The military and intelligence officials I know are as appalled by our abuses as any other group, in part because they realize that if our people waterboard, then our people will also be waterboarded.
Both Barack Obama and John McCain should commit to impaneling a Truth Commission early in the next administration. This commission would issue a report to help us absorb the lessons of our failings, the better to avoid them during the next crisis.
As for what to do with Guantánamo itself, the best suggestion comes from an obscure medical journal, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. It suggests that the prison camp would be an ideal research facility for tropical diseases that afflict so many of the world's people. An excellent suggestion: the U.S. should close the prison and turn it into a research base to fight the diseases of global poverty, and maybe then we could eventually say the word "Guantánamo" without pangs of shame.
Nicholas Kristof writes for The New York Times.
© 2008 The New York Times
20 Comments so far
Show AllNot bloody likely!
What we really need is an aggressive Department of Justice running a massive, well supported RICO investigation into the entire criminal enterprise of the Bush/Cheney misAdministration. There are lots of shallow graves all round the WhiteHouse, making the Thugs all the more desparate to keep the office in McSame hands 'til they can make their getaway.
There are so many crimes and they are so interwoven that it will take the kind of investigation and prosecution that brought down much of the New York Mob.
RICH M: I consider you a staple of commondreams, one who helps to bring a focus and clarity to the debates and issues of our day. I appreciate--and look forward--to your analyses.
This article is a joke. It's a column in the NY Times, whose editors have done nothing but assist the criminals in Washington from the get-go, repeatedly giving them cover & providing them with an unearned sheen of legitimacy. Any "Truth Commission" worthy of the name would recommend prosecution of the Times itself for its enthusiastic complicity in many of the pertinent crimes. The NYT helped cover up the fact of the Bush domestic spying program for over a year, & prevented American citizens from knowing about it in time for the 2004 election. Not to mention the roles of such notorious liars as Judith Miller & Michael Gordon in fomenting the war, & keeping the occupation steaming briskly along.
Kristof himself has been tepid & mealy-mouthed during the horrors of the last 8 years. He occasionally came out of hiding to contribute commendable work, such as his series surrounding the 2001 anthrax attacks. But for the most part he was quiet & gutless, often writing Bush apologias which amounted to simpering variants of: "Even though I'm a liberal, I must admit that President Bush is exactly right about....."
That such a tepid liberal now enters a piece in the NYT apparently calling for "putting things right again" -- this cannot be taken at face value. It's not so much a call to put things right, as a plea for a whitewash that will remove the stench from those in power, without removing the officials themselves from power, or indeed holding them accountable them in any way. What Kristof wants here is for everyone to pretend that the US Establishment still has enough credibility to empanel a "commission" that would "get to the truth" about its own conduct. This itself is an immense & deeply offensive lie. People like Lee Hamilton & James Baker should also be hauled before a tribunal. A political establishment that can't even impeach the likes of Bush & Cheney can certainly not appoint a meaningful "Truth Commission."
Incidentally, Kristof has not been calling for impeachment, much less demanding it. This shows how unserious his present "proposal" really is.
PShaw July 6th, 2008 7:01 pm
Absolutely correct, though the reality is that the MI bunch is probably thinking about that themselves.
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The general offier corp are not "troops" by the way.
I agree with PShaw and luckylefty. Soft-core liberals like Kristof support the "Truth Commission" concept because they think it will help soothe the burning itch to impeach and otherwise aggressively pursue criminal and civil actions against the criminal maladministration.
Truth Commission, Amerikan Style, would probably feature the same ensemble that starred in the 9/11 Commission. There's a slew of superannuated elite politicians on the Commission Senior Tour roster-- all supposedly with impeccable credentials and unimpeachable integrity: Lee Hamilton, James A. Baker, John Danforth, George Mitchell.
The list of highly-esteemed hacks and charlatans goes on and on. I'll bet Kristof and his ilk would be thrilled to see, say, Sandra Day O'Connor presiding over a Truthy Commission Dog & Pony show.
We've all been involved in disputes at one time or another which are appropriately resolved by each party admitting that they were equally wrong. That may have been the case in South Africa. But here, President Unitard and his henchpersons are the ones who've committed heinous crimes.
Even if such persons would consent to appear before a commission to offer pro forma "mea culpas"-- unsworn, no doubt, and in private-- they deserve punishment, not just a frowny-face from some bogus high-hat commission.
Wait'll the stuff 'bout 9/11 begins to come out!
Whoo-eee!
Now that's going to be a Ho Down!
Since most Congressional Democrats are complicit in the Bush/Cheney war crimes, and still vote to fund an illegal war of aggression and occupation, they will never hold any hearings which might reveal even a tiny bit of the truth. Nuremberg-type trials are what is needed, but no Americans should be the justices. If any of this ever happens, I will be totally astounded.
After 9/11, they did these things "even though we knew that these torture techniques produced false confessions." Could it be that, after 9/11, they had to have these false confessions to cement the "official story" of 9/11? Certainly they have succeeded in keeping attention away from the obvious discrepancies in this fantasy story due to the "confessions" of KSM and others. Ever wonder why the tapes of his "interrogation" were destroyed?
There is no way this gang will ever submit to a Truth Commission, as the truth of what they have done is too terrible for them ever to allow see the light of day. And we also, it seems, don't want to really know the whole of it, either. Things will get much worse for us, as long as we permit the truth to be too terrifying to face.
I like GWs commissions which spend a lot of money and no one pays any attention to the finding-such are commissions these days. The commission above tells us where the U.S. is now in the way of morality. We need to have a commission that pardons everyone so that we might hear the truth. Congress has abrigated it's duties so can't even serve a subpoena and make it stick, hasn't the guts to impeach the most dishonest President in modern history and so we need a commission. Of course since there will be no consequences for lying there will be no truth, just posturing and finger pointing or maybe the whole thing will come down to "there were no crimes committed" which is probably the most likely outcome as the rules of conduct and U.N Charter will be reinterpreted ala Clinton's "what is "is"?
D R E A M E R _ T O O
Nice to read your postings again; love the humor.
Namaste « Presence »
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"The military and intelligence officials I know are as appalled by our abuses as any other group, in part because they realize that if our people waterboard, then our people will also be waterboarded."
This is also crap. Neither is it a reason not to do it that it provides no useful information, and certainly none that could ever be used in any legitimate court of law. The reason you don't waterboard people is because it is torture, and as such is proscribed by the Geneva Convention. No further thought is necessary. It is the rule of law, and it is that simple. The US are supposed to be the good guys -- the ones who wear the white hats.
Truth Commission? Yea right! The U.S. has completely failed in the foundational truths of America's birth and the apology and corrective actions for American Indians.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was exactly that -- tell the truth, however bad, whatever you did, and you get let off. It was based on the premise that during the apartheid era both sides believed they were right (with god on their side!) and any dirty tricks were justified.
That is not what we have here. A Truth and Recinciliation Commission between Iraq and the USA (Blackwayer) might be analogous, although I think the Iraqis might baulk at it.
What luckylefty said: WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING COMMISSIONS.
WE NEED NUREMBURG TRIALS.
Aw, shit, just hang 'em and have done.
Truth Commission?
"You can't handle the truth!"
;)
You Can't Handle The Truth ..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hGvQtumNAY
Yes, yes but who will 'bell' this cat - all three branches are in on these war crimes up to their pockets!
NOT ANOTHER COMMISSION. "That was what South Africa did after apartheid, with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and it is what the United States did with the Kerner Commission on race and the 1980s commission that examined the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II."
Yes, S-A did. Just before Nelson Mandela handed S-A to the IMF/World Bank/WTO and the White Ruling Economic Class in S-A. The people are worse than they were during Apartheid.
Yes, the Kerner Commission did it's work. Then everybody went back to sleep and forgot about it. Black people are more segregated today and our racism is more institutionalized than it was when the hearings were held.
Yes, the interned Japanese people were handed $0.30 and an apology, patted on the head and told to shut up now.
WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING COMMISSIONS.
WE NEED NUREMBERG TRIALS. Right here in the US of A. And then we can talk about whether lethal injections are cruel and inhuman punishment for War Criminals and Torturers.
Stick your commissions with the rest of your "Let's have a cookie sale" suggestions. Lefties have been succeeding by failing for 35 years.
General Strike.
The idea of converting Guatanamo to a tropical disease treatment/research facility is the headliner here. Swords to plowshares. Staffed with graduates/researchers from Cuban medical schools.
Prosecute!
Me too. Give Taguba another star.
I support the troops, troops like General Taguba. Too bad that there are so few good troops out there to support. Most of them are just trying to get ahead in their 'careers' and have little to no integrity.