Amnesty wants Canada to arrest Bush for war crimes

LOL. It makes me wonder if they ever issued such a proclamation against Sadaam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, etc.? This has nothing to do with justice and is all about politics.

 

Nothing will come of this. It's all about spoiling Bush's visit.

After the, to be overly charitable, unwise policies of the Bush era his is a fate shared by many of his underlings (Yoo, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz etc pp). After all, they formulated and executed policies, invading Iraq aside, that saw a couple hundred people extra-legally assassinated (and now, just think about Obama's escalating use of drones for expressly that purpose), some others tortured (yes, that water boarding thing) and a couple other things. They cannot travel without having to first consult their lawyers. That unpleasant circumstance is not a result of political activism but an inevitable consequence of their previous lawbreaking and a fate they share with people like Pinochet. The activists simply call on the nations to choose to use the legal tools at their disposal.

The people still denying the illegality of many things that have happened under Bush live in coo-coo land. What about Bush 'illegal wire tapping scandal'? Oh never mind. That illegal bit don't mean nothing. What about torture (yes, that water boarding thing, again)? What about extralegally, by executive fiat, ordering the assassination worldwide, even in the US, of people, US citizens included, without trial (no due process, bill of rights, jury of peers and all that)? The conservatives who lament Obama doing that are advised to recall that this is a continuation of Bush policies. Ah, nah, all that law mumbo jumbo ... only makes one's head spin.

And of course it is about politics, or rather, a matter of activism - it is about to indict Bush for what he did, if not legally, then publicly - because it is also about principle. I think the people calling for the arrest are sincere in their pursuit of these principles. Also, the charges made can't be dismissed as frivolous. The law, humanitarian law, law of war, HAS been broken. The culprits HAVE come away. The United States of America DO refuse to prosecute. Technically that, not to mention cases in which Canadian citizens have been harmed, gives Canada the right to prosecute. For political reasons they will refuse to do so.

Nations, because of the inevitable foreign policy fallout, rarely to choose to use the legal tools at their disposal, but stranger things have happened. If the US was a failed state, Bush would be arrested. The only thing that keeps him out of jail is US power (and domestically, the utter unwillingness of the US to soberly come to grips with their past). That fact doesn't attest to his innocence.

 

Or instead of everything you said we could keep it much simpler - Amnesty International lacks the legal authority to make any country do anything it doesn't want to, and Canada doesn't have the stones to do it anyway.

 

I don't think Amnesty actually wants it to happen in the first place - imo it's a soundbite to make the news and energize their supporters there about the Bush visit. If there are thousands of people protesting and they make the news in 95+% of the newscasts, AI will probably consider it a win.

 

Well, Amnesty can report a crime and point out the culprit. It is then up to the Canadian authorities what to do, and they have discretion in deciding whether to prosecute or not.

When human rights folks demanded that Germany arrest Rumsfeld it was just about that, based on what was done to German national Khalid El-Masri (probably driven insane in US captivity), German authorities refused to prosecute, and the thing went to court. The court ruling in this case was intriguing - they found that, at that time, there was no indication to assume that the US had given up on investigation or prosecution, elegantly freeing Germany from the inconvenient obligation to step in instead.

It did not say, however, that Germany didn't have jurisdiction. Since German citizens were harmed, Germany can still claim jurisdiction (they don't even have to revert to universal jurisdiction), if the Americans indicated that they will never investigate or prosecute these cases (actually I think that would be a fairly easy case to make - a decade of inaction pretty much speaks for itself).

That's generally a thing people have to understand about universal jurisdiction: The general idea is that, if a country doesn't keep their house clean and prosecute their criminals themselves, someone else will - i.e. it is a subsidiary jurisdiction. And to the best of my knowledge double jeopardy rules don't apply internationally, so having a sham trial or investigation (or retroactive immunities) duly absolving politicos of any culpability (or immunising them) cannot prevent universal jurisdiction from kicking in.

Even if nothing comes form this, the inconvenience of having their travelling schedule obstructed, with bad publicity reminding everybody of their inconvenient past, will remain. If it ever goes to trial, we will see frail old men who will get some leniency for their various ailments.

Of course it is about PR. AI ain't stupid. They know Bush won't get arrested, let alone tried.

 

Rag, I think your first post on this matter was great.

Cheers!

 

What about a war that cannot be won? e.g. War on Terrorism?

 

I want to re-emphasise something: I wrote that I think the people calling for the arrest are sincere in their pursuit of these principles. You will find AI objecting about torture everywhere. They aren't about bashing Bush. They oppose, on principle, torture. What is, and can possibly be, wrong, let alone radical about that? It is ludicrous and asinine in the extreme to even suggests that there is anything left wing or alone liberal about such criticism.

To insist in rights to be respected, in law not to be broken or circumvented - all that is in fact an arch-conservative stance. What the self-appointed 'conservatives' who defend torture believe instead is that laws and legal standards can be sacrificed for expedience. There is nothing conservative about that.

That brand of 'conservative' harps all day long about limited government, that government screws up everything and all the time, but when the government sets forth to torture and kill people, government is infallible and there is no need for oversight or transparency. So the NSC, under Bush and Obama, in secrecy compiles kill lists that include US citizens? What's the big deal? Apparently, citizen rights mean nothing when weighed against the imperatives of national security. What about separation of powers, rule of law, prohibition of torture, privacy laws, rules of evidence and due process, transparency and checks and balances? All left wing or liberal ideas? That all of that easily goes far beyond the "Intolerable Acts" the founders rebelled against ... oh, whatever. In their eyes national security, because America is under threat, supersedes all of that.

The concept of the state of emergency, which, inevitably in a war on nouns, that cannot be won or lost, is perpetual, that concept owes a lot to Carl Schmitt and very little to Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton. I think the application of the state of emergency on an open ended, routine basis is irreconcilable with the ideas manifest in the American constitutional system.