High
Crimes and Misdemeanors
by Kevin Alexander Gray
"We
must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders
are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it... no
grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an
instrument of policy." - Supreme Court Justice Robert L.
Jackson, a U.S. representative to the International Conference on Military
Trials at the close of World War II.
What strange liberators we must look like to the
Iraqi people and the world. While
families in this country grieve over the loss of close to 3100 troops and the
more than 48,000 wounded soldiers in V.A. hospitals across the country, thee Iraqi
people have paid a higher price in the total number of lives lost and broken in
conflict with the United States. Conservative estimates from the first Gulf War
to the present reveal that the United States has directly or indirectly
contributed to the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Iraqi people in the past
17 years. Comparatively speaking,
Saddam Hussein was officially accused of killing an estimated 180,000 Kurds and
other Iraqi citizens. And he was
charged, tried, convicted and hung for killing 126 people.
"The Iraqis need to be
saved from us."
In 1991 George H.W. Bush's Persian Gulf War left
an estimated 250,000 Iraqis dead according to
the Red Crescent Society of Jordan. Of the quarter million casualties,
113,000 were civilian deaths, 60% of them children. As a consequence of Clinton
Administration economic sanctions in the 90's, the U.N. estimated that over 500,000
Iraqi children perished. During an interview CBS's
Leslie Stahl asked then U.N Ambassador Madeleine Albright what she thought
about the U.N. report and the deaths of so many due to lack of medicine, food,
and clean water. "Is it worth it?" asked Stall. Albright, after a considered pause, said,
"Yes, we think the price is worth it." Now, fast forward to the recent Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report published in The Lancet medical journal in which a
team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that "655,000 more people
have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have
died if the invasion had not occurred."
So, despite Michigan Senator Carl Levin
repetitious laments that, "We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves," it is
fairer to say that the Iraqis need to be saved from us. And, while the George
W. Bush Administration is now being confronted for its scapegoating of Iraq
after 9/11, the U.S.'s deadly policies toward the Iraqi people did not start
with the present occupant of the White House. It started with his father and
continued with the husband of the current Democratic presidential frontrunner.
When will it end?
A Newsweek poll, conducted just before election
day, showed 51 percent of Americans believed that impeachment of President Bush
should be either a high or lower priority and measures
such as the New Mexico legislature's
impeachment initiative has given life to impeachment
chatter. The familiar charge is that George Bush, Dick Cheney,
Condoleezza Rice, Richard Pearl, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and their
apparatchiks lied about the reasons for
invading Iraq. And that a
President can commit no more serious crime against our democracy than lying to
Congress and the American people to get them to support a military action or
war.
We know there were no weapons of mass
destruction to be found in Iraq. Not even the ones that Ronald Reagan allowed
Hussein to acquire in the 80's so that
he could gas the Iranians who in 1979 kicked America's guy, Shah
Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, out of power, embarrassed
Jimmy Carter by seizing the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking hostages and then
installing the theocratic government in power today.
"The people
must insist, ‘Where is the accountability?'"
We know there was never any serious intelligence to
support Vice President Dick Cheney's insistence that Hussein and Al Qaeda were
working together. Nonetheless, the Administration repeatedly tried to claim the
connection to show that the invasion was a justified response to 9/11. Nor was
there reliable intelligence to support the Administration's claim that Hussein
was about to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Both claims have been
repeatedly proved untrue although to this day the vice president still makes
them.
Yet the Democrats were no sooner
elected in November than their leader, Nancy Pelosi, said "impeachment is off
the table." So the likelihood of their moving on their own to impeach
the president for lying about the reasons for
war is as improbable as 21,500 additional United States troops
bringing security and easing chaos in Iraq. But the people must insist, "Where
is the accountability?"
We know a few other things. We know that Bush
admits that he repeatedly authorized wiretaps, without obtaining a warrant, of hundreds,
possibly thousands, of American citizens engaged in
international calls. On the face of it, these warrantless wiretaps violate the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires
court approval for national security wiretaps and sets up a special procedure
for obtaining it. Violation of the law
is a felony. Since when does the justice system shrug at felonies?
"Instead of civil rights groups such as the NAACP
honoring Secretary of State Rice because of her job title, they should
excoriate her for promoting the war, violating international law and the public
trust."
And we know that wanton
disregard for international treaties, unprovoked invasion of another country,
occupation and torture are grounds for war crimes charges. The New York-based Center
for Constitutional Rights is trying to bring such a case against Bush et
al. through the German courts. The chance that Bush or any administration
official will ever be charged with war crimes or stand trial for violating
the Nuremberg code's prohibition against launching a war of aggression may
be as unlikely as impeachment.
Nevertheless, CCR should continue the work - at best, to hold accountable or,
the very least, to embarrass and hold up for scorn those responsible for so
much death, destruction and sadness. Instead of civil
rights groups such as the NAACP honoring Secretary of State Rice because of her job title, they should excoriate her
for promoting the war, violating international law and the public trust.
The very threat of constitutional and legal consequences and
international embarrassment may be the only "arrows in the quiver," as Rice is
prone to say, to deter the Bush Administration and its successors from
attacking Iran. Rice claims the president has the power to authorize troops to
go into Iran without Congressional approval. The Democratic Party's rising star
Senator Barack Obama said he might support a "surgical" missile strike against
the country. And, should the
unthinkable happen, Congress would have to take seriously New York Congressman
Charles Rangel's legislation to reinstitute the draft. The scenario ought to worry anyone.
Recently on BET a comedian named ‘Katt' Williams asked the
audience, "What kind of uniforms do the Iraqis army wear?" After an uncomfortable pregnant pause by the
crowd, he sarcastically mocked, "I'll wait for the answer." Then he said, "You can't answer the question
because the people we are killing are not wearing uniforms; they are
civilians." Williams' observation is
perhaps 80% correct (give or take a few points) if we go by the estimates of
the independent observers keeping track of the deaths. And while there is no official "al Qaeda" or
"insurgent" uniform, most of the remaining 20 percent are Iraqis fighting
United States occupation and a U.S. installed government in their country. They
are young men. (At the time of invasion over 50% of Iraq's population was under
15 years of age.) And their families
support them.
So, we must ask ourselves and find answers for
some tough questions. Why are we doing all this killing? At what
point does it becomes so clear that a President has so systematically abused
the powers of the presidency and so threatened the rule of law that he must be
removed from office? When is enough, enough?
"Now it's time to pay for what we broke. We pay by leaving Iraq..."
The war in Iraq was a choice, not a necessity,
not an act of self-defense. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Bush,
‘'You break it; you've bought it," as plans for the war were being laid
out. Now it's time to pay for what we broke.
We pay by leaving Iraq and letting the people figure out what kind of
society and government they wish to create.
We should pay for the infrastructure and societal damage we have
inflicted over the past 17 years. And
we should pay by making the architects of this war pay.
South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham carved out a positive
national persona in 1998 while serving
as one of the House managers who brought the body's case against Bill Clinton
at his impeachment trial in the Senate.
For whatever reason, Graham is staking his "straight shooter" image on
Bush's escalation of the war. What
would be more useful to his constituents would be his recalling the principles
behind why he thought Clinton should be impeached. He claimed that Clinton lied and broke the law. What say he about
the current occupant of the White House?
Until Graham and others stand up and hold the Bush Administration
accountable, the United States will not regain its stature
around the world as a democracy that honors the rule of law by keeping its
leaders in check.
What we on the home front can do is ask and advise our kids,
family and friends not to sign up for military service to be used on a
"fools' errant." That to fight to protect the lives of family and country
is one thing. To kill for a lie or because you need the money is another.
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Kevin Alexander Gray is lead organizer of the
Harriet Tubman Freedom House Project in Columbia, South Carolina, which focuses
on community-based political and cultural education. He is also a contributing
editor to Black News in South Carolina. Gray served as 1988 South Carolina
coordinator for the Presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson and as 1992 southern
political director for Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's Presidential bid. He can be
contacted at [email protected]