Criminally Minded

With Omar al-Bashir recently charged with crimes against humanity, I began to wonder when if ever former President George Bush was going to be charged with comparable crimes. Initially Bush supporters respond to this claiming that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were completely justified. Although there is a state of mind that says that even the Afghanistan war was unjustified, I'll just concentrate on the matter of the Iraq war. Beyond violating the sovereignty of that nation Bush entered the United States in a war of false pretense. The meaning behind the war continued to change. Initially there was a case made for the Al-Qaeda connection and despite then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claiming that he knew with a degree of certainty that the weapons were near Baghdad and Tikrit,that proved to be faulty. Then there was the Operation Iraqi freedom.

This premise was loaded with fallacies. The first thing you can find is the audacity of the United States to try to correct someone else's problems when the U.S. is (and at that time was) loaded with its own problems. Second you wonder what qualifies a nation's people to deserve to be "liberated". The atrocities suffered under Sadaam Hussein were awful. Then again so too were the ones observed in Rwanda, Tibet, Palestine and India where the United States has been unwilling to comment on let alone do anything about. That begs the question why the United States is so eager to "liberate" the people of Iraq. Then we are presented with the idea of spreading democracy. Interestingly enough one of the U.S.'s strongest allies in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia which has a history of denying women rights as well as being an existing monarchy that in no way supports democracy.

Thus far we are clearly able to establish at best lies and at worst war crimes. This is all done without addressing the way United States treated prisoners of war. A word that has been thrown around quite a bit without any substance or merit is the talk of torture. Human rights groups across the world and inside the United States have concluded that what the United States has done to enemy combatants can easily be called torture. Republican Senator John McCain even denouced the Bush administration for any torture they have done. This seems to be plenty of evidence for the International Criminal Court to pursue criminal charges. The good news is (in actuality it's bad news) that there are even United States laws that Bush violated. The past president's handling of the Justice Department, and its federal attorneys was simply deplorable.

At this moment the head of the House of Representatives Judiciary Chair is none other than John Conyers. Chairman Conyers is the same person who every session introduces a piece of legislation called H.R. 40. That bill calls for reparations for the African-American descendants of slaves. When asked why he continued to sponsor the legislation despite it having no chance of winning, Chairman Conyers replied because it was simply the right thing to do. With this type of narrow-minded determination and focus it should be anytime now that we can expect some legislation to come from the Judiciary committe bringing charges against Bush. Those who are in Chairman Conyers district should implore the Chairman to use his position to do what is not only fair but just.

The mainstream media has made much noise about Harriet Miers and Karl Rove testifying before a House panel, however this is not serious justice on the matter. It comes off as merely a bone to appease critics of Bush who showed how he was beyond immoral but unjust and blantatly illegal. House members (outside of Dennis Kuinich) have been either unwilling or too cowardly to bring about impeachment charges against Bush. Now that he is no longer in office we can only hope that members of the House will act on the courage of their convictions.