Sunday, May 09, 2004
A President Beyond The Law...?
The The New York Times May 7 op-ed by Anthonly Lewis entitled "A President Beyond The Law" soundly and concisely nails one of the most basic and fundamental problems with the Bush Administration: an adherence to law only when it's convenient.
Lewis cites the the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as a glaring example:
The Third Geneva Convention requires that any dispute about a prisoner's status be decided by a "competent tribunal." American forces provided many such tribunals for prisoners taken in the Persian Gulf war in 1991. But Mr. Bush has refused to comply with the Geneva Convention. He decided that all the Guantánamo prisoners were "unlawful combatants" — that is, not regular soldiers but spies, terrorists or the like.
It would appear to President Bush and his supporters that to follow the rule of law is to be weak on terrorism. The problem with this mindset is that without adherence law there is no moral high ground.
Bush has set the stage for other countries to do to our citizens exactly what we've done...hold our citizens without regard to international law. This is a most dangerous precedent. Why should other countries obey laws when the government of the United States won't?
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Lewis cites the the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as a glaring example:
The Third Geneva Convention requires that any dispute about a prisoner's status be decided by a "competent tribunal." American forces provided many such tribunals for prisoners taken in the Persian Gulf war in 1991. But Mr. Bush has refused to comply with the Geneva Convention. He decided that all the Guantánamo prisoners were "unlawful combatants" — that is, not regular soldiers but spies, terrorists or the like.
It would appear to President Bush and his supporters that to follow the rule of law is to be weak on terrorism. The problem with this mindset is that without adherence law there is no moral high ground.
Bush has set the stage for other countries to do to our citizens exactly what we've done...hold our citizens without regard to international law. This is a most dangerous precedent. Why should other countries obey laws when the government of the United States won't?
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