I am a serious fan of the U.S. legal system. Those who stand accused of crime are innocent until proven guilty, citizens have a right to trial by jury and there are rules against cruel and unusual punishment. Of course, in reality, these staples of American justice don’t always pan out so well. Genetic evidence indicates that more than a few citizens have been wrongly executed, police brutality and issues such as racial profiling are still present in many areas and access to a legal system that works for you depends more on your annual income than your innocence or guilt. However, the biggest problems plaguing the U.S. justice system right now are two intertwined factors: hypocrisy and patriotism.
Zacarias Moussaoui is a French citizen who was planning to fly a plane into the White House on behalf of none other than Osama bin Laden. After Sept. 11, Moussaoui never got a chance to complete his mission, and he now sits poised to be the only person prosecuted for involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. If U.S. lawyers get their way, he will pay for that involvement with his life.
Moussaoui has been charged, in essence, with planning to hurt American citizens, and for this our government believes he should die — a probable, acceptable conclusion of our government, until one considers the myriad of U.S. soldiers escaping even the most menial prosecution for their heinous crimes on foreign soil. The Bush administration is once again proving itself to be rampant with hypocrisy. You want harm against humanity, let me give you two words: Abu Ghraib. Is considering harm toward American citizens worse than actually harming an Iraqi life? Apparently so. Whereas U.S. citizens are people to be protected at the utmost cost, foreign citizens are acceptable casualties of war and the rash thinking that accompanies it.
Luckily, Human Rights Watch recommended this week that a special prosecutor be assigned to look into the role of senior defense officials within the Abu Ghraib abuses. Indeed, it seems obvious that any investigation into the questionable actions of subordinates should include an analysis of their superiors. Moussaoui is slated to receive the death penalty, so one can only imagine that the official under whom he was working (i.e. Osama bin Laden) would receive a sentence of at least the same magnitude if apprehended. If the United States is willing to sentence Moussaoui and bin Laden to death for conspiring to harm people, Donald Rumsfeld and then-commander of U.S. troops Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez should at least be investigated for their orders to use “painful stress situations” and myriad other tactics that broke the Geneva Conventions.
Perhaps Rumsfeld and Sanchez were too far up on the chain of command. Perhaps they had no idea their orders would be magnified to induce the horrific abuse at Abu Ghraib. But what about the other commanding officials who were physically present at the scene of the abuse? One, just one of those commanders was given any sort of reprimand. The other superior officers, Sanchez included, were relieved of blame for “mitigating circumstances,” such as the fact that “U.S. military command was short of senior officers.” I guess we’re left to assume that lower rank officers thought putting prisoners into grossly inappropriate sexual positions with each other was the only way to bring in more army officials. The real mitigating circumstance is the U.S. government’s apparent core belief that authorizing harsh treatment of prisoners and breaking international war codes is OK, as long as the welfare of America remains stable.
On the other side of this debate is a somewhat logical argument that the soldiers actually committing the abuse deserve the harshest punishment; after all, they were the human beings physically executing torture. But once again, to charge only these lower-level soldiers is hypocritical of the U.S. government. Rumsfeld, Sanchez and the other exonerated officials may have not personally tortured Iraqis; but, like the conspiring of Moussaoui, American officials’ orders and planning still ultimately led to the abuse.
The United States should not operate itself legally under the pretense of patriotism; what benefits America is acceptable, what harms America is not. The ends should not justify the means, especially when those means are just a facade of national security based on homeland affiliation. Our country is in a state where “terrorism” is designated the ultimate evil and anyone working for terrorism is deemed worthy of the harshest treatment. Those working “against terrorism” (such as the officials in charge at Abu Ghraib) are granted extreme leniency because of their job description.
One of America’s biggest buzz words is and has always been justice. Unfortunately, as a buzz word and in general, justice is being swiftly replaced by terrorism.
The injustice of U.S. justice
Daily Emerald
April 24, 2005
Further from perfection
0
More to Discover