[Peace-discuss] Three Articles from Sunday Chicago Tribune

[David Green]

Do unto others . . .
America fights international covenants against torture
  
By Doug Cassel. Doug Cassel is head of the Center for
International Human Rights at Northwestern University
Law School
Published September 1, 2002

Does the Bush administration give a hoot about human
rights?

The question arises from its stance on issues ranging
from torture to holding human-rights violators
accountable, aid to repressive militaries, and civil
liberties in the "war" against terrorism. Perhaps the
most startling case example is its marriage of
convenience with Fidel Castro to oppose a new United
Nations agreement on torture. The current Convention
Against Torture, joined by the first President George
Bush, requires governments to punish torturers but
does little to prevent torture.

Partly as a result, torture still ravages people
worldwide. Surveys by Amnesty International regularly
find torture practiced in dozens of countries. In
hopes of curbing the practice, Costa Rica has long
pushed for a UN protocol that would require
governments to open their jails to inspections by an
international group of experts. The proposal is
similar to a European treaty under which experts have
carried out inspections in more than 40 European
countries--including British and Russian centers for
detaining terrorists.

The experts then make confidential recommendations to
governments. According to the Council of Europe, their
work has "led to a wide range of improvements," such
as better police supervision, new legal safeguards,
bans on dangerous forms of restraint and even the
closing of some detention facilities.

Costa Rica's proposal was negotiated for a decade and
finally approved this spring by the UN Office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights. In July, it moved
to the next step, the UN's Economic and Social
Council.

But there the United States moved to block the vote
and proposed to reopen the negotiations. The European
Union publicly accused the U.S. of "delaying tactics
aimed at killing" the protocol.

Do unto others . . .
U.S. has reasons to protect rights: Its citizens
abroad
   
By M. Cherif Bassiouni. M. Cherif Bassiouni is head of
the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul
University
Published September 1, 2002

Several million Americans travel to other countries
every year, and some 1 million Americans live abroad
for six months or more. They include business people,
students, researchers, academics, tourists, retirees,
military personnel and families of persons living
abroad. If for no other reason than statistics,
Americans abroad run afoul of the laws of a foreign
country. At times, they may even be targeted by local
public officials for a variety of reasons.

Many countries' legal systems do not offer the same
protection as those in the United States and Western
European countries. In some countries, law enforcement
is corrupt and abusive. Torture and physical
mistreatment are not uncommon in 40 to 50 countries,
as reported by Amnesty International and the State
Department's annual country report to Congress. The
first thing an American does when he or she is
arrested abroad is to seek assistance from the local
U.S. Consulate. If the person can't do so, the family
will turn to the embassy in that country and to the
State Department in Washington. Family members will
also turn to their representatives in Congress to
contact the State Department.

Diplomatic intervention on behalf of a citizen
detained abroad is everyone's expectation in this
country and others. All governments have a duty and
responsibility to protect their citizens abroad.

But, in a number of cases, including a few that
involved executions, the United States has violated
that precept.

This principle has long been established in
international law and is specifically included in the
1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which
the U.S. has ratified. It provides for an explicit
obligation for all countries of the world to notify
the consular officials of a country whose citizen has
been detained. The right of notification also extends
to a right of access by the consular officials to
visit the detainee and observe that he or she is
properly treated and has effective legal
representation.

The U.S. protests these violations with the foreign
government. On occasion, the U.S. takes stronger
measures toward countries where its citizens have been
detained without right of access to a consular
official, where they have been mistreated or where
their rights to a proper defense and a fair trial were
not afforded.

The latest of these cases has to do with an
Egyptian-American, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a professor of
sociology at the American University in Cairo, who was
recently convicted by a State Security Court in Egypt
on the questionable charges of embezzlement and
defamation of the state. Not only has the U.S.
protested this decision, which does not stand up to
close legal scrutiny, but this government and Congress
have even taken the unprecedented step of barring
Egypt, a valued ally, from receiving additional
foreign aid assistance.

There is no doubt that diplomatic protection of
nationals abroad, particularly as reflected in the
rights afforded under the Vienna Convention on
Consular Relations, is of great value to Americans,
given the number of those exposed to foreign legal
systems.

It would be logical for the U.S. to be particularly
rigorous in affording the same protection and rights
to foreign citizens on its territory. Unfortunately,
this is not the case. There have been several cases in
the past few years of foreign nationals detained and
brought to trial in the U.S. not being advised of
their right of access to consular officials in a
timely manner, or denied that right altogether.

These people may not have been able to secure counsel
of their choice because, as indigents, they could have
access only to a public defender.

No consulate contact

The latest of these violations occurred in Texas. On
Aug. 14, Javier Suarez Medina, a Mexican national, was
executed for killing an undercover police officer
during a drug transaction. Suarez was denied contact
with his consulate, and when Mexico's officials
inquired, they were misinformed and told that Suarez
was not Mexican.

Mexico argues that, had its consulate been able to
obtain counsel for Suarez, he would have probably
received a sentence of life imprisonment instead of
death. This is particularly significant in Mexico,
where the constitution abolishes the death penalty.
More troublesome is that the White House and the State
Department did nothing to urge Texas to postpone the
execution so President Vicente Fox could come to Texas
and appeal to the governor for a commutation of the
sentence.

As a result, Fox canceled his U.S. trip, souring
relations between the two countries.

This is not a unique case. In the past five years, two
Mexicans, a Paraguayan, a Canadian and two Germans
have been executed without timely access to their
consular officials. In all of these cases, the
governments in question have protested the treaty
violations by the U.S. The case involving a Paraguayan
citizen in Virginia led to an embarrassing suit
against the United States before the International
Court of Justice in 1998.

The blatant violation of the Vienna Convention is also
evidenced by the fact that an estimated 1,200 foreign
nationals were detained after Sept. 11 on various
charges of visa violations without notification to
their consular officials. A year later, the Department
of Justice is still resisting disclosing the names of
those released or those still in custody in part
because it does not want to notify foreign consular
officials and does not want those officials to have
access to their citizens.

They probably fear that these governments would
protest having their citizens detained only on the
basis of visa violations and not on the basis of the
commission of a crime. This would cause worldwide
embarrassment to the U.S. because it was assumed such
arrests and detentions were related to terrorism. If
that turned out not to be the case, and that such a
large number of persons have been kept in jail for so
long only for technical immigration violations and
without any connection to the Sept. 11 attacks, the
reactions against the administration in this country
and abroad would be significant.

Guantanamo detentions

Neither international embarrassment nor the risk that
our own citizens could be treated as we treat those of
other countries seems to cause the administration much
concern. Its disregard of international law is also
evidenced by the detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of
Taliban prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva
Conventions. This example could lead other countries
to treat American POWs the same way.

The United States cannot claim to lead the world and
disregard the international rule of law. The
administration must stop these double standards and
show more respect for the law, if it wants others to
do the same.


Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune 


Fortunately, the U.S. lost its bid by 29-15 (with
eight abstentions). The U.S. was opposed by all
European and Latin American countries, except
one--Cuba.

The protocol then passed (with the U.S. abstaining)
and will go to the General Assembly this fall. Cuba's
"no" vote on the protocol was echoed by China, Egypt,
Libya, Nigeria and Sudan, all identified year after
year as countries that use torture.

How did the Bush administration end up in bed with
Castro?

Presumably it has no desire to commit torture. But it
also has no desire to let international inspectors
(beyond the Red Cross) visit and interview "enemy
combatants" detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in
military brigs.

Justice Department officials also argue that
international inspections of state prisons would
violate states' rights and prisoners' privacy rights.

Still, even if all these arguments had merit--does
Washington really believe that prisoners want
protection from torture inspectors?--none justifies
trying to kill the protocol. It will apply only to
countries that choose to join it. The U.S. can simply
not join.

Castro may not want the embarrassment of being left
out in the cold. But why should Washington try to
weaken or kill a treaty that would not bind us and
that promises to curb torture elsewhere?

The president's public record on human rights is not
uniformly negative.

Sometimes he does profess to care. At every
opportunity, for example, he denounces human-rights
violations by Cuba. Last year he condemned violations
by the Taliban, and this year by Saddam Hussein.

But his overall record makes one wonder about even
these selective stirrings of conscience. Is his real
concern human rights or Cuban-American voters and
popular support for war in Afghanistan and Iraq?

One source of skepticism is the administration's
evidently low priority for holding human-rights
violators accountable, whether before international or
national courts, in criminal or civil cases.

It opposes the International Criminal Court on the
grounds that the court might conduct politically
motivated prosecutions of Americans--even though the
ICC statute requires that all cases involving
Americans be referred to the U.S. for investigation
and any resulting prosecution. The ICC can take the
case back only if it later finds that the U.S.
proceeding was a sham, designed to obstruct rather
than to achieve justice.

Such a finding--by judges chosen mainly by our
democratic allies--is exceedingly unlikely. Yet its
mere possibility is enough for the administration to
oppose an ICC that may offer the only hope for justice
in many cases of crimes against humanity.

Not only has the president withdrawn the U.S.
signature from the ICC treaty, but he has signed a
bill that authorizes him to use military force against
the ICC.

Meanwhile, his diplomats hold UN peacekeeping missions
hostage to their demand that U.S. soldiers be immune
from the ICC, and they pressure individual nations to
sign agreements promising not to turn over U.S.
soldiers to the ICC.

Washington's weak commitment to accountability is not
confined to the ICC.

When Indonesian courts recently returned "not guilty"
verdicts against the first six military personnel
tried for the 1999 atrocities in East Timor, despite
strong evidence of guilt, the State Department said it
was "disappointed" but hoped that future trials will
go better.

There is little if any basis for such hope. Even so,
according to a Western diplomat quoted in the South
China Morning Post, Washington can be expected to
oppose a special international tribunal for Indonesia,
like those now prosecuting genocide in Rwanda and war
crimes in Yugoslavia.

Civil suits for monetary damages in federal court are
another way to hold human-rights violators
accountable. Yet when victims recently sued ExxonMobil
for murders and disappearances allegedly committed by
Indonesian troops guarding the company's oil wells and
pipelines, the State Department asked the federal
judge to dismiss the suit, arguing that it could
prejudice U.S. relations with Indonesia.

And despite that military's dismal human-rights
record, the administration recently resumed security
assistance to Indonesia. Already we send a lot of aid
to Colombia's military, whose continued collusion with
paramilitary death squads is well-documented.

The scant regard for human rights is evident as well
in our counterterrorism activities. Since Sept. 11,
more than 1,000 foreign nationals have been detained
in secret, some for months without access to lawyers
or judges, and then deported after closed hearings for
minor immigration offenses.

When a federal judge ruled that their immigration
hearings must generally be public, the Justice
Department got the Supreme Court to stay the order.
When another federal judge ruled that their names, at
least, must be made public, the government got that
order, too, stayed pending appeal.

At least two U.S. citizens--Jose Padilla and Yasser
Esam Hamdi--are being held incommunicado in military
brigs in the U.S., without access to lawyers or
courts, as "unlawful combatants." So, too, are
hundreds of foreign citizens at Guantanamo.

When the president last year announced his plan to
authorize trials of suspected terrorists before
military commissions, critics objected to this
proposed shortcut of due process. Now, it seems, most
of those being held will be lucky to get any kind of
hearing at all.

The cumulative damage done by these and other
administration assaults on human rights is worrisome.
Many of our allies are rightly appalled; we are
increasingly seen around the world as more likely to
oppose than to defend human rights.

Our current policy of treating human rights as a flag
of convenience undercuts the global moral credibility,
not only of the land of the free, but of the broader
cause of human rights.


Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune 

Published on Sunday, September 1, 2002 in the Chicago
Tribune  
War on Iraq: Fast-Forward to 2012
The question then will be: "How could America's
leaders have been so weak and ill-informed?"
 
by Karen J. Alter 
  
Ten years from now, will we be looking back asking:
"How could the U.S. have thought that an unprovoked
preventative war on Iraq could succeed? The signs of
danger were so clear and ominous. 

"How could America's leadership not have seen that the
impossibility of accomplishing the mission through air
power would lead to levels of American casualties not
seen since the Vietnam War? How could our leaders have
failed to anticipate that an oil shock and deficit
spending for war would plunge the U.S. and world
economies into a major recession? How could the Bush
administration be so focused on getting rid of Saddam
Hussein that it failed to create a workable policy to
shape a post-Hussein Iraq?" 

The most compelling way to answer these questions will
be to apply the late Irving Janis' insights on
"groupthink." Looking back on the disastrous Bay of
Pigs, Janis, one of the world's leading authorities on
decision-making, asked, "How could bright, shrewd men
like John F. Kennedy and his advisers be taken by the
CIA's stupid patchwork plan?" 

Drawing on psychological studies of group
decision-making, Janis argued that the pressures of
like-minded people deciding as a group lead to a
deterioration of mental reasoning, reality testing and
moral judgment. In short, groupthink leads to a
complete breakdown of critical thinking. The Bush
administration's foreign policy team manifests all the
symptoms of groupthink that Janis identified: 


illusions of invulnerability leading to the taking of
extreme risks;

collective efforts to rationalize, leading
decision-makers to discount warnings that might
otherwise force them to reconsider;

stereotyped views of enemy leaders as too evil to
warrant genuine attempts to negotiate, and as too weak
or stupid to counter an attack against them, leading
to miscalculations;

an unquestioned belief in the group's inherent
morality, inclining group members to ignore the
ethical or moral consequences of their decisions;

advocates of the consensus view, putting pressure on
those who express strong arguments against any of the
group's commitments, making clear that dissent is
contrary to what is expected of all loyal members;

self-appointed mind guards emerging to protect the
group from advice, information and views that might
shatter the shared complacency about the effectiveness
or morality of their decisions;

self-censorship by people with views deviating from
the apparent group consensus, creating an illusion of
unanimity within the group. 
Candidate Bush ran for office by arguing that America
cannot be the world's policeman, that the U.S. must
avoid entanglements in the world, and most of all,
avoid anything that resembles "nation-building." But
Bush's conversion to war with Iraq will obliterate all
those arguments with nation-building certain to
follow. 

President Bush is no foreign-policy expert. So how
could he decide not to go to war when his most trusted
advisers--the head of the National Security Council,
the secretary of defense, the vice president--all say
that the threat of nuclear proliferation makes
removing Saddam Hussein unavoidable? Once Saddam
Hussein is gone, they argue, Iraq will no longer be a
dangerous problem for us. 

Bush's mistake will have been to surround himself with
advisers sharing an ideological cohesiveness and
radical views. Of course, war was neither unavoidable
nor inevitable. 

The real question to consider is: How could the rest
of America's leadership have let this happen? The
extreme nature of Bush's advisers and their
pathological distaste for Saddam Hussein was
well-known. The drumbeat leading up to war was
prolonged and extremely transparent. Why did America
let this disaster unfold when it knew better? 

As soon as President Bush starts making his case to
the American public, the decision for war will have
been made. In essence that will be the United States'
declaration of war. Already the Bush administration is
preparing, inviting proposals for humanitarian aid
projects in Iraq and for Iraqi refugees in surrounding
countries. 

It is time for those who are still thinking clearly to
ratchet up the rhetoric. An unprovoked "preventative"
war with Iraq is insane. 

Before the administration creates a flimsy pretext to
go in, Congress must insist that Bush not wage war
without its assent. Members of the administration who
disagree with a war in Iraq must publicly voice their
opposition, to lend support to those outside with
serious reservations. The people who have supported
George Bush, and on whom he is counting for
re-election, must also make it known that they do not
support war with Iraq. It is better to voice your
opposition now, when backing down is still relatively
easy, than to reflect 10 years from now upon how this
fiasco happened. 

Karen J. Alter is an assistant professor of political
science at Northwestern University 

Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune 

 


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